Recent alcohol abuse statistics show that alcohol abuse among adolescents is increasing in the United States. What are some of the reasons for this? Quite a few alcohol addiction professionals believe that alcohol advertisements brought into being by the media are a key reason for the increase in teen alcohol abuse.

Other substance abuse consultants state that the increase in adolescent alcohol abuse is due to the acceptability and accessibility of alcohol in our society.

Still other substance abuse authorities believe that numerous young people involve themselves in alcohol abuse due to the increased disquiet that they are subjected to.

From a somewhat different viewpoint, due to the fact that both parents in more than a few families are gainfully employed, the lack of parental guidance certainly has to play a primary role in the escalation of teenage alcohol abuse. And last of all, diverse alcohol abuse consultants believe that the increase in teenage alcohol abuse is due, to some extent, to our laissez-faire society.

Abusive Drinking and Coping Skills Training

One component of teen alcohol abuse that appears to be lacking in the alcoholism research literature, to the contrary, is the paucity of educational courses that teach teens how to augment their coping skills so that their harmful drinking behavior is notably reduced or exterminated.

More explicitly, science has displayed the fact that there is an indirect link between poor coping skills and excessive drinking. In actual fact, this means that the more mediocre the coping skills, the greater the occurrence of alcohol abuse. To the degree that this is an accurate affirmation, why isn’t coping skills instruction a fundamental part of the academic curriculum in all of our junior high schools, elementary schools, and high schools?

A Society That Puts Emphasis On Youth Coping Skills

Let us create a scenario for illustrative purposes. Let us imagine a society in which all people are taught how to achieve sound coping skills all the way from kindergarten up to and including the twelfth grade.

In such a society, when life gets challenging, students who are ”coping skills experts” will be able to respond in a more healthy and more successful way, contrary to others who are unsuccessful in their attempts to put their coping skills into practice.

More precisely, students who demonstrate first-class coping skills will be more able to think logically and show signs of superior decision making as opposed to teens who, because they were unsuccessful in their attempts to learn good coping skills, gravitate to the “quick fix” of excessive drinking.

What would happen in the above “ideal” society, additionally, if teens not only received top quality coping skills training but also obtained a top shelf education that outlined the long term and short term destructive outcomes associated with drug abuse and alcohol abuse? Emphasizing these types of drug and alcohol abuse facts, along with more advanced coping skills education, it is pronounced, would help teenagers keep away from the noticeable attraction with adolescent drinking and, as a result, would radically reduce the dangerous drinking behavior exhibited by adolescents in our country.

Youth Hazardous Drinking: Conclusion

There are surely a number of justifiable reasons why so many of our teens drink in a harmful manner. Such a knotty subject matter demands a far-reaching and more applicable preventative and educational response by our politicians, educators, students, and parents so that our teenagers can learn how to cope with life’s predicaments in a more fruitful and responsible manner rather than resorting to abusive drinking behavior to solve their difficulties.

Tags: youth alcohol abuse, teenage alcohol abuse, adolescent alcohol abuse