Alcohol abuse statistics show that alcohol abuse among teens is increasing in the United States. What are some of the reasons for this? Many alcohol addiction authorities assert that liquor, wine, and beer ads generated by the media are an important reason for the rise in teen alcohol abuse.

Other alcohol abuse professionals articulate that the increase in teenage alcohol abuse is due to the acceptability and ease of access of alcohol in our society.

Still other alcohol addiction consultants assert that many of our young people engage in dangerous drinking because of the increased tension that they go through.

From a somewhat different viewpoint, because both parents in many families work full or part-time, the lack of parental supervision positively has to play a key role in the expansion of youth alcohol abuse. And last of all, an assortment of alcoholism specialists articulate that the increase in teen alcohol abuse is due, in some way, to our “anything goes” society.

Coping Skills Training and Hazardous Drinking

One element of youth alcohol abuse that seems to be somewhat missing in the chemical dependency research findings, conversely, is the dearth of educational courses that teach teens how to augment their coping skills so that their injurious drinking behavior is extensively lessened or exterminated.

More to the point, scientific research has displayed the fact that there is an indirect association between poor coping skills and abusive drinking. Essentially, this means that the worse the coping skills, the higher the occurrence of alcohol abuse. To the degree that this is an accurate line of reasoning, why isn’t coping skills instruction a major part of the academic core curriculum in all of our junior high schools, elementary schools, and high schools?

A Society That Stresses Teenage Coping Skills

Let us create a scenario for illustrative purposes. Let us imagine a society in which students are trained how to develop superior coping skills all the way from kindergarten up to and including their senior year in high school.

In such a society, when life gets complicated, people who are ”coping skills experts” will be able to respond in a healthier and more successful way, as opposed to others who are unsuccessful in their attempts to put their coping skills into operation.

Stated more explicitly, students who show evidence of first-class coping skills will be more able to think logically and engage in quality decision making as opposed to adolescents who, because they were unsuccessful in their attempts to learn outstanding coping skills, are drawn to the “quick fix” of excessive drinking.

What would happen in the above “ideal” society, what’s more, if teens not only received first class coping skills training but also received an outstanding education that outlined the short term and long term destructive outcomes associated with drug abuse and alcohol abuse? Emphasizing these drug and alcohol abuse facts, along with more highly developed coping skills training, it is proclaimed, would help students keep away from the clear charm associated with teen drinking and, for that reason, would notably lessen the excessive drinking behavior displayed by adolescents in our country.

Youth Abusive Drinking: Conclusion

There are indubitably various valid reasons why so many of our teens drink in a harmful manner. Such a complex subject matter demands a wide-ranging and more meaningful preventative and educational response by our parents, students, politicians, and educators so that our teens can learn how to cope with life’s difficulties in a more fruitful and accountable way instead of resorting to destructive drinking behavior to solve their difficulties.

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