AHS Views

Statistics show that kids whose parents really educate them on the dangers of alcohol are 50 percent less likely to drink. A new program in two Seattle high schools is showing that education in schools can have the same effect – their alcohol education program reduced the number of kids who drink by 50 percent. This is important for several reasons – it stops kids, and families, from suffering the consequences of alcohol abuse, and it also greatly reduces the chances that kids will turn into adult alcoholics who need alcohol rehab.

What do we mean by ‘education’? It’s not just ordering kids not to drink or take drugs, and it’s not broad generalities about how they’re bad for you. It’s giving them information about what alcohol is, what is does to the body, how it effects the mind, how it makes a person even less able to control their environment and their thoughts, and less able to address whatever problems they have that are making them want to drink.

It also means giving them statistics on the consequences – driving while under the influence, the increase in other types of accidents and injuries, information on how it effects kids in school regarding their grades, their ability to show up for classes where they can get the education they need to have a good future, and so on.

In other words, they need the full picture. Just like adults, reasonable kids use information to make their decisions. Not all kids will do that, and not all adults will do that, but it decreases the chances of them drinking or taking drugs by 50 percent – so we know that at least ½ of them ‘get it.’

The program in the Seattle schools got everyone involved – the kids, the parents, the teachers, and the police.

If you educate your kids, and get your kids’ schools to initiate a similar education program to back you up, it will really help. Your kids will be safer, and you’ll have one less thing to worry about.

Sometimes education isn’t enough. If someone in your family won’t stop drinking, get them into an alcohol addiction help program so they won’t ruin their lives, or yours.

Kids who drink a little or take drugs are much more likely to use them as much or even more when they go to university or college. Alcohol, and some drugs, are so acceptable in colleges that they are encouraged by the culture to step things up. As they do so, they’re even more likely to become heavy drinkers and alcoholics when they get out of school and a significant percentage of them will need professional alcohol or drug addiction help to quit.

Fortunately, many universities and colleges are now offering alcohol and drug education. University of Western Washington is one of the latest to step up to the plate and offer these services for all students, including those who have just arrived.

They will also soon be putting up ‘informative’ posters around their campus and on student doors and will have advisers going to classrooms to talk to the new students.
They’re basing this on a study done about 10 years ago – the actions done included putting door-knockers on dorms and ads in a campus newspaper. It reduced alcoholism by 20 percent over the three years that the campaign ran.

It’s too bad that school resources, which are often short to begin with, have to be spent on this kind of deterrent – parents are paying for their kids to go to college for an education that will set them up to do well in their life careers, not to get them to stop drinking or not get caught up in the drinking culture in their school.

But, really, it’s going to come down to the parents. Parents have to be aware that they have to handle the problem well before university comes around.

The younger kids start to drink, the higher the chances they’ll continue.

If you can keep them from drinking while in their early and mid-teens, the chances of them remaining sober are 50% greater than if they drank or took drugs at that age.

If you can keep them from drinking in high school, there’s less chance they will fall prey to the alcohol culture when they get into college.

And, if they can avoid getting into the alcohol or drug culture in college, they’re less likely to drink when they leave.

But it’s really vital that parents start this at a very young age. Kids are exposed to drinking and drugs at a very young age; they need to be prepared. They need to already understand the dangers of what they would be getting into if they drank or took drugs BEFORE they are offered them.

There are many resources available to help parents educate their kids – just look online for alcohol or drug education and the info will be there.

And if you can’t keep them from drinking or taking drugs, you must get them into a good drug or alcohol rehab program as soon as possible – one that will give them that education, and get down to the bottom of why they’re taking drugs or drinking in the first place, and help them with those issues so they can stop – regardless of their environment.

Of course, one of the best ways to learn is by example. If parents don’t use alcohol or drugs as solutions to problems or to ‘have a good time’, the kids are more likely to follow in their footsteps.

This applies to prescription drugs as well as street drugs. Prescription drug addiction is now just as common as with other drugs.

Bottom line: If you look for non-drug solutions to enhance your own physical and emotional well-being, and teach your kids to do the same, you’re off to a very good start.

Alcohol and drugs ruin lives. They are now so common and available that teaching your kids about them is a vital step in raising them.

Many parents face the dilemma of trying to bring up their kids so they don’t drink alcohol. Or, at least, don’t abuse it. If someone does have an alcohol problem, they can get alcohol addiction help through an alcohol rehab program. But prevention is far easier than the cure: Once a person gets to the point of getting treatment, they have often done a lot of damage to their body, their family, and themselves. And sometimes it’s irreversible.

Educating kids on the dangers of alcohol is a common prevention method, but here are a few relatively new statistics that could be pretty convincing.

• One out of every five alcoholics who attempt to stop drinking without medical intervention end up dying as a result of alcohol withdrawal delirium. So, in fact, it’s not just will power or the mental and emotional dependence on alcohol that keeps people from quitting. The symptoms they experience are so severe they feel they just have to have another drink or they’re going to die. And, in one out of every five cases, they’re right. That really gives you a clue as to how bad drinking can be.
• 68% of people who go to hospital emergency rooms have an alcohol or drug problem. Just to give you more of an idea of how many people that represents – there are nearly 124 million ER visits every year, so that means over 84 million people with drug or alcohol problems are in ERs. I’ve heard a lot of people complain about not wanting to go to a hospital emergency room because they don’t want to wait for hours in a room with a bunch of ‘drunks’ or ‘druggies.’ Does your son or daughter want to be one of them?
• They should also know that most of these people in ERs aren’t hardcore, long-term alcoholics. The millions of accidents and injuries that occur while drinking often happen to people who are not really alcoholics at all.
• 20% of suicide victims in the US are alcoholics. You might be tempted to say that’s logical because if they weren’t really depressed or otherwise kind of messed up, they wouldn’t be alcoholics in the first place. Well, to a degree, that’s true. But people often start drinking for much more mundane reasons than wanting to kill themselves. They start because their friends think it’s cool, or because everyone around them drinks and they want to feel like they’re part of the crowd. And, by the way, this isn’t always because of ‘peer pressure’ – sometimes it’s just a matter of having people to talk to and hang out with. If all the people around you who you might want to hang out with are drinkers, it’s hard to talk to them unless you’re drinking too. Even just being a ‘little high’, not drunk, can be a vastly different world than being ‘sober.’
• Whatever the reason the person started drinking, alcohol can make you depressed – the longer you drink, the worse it gets. Also, the chances of alcohol causing problems in your life are very high – someone’s orderly life can turn into a mess once they start drinking. They lose family, jobs, friends, money, relationships, etc.
• At this point, you can be sure that they have wanted to quit for along time – they’ve seen the slide in their life. But, because alcohol is so addictive both mentally and physically, they have not been able to quit. So they slide down even further – their self-esteem is destroyed as they see their lives go down the drain and can’t do anything about it. Is it really surprising that under those circumstances someone would kill themselves?

Let your kids know about these things. Get them to really look at how bad it can get. That should help them realize that drinking has consequences that they really don’t want.

And in case they think they’re immune to all that, point out to them that there’s not much chance that anyone thought they’d become one of those statistics when they started drinking. No matter how they feel now, or who they think they are and  how they would react or respond to things, alcohol will change them.

This week there was a news item entitled “Government Sues Trucking Company for Taking Keys Away From Alcoholic Driver.” Quite a story. And one that might make you or someone in your family decide that if they have an alcohol problem, they should get addiction help as soon as possible.

After working for a trucking company – Old Dominion Freight Line – for 7 years, a driver told his employer that he thinks he has an alcohol problem. The company’s policy is that if someone admits to the company that they have an alcohol problem, they can no longer drive for them – ever. The person can stay with the company if they get addiction help – in the form of a formal alcohol rehab program – but they will be placed in a position other than driver, if and when a position is available.

In this particular case, he was offered a position as a dock worker, as long as he agreed to get alcohol rehab. Unfortunately, the new job, which was only part-time and paid $10/hour without benefits meant he also had to take a big cut in pay – his job as driver paid $22/hour with benefits.

He then decided that he didn’t want to do the alcohol rehab program – because he thought that he would have to pay for it in advance and take a chance on his insurance company not reimbursing him. He enrolled with Alcoholics Anonymous instead.

Since he didn’t do the substance abuse program, and therefore was not eligible for the other job, the company fired him.

The trucking company is now being sued, by the government, for violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Alcohol abuse is legally classified as a disability, and people who are disabled are supposed to be given the same opportunities for work advancement as those without disabilities. The lawyers are demanding that the man be given his job back, as well as getting back pay, damages and compensation for lost benefits.

I would really like to hear what other people think of this.

Do you think the company’s treatment of this admitted alcoholic is unfair?

Parents are excited when their kids go off to college, but they are also a little worried. How will their young man or woman cope with being away from home? Will they do well? Will they behave themselves? Will they get involved in things that might cause them trouble? Now, more than ever, that is a very real concern – especially when they go to a ‘party school,’ so named for the alcohol abuse. Drugs are a factor, too, but alcohol is the big one.

Party schools are defined in Wikipedia as “a college or university that has a reputation for heavy alcohol and drug use or a general culture of licentiousness.”

Not exactly what you had in mind when you put that ‘college fund’ aside, right?

Every year, several publications publish their research on party schools and come up with rankings. You, or your kid, can look up the rankings on line – just search top party schools.

The most well-known list is published by Princeton Review. Here’s their top ten for 2011.

Ohio University
University of Georgia
University of Mississippi
University of Iowa
University of California, Santa Barbara
West Virginia University
Pennsylvania State University
Florida State University
University of Florida
University of Texas at Austin

The statistics for young people who drink at college are pretty gruesome – more girls get raped, more students (male and female) have sexual encounters they would not have had were they sober, more injuries all around, more DUI’s, skipping classes because of being hung over, not doing well in exams, turning to ‘study drugs’ like Adderall and Ritalin (very similar to methamphetamine or cocaine) to be able to stay awake and cram for the last few days before exams because they were too busy partying to keep up with their studies properly during the semester, or the entire year.

It’s not pretty.

So, as parents, what do you do with this information? Here are a few suggestions:

Don’t ignore the problem and just hope or trust things will be okay. Not only are your kids likely to have some nasty things happen to them, and definitely not get the most out of their education, it also sets them up to be alcoholics as adults.

Educate your kids on the dangers of alcohol and drugs. Make sure they understand they are poisoning their bodies, and know the statistics and the consequences.

If your kids are already drinking, get control of it before they go to school. If they won’t stop, get them through an addiction help program before they go to college. Same goes with drugs.

And keep a very, very close eye on things. Be very direct about it, and don’t just give up thinking ‘kids will be kids’ and so on. Statistics show that kids are drinking or taking drugs for an average of two years before their parents even find out about it.

Peer pressure in college is at its peak. And it’s hard to resist. It is expected and, if a student doesn’t live up to those expectations, they can be socially ostracized.

Those with a really sense of self and purpose have less chance of being intimidated in these surroundings, although even they can get trapped in the drug and alcohol scene.

But someone who is already drinking or taking drugs already will almost certainly get even worse. It’s like throwing them into the lion’s den.

Getting into a good addiction help program now will not only get them off drugs, it will help with the issues they have that are driving them to alcohol or drugs. With these issues successfully resolved, they should be able to get the education they’re attending college for, and have a lot of sober fun doing it.

Alcohol and kids. I think anyone would be hard-pressed to find a parent who drinks alcohol who doesn’t also allow their teenage, under-age, kids to drink at home. Parents figure that the kids are going to drink anyway, so if they’re drinking at home, or in the home of friends who also live with their parents, then they’re safe. For some reason, parents don’t seem to think of the alcohol abuse as dangerous – they’re just looking at how the kids are going to get home from wherever they are, or other trouble they could get into.

Parents also tend to think that the kids will drink less if they’re at home – after all, the parents are there, or could come home any minute. But parents often retire to their bedroom or some other part of the house to let the kids have their party without interference.

Well, guess what? There have been many alcohol-related deaths right in those homes, with the parents right there – sometimes sleeping while the kids party – and it’s because of alcohol poisoning.

Did you know that drinking just 8 ounces of vodka over an hour or two can lead to coma and death?

Did you know that some people are actually allergic to alcohol and can go into anaphylactic shock with very little alcohol in their system?

Did you know that some of the kids who are drinking might also be taking drugs that could have fatal interactions with alcohol?

Did you know that when someone passes out from drinking they’re not just ‘drunk’, they’ve been poisoned. And their blood alcohol level will continue to rise while they’re ‘sleeping’ People say ‘let them sleep it off.’ In fact, that’s the worst thing you can do. The person is in such a toxic state, they can’t even stay conscious. They could die.

Did you know that the ‘normal’ effects of being drunk – vomiting, mental confusion, you know: “drunk” – is actually the result of being poisoned?

Did you know that alcohol poisoning can lead to permanent brain damage?

Did you know that kids who drink while in their teens are likely to be adult alcoholics and will eventually need alcohol rehab to get over it?

It’s time to take a cold, hard look at what you’re really allowing your kids to do. They’re not just having a good time, blowing off steam or having a nice relaxing stress-free get together with their friends. They are poisoning themselves.

Not only is it extremely dangerous for the kids – you can, in many states be prosecuted for allowing under-age drinking in your home. You can literally be sent to prison for it.
And if anything serious happens – like one of the kids, including your own, dies – you will be charged with murder.

Want to be your kids’ friend? Find another way to do it. Friendship does not include standing by while someone is poisoned.

If your efforts to educate them and use other methods to get them to stop drinking fail, it’s time to find addiction help services that will get them through the problem and out the other side.

Wow. A recent survey conducted on 500 kids under the age of 16 revealed that half of them had been embarrassed by an adult’s drinking. You may have had that experience yourself. Very unpleasant for a kid. Alcohol Focus Scotland (AFS), a charity that focuses on reducing the harm caused by alcohol, is now on an all-out campaign to get adults to start setting a good example. No doubt, alcohol rehab and addiction help will be part of it.

I wouldn’t go as far as saying we have quite that bad a situation in the U.S. – although I’m certain there are some States, cities or areas that would get similar results if a similar survey were conducted – but AFS is on the right track in trying to reduce the alcohol abuse problem overall. If their efforts manage to convince adults that they should cut down on the booze, then fewer kids will drink as well.

Parents setting a good example – regarding alcohol, or anything else – is a very important part of kids not turning to drugs or alcohol. Of course, there are some adults for whom drinking is so normal that they really don’t care if their kids drink or not, and they actually expect them to. But most parents would prefer to know that when their kid goes out for the evening they’re not going to get a DUI on the way home or, worse, have an accident and get hurt or killed, or do the same to someone else.

If a parent cares about the safety and future of their children, it’s a good idea to start with getting into an alcohol rehab program themselves so they can set a good example – it will also give them more credibility when they try to convince their kids that a lot of drinking is not a good thing to do.

Don’t worry about your history – in fact, someone who has had an alcohol problem and then overcomes it would probably have an even bigger and better effect on their kids.

Do you have a problem with alcohol abuse? Do you have kids? Consider getting alcohol addiction help. It could make a big difference to your future, and your kids’.

Many parents think that if they let their kids drink at home, instead of going to bars or parties where they’re unsupervised and going to have to drive home, they’re going to be safe. That is not the case. In fact, it could foster substance abuse. What are your options? Alcohol rehab should be at the top of the list.

Case in point, a news story this week about a girl named Terry. She was at a party at a friend’s house. The parents were home. They had a few drinks with the kids, but then went to bed. They told the kids not to drink anymore.

Instead, Terry decided she would try to down 15 shots. This serious binge drinking poisoned her. She struggled all night lying on the bathroom floor, with her friends trying to help.

No one woke up the parents – the kids didn’t realize how dangerous the situation was. But as the news story put it, Terry wasn’t just struggling, she was dying. By the time the parents were informed, it was too late to save her life.

This incident happened in Michigan, in a county of less than 200,000 people. That county has a remarkably bad record with drugs and alcohol: Emergency medical technicians responded to about 175 overdose incidents and there 208 alcohol-related car crashes and 37 drug-related car crashes in 2009.

But, really, it doesn’t matter where this particular incident happened – it happens all over the U.S.

What went wrong? First, some parents have the idea that drinking with their kids is cool; it’s a way to ‘relate.’ But it sets the worst example. Will kids look up to their parents because they drink? Not likely.

Second, drinking at home, apparently safe, may keep the kids from having to get into a car and drive, but it doesn’t stop them from drinking too much, overdosing on alcohol, or becoming alcoholics.

If you have kids who drink, get them alcohol help. In a good drug and alcohol rehab program, they’ll come to understand that urge and overcome it. They’ll also learn to deal with it when friends around them are drinking. Then you don’t have to worry about them. Whether they’re home or out. They’ve become responsible.

If you’re worried about making sure your kids don’t turn into alcoholics, the best thing to do is start taking precautions against that when they’re very young. If you don’t do that, they could wind up in need of addiction help quite soon, and if they don’t get it, they could be fighting alcoholism all their lives. So, what do you do when you’re starting early?

First, educate them. Not lecture, just kindly give them the information they need. This means you’re going to have to get educated yourself. What is alcohol? How is it made? What is the real effect it creates on the body? Why it is poisonous? Show them drunk driving and domestic violence statistics. Binge drinking. And so on. They need to know what it is, what is does.

Second, set a good example. Don’t drink yourself or limit your drinking to once a week or so and then only have a small glass of wine or something like that. But, truthfully, even drinking in moderation sends the wrong message. The message is that no one needs alcohol. Period.

Third, keep them busy with activity that will give them a sense of purpose, accomplishment and satisfaction. The activity(ies) should be chosen by them, something they’re interested in, not something you’re interested in. It doesn’t matter if it’s track and field, ballet, making jewelry or astronomy. Encourage their personal interests and help them learn about them.

There are no guarantees, but if you want your kids to have the best chance of staying drug and alcohol free and avoiding drug or alcohol rehab in the future, this will give you a good start.

There’s a new drink in town. It’s called Blast. Anyone who’s drinking this beers could probably use alcohol rehab, but I would get it for them as soon as possible – this drink’s dangerous!

Blast comes in 23.5 ounce cans of 12% alcohol. Most beer is sold in 12 ounce cans, with alcohol content of 3 to 5 %.

Blast could cause a lot of problems. It can put you over the legal limit with one beer, and it’s enough alcohol to constitute binge drinking.

It may be worst for those who don’t know what they’re drinking, especially if they they tend to guzzle. They could down two beers fairly quickly – before the alcohol really hit them. By then, they’ve actually had 10 beers – a really dangerous amount of alcohol.

It’s scary to think of the number of people who could wind up with alcohol poisoning.

All in all, Blast is a dangerous drink.

Blast comes in brightly-colored cans with fruit flavors – making it all the more appealing for the younger generation. In fact, Maine’s and 16 other Attorneys General recently contacted Pabst, the maker, requesting they take Blast altogether or change it.

Don’t be fooled by a quick look and think your kid is drinking fruit juice or some innocent soda pop. Blast is anything but. If your kid thinks this beer is a good time, get him some addiction help.