AHS Views

Why do parents worry when their kids are drinking? For the most part, it’s either because their kids change when they drink and become somewhat obnoxious, or because they’re afraid they’re going to drink and drive or get into a brawl. All very good reasons for finding out how to get them the addiction help they need – and there’s no doubt that anyone drinking like that, regardless of the consequences, needs alcohol rehab.

But those reasons are not the only things you have to worry about.

A study in Australia (and there’s no reason to believe the situation in America isn’t either as bad or worse) showed that one in five deaths by injury involved alcohol.

Someone drowns – there’s a one in five chance alcohol was involved.
Someone gets poisoned – again, one in five chance alcohol was involved.

Have an accident with tools, a fall that causes an injury that either kills someone on the spot or later, caught in a fire – at least one in five of all of these involve alcohol. In some case, it’s more. For example, alcohol is involved in one in three burns or fires.

It’s quite amazing when you think about it that it’s legal to drink alcohol. It is so destructive.

If someone in your family needs alcohol rehab, get them help now before the situation gets worse.

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.

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.