Alcohol Affecting Teens

Every 51 minutes in America, someone is killed in a drunk driving crash. A dangerous issue facing society today is the problem of teen drinking and driving. Currently an approximate of 10,076 people die in drunk driving crashes per year. If positive progress to ceasing this act does not happen, teens will continue to drink and drive putting everybody on the road at risk. Teens who drink and drive put everyone on the road at risk, causing serious crashes that could be preventable.

The negative impact the drugs and alcohol abuse and addiction has on the overall health of the user must be considered. Every process and system in the body is adversely affected by the over-indulgence of drugs and alcohol. Some of the health problems regularly noted include organ damage, kidney and liver disease, organ failure, congestive heart failure, respiratory depression, memory lapses, brain damage, infection, stroke, heart attack, and overdose.

The physical, emotional, and psychological effects of addiction have the potential to make the addict vulnerable to a great many symptoms and disorders including paranoia, depression, anxiety, PTSD and other co-existing mental disorders, cancer, cardiovascular disease, stroke, heart attack, organ failure, hepatitis B & C, memory lapses, incontinence, poor oral health and gum disease, skin lesions and disease, and many more.

There are many health effects of drug and alcohol addiction. Some report flu-like symptoms, headaches, IBS and other gastric disorders, sleep disturbances, memory lapses and blackouts, and life-threatening effects such as stroke, heart attack, overdose, organ failure, cancer, and many more.

     Teenagers rarely think before they do many things. Many times teenagers go to big blowouts or little get togethers with their friends. Their first thought is not about death, their grades, or alcoholism; their main purpose is to get drunk fast and sober up before going home by their set curfews. At parties, teenagers have an average of five or more beers in one night. In the United States teenage drinking has become a major problem, with about 3.3 million teens as problem drinkers. ?One-fourth of all seventh through twelfth graders admit to drinking at least once a week?(Nielson 47). About forty percent of twelfth graders said they had one episode of heavy drinking in the past two weeks. Although no one knows why teens turn to drinking, various studies show that the amount of alcohol changes by their geographical location (Nielsen 47).

Adolescent substance abuse is a major problem in society. There are many risk factors that can contribute to adolescent substance abuse. One of the main risk factors is peer pressure. When adolescents start at a young age there is an increase in health problems, addiction, and over all poor social outcomes. Parental influence has substantial effect on adolescents because the adolescent sees their parents and they learn by their example. Media plays a role in the use of drug and alcohol use among young people. Many school systems have implemented programs that teach adolescents about the problems of substance abuse that is funded

One main thing that it affects is the brain. When you are doing something you enjoy, your brain releases dopamine. Dopamine is a chemical compound that is commonly known to occur as a reward. This “reward” causes the person to want to continue doing what gives them that good feeling. The release of dopamine can cause someone’s addiction to get worse. The surplus of dopamine can cause people to lose the ability to find pleasure in activities. The person ends up relying on their substance to feel good. After a while they build up a tolerance, therefore, they have to up the dosages on their substance. This is so they can still achieve that good feeling. Drugs hurt the communication system of humans. They also affect how people can think through problems. Researchers have found that people who have an addiction, they also have other medical problems. Some of those medical problems could include cancer or other diseases (“Drugs, Brains, and Behavior: The Science of Addiction”, 2007, pg. 1-30).

Since the 1970s, government-funded research studies have shown emerging patterns of substance use, misuse and abuse among school-aged adolescents. Studies such as the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse (NHSDA), National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), Monitoring the Future (MTF), Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) and Partnership Attitude Tracking Study (PATS) are intricate research studies that compiles data on the prevalence and long-term effects of substance abuse in and outside of the school setting. Funded and sponsored by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), the National Institute of Health (NIH), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) and the Substance

Nearly 25 percent of teens drink alcohol because they think it is fun; however the problems it may bring are not so fun (Hyde 22). There over six times more teen deaths per year from alcohol than any other drug (O’Malley 30). Alcohol affects the body of teens as well as all of the developmental processes. A major issue of teens drinking is that it increases the chance of becoming an alcoholic in the future; which leads to lowered self-control, impaired judgment, and lowered inhibition (Heath 12). Alcohol can completely change the life of a teen from the time they start drinking till death. Alcohol affects so many aspects of a person’s life and once it does, it is so hard to get life back to normal. Alcohol effects teens by harming them

This response will create a sense of curiosity and may convince the person to try drugs themselves. Many teenagers today believe that their first use of drugs is safe. However even though there is no instant addiction with the first try, youngsters tend to experiment further. Soon a person could actively seek the euphoric effects of drugs. The final and the most disastrous stage is when a person needs drugs in order to function adequately. Therefore availability, curiosity and experimentation could result in drug addiction among teenagers.

First off, alcohol addiction and abuse among teenagers today is a bigger problem than ever before. The root of the problem lies in the fact that the teens are so exposed to the culture of this day and age, leading them to where they have easy access to alcohol. For example, their parents may already be alcoholics, and it's merely a few bad decisions later which could cause the child to have a few drinks and cloud their judgement. This is a big problem because their young bodies have never encountered anything like alcohol before, so in turn, the body does not know how to process it, and therefore leads to their downfall. A publication released by the National Institute of Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse (NIAA) suggests that by age 18, an astounding 60% of US teens would have had at least one drink. Moreover, according to the NIAA, youth between the ages of 12 and 20 will often binge drink as well.

The adolescent period of a human is the developmental phase of child to adult. During this time in a human’s life the entire body is developing rapidly, there are many factors that can affect the natural development. Alcohol is one of the most common depressants used and abused by adolescents which can alter the development of the body, especially the development of the brain. “When data from the World Health Organization’s Global Burden of Disease study were used to calculate cause-specific disability-adjusted life years for young people aged 10–24 years, the main risk factors were found to be alcohol.” (Marshall, 2014) There are many reasons why adolescents use alcohol, whether they are aware of the potential consequences

It has been discovered that most people who struggle with drug addiction began experimenting with drugs in their teens. Teenage drug abuse is one of the largest problems in society today and the problem grows and larger every year. Drugs are a pervasive force in our culture today. To expect kids not to be influenced by the culture of their time is as unrealistic as believing in the tooth fairy (Bauman 140). Teens may feel pressured by their friends to try drugs, they may have easy access to drugs, they may use drugs to rebel against their family or society, or they may take an illegal drug because they are curious about it or the pleasure that it gives them.

One of the more common addictions that were mentioned is substance or drug addiction. In the medical dictionary substance abuse means, “Excessive use of a potentially addictive substance, especially one that may modify body functions, such as drugs.” The effects of substance abuse can show a discrepancy between physical and psychological effects. Essentially every drug has dissimilar physical effects on the body; they all have an effect on the brain initially in a similar manner. The physical effects of substance abuse includes; respiratory issues, cardiac issues, and even gastrointestinal issues. With these issues, they can get severe enough to lead up to further severe issues such as lung cancer, heart attacks, and kidney or liver damage, which can ultimately lead to death. The psychological effects of this addiction can be just as harmful. The psychological effects included; hypothermia, paranoia, anxiety, violent behavior, hallucinations, depression, loss of interest, loss sense of reality, confusion, flashbacks, sense of distance, and catatonic syndrome (which affects the body’s central

Drug abusers experience several severe health effects ranging from ill-health, general sickness to death. Different drugs used by an individual has different health effects such as cocaine, methamphetamines and even alcohol. Excessive and continuous consumption of alcohol leads to liver cirrhosis which is a very dangerous condition ultimately leading to death. Drug use has four major effects on its consumer which are medical, addiction, social and economic.