1200 word argument essay
Chapter 2: Why Teens Drink and the Effects of Alcohol
Daniel Radcliffe was eleven years old in 2000 when he won the lead role in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. In the next decade millions of moviegoers watched Radcliffe grow to adulthood in eight films based on the best-selling novels about the boy wizard written by J.K. Rowling. Like many young people around the world, Radcliffe experimented with alcohol during his teenage years. In an interview in July 2011 before the final Harry Potter movie was released, Radcliffe admitted he was drinking so much by 2008 that his acting suffered when he filmed Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Said Radcliffe: “I became so reliant on [alcohol] to enjoy stuff. There were a few years there when I was just so enamored with the idea of living some sort of famous person's lifestyle that really isn't suited to me.”24 Radcliffe quit drinking in August 2010 when he realized how much alcohol was hurting him.
Radcliffe's reason for drinking—that it was how a world-famous movie star should act—is not one many teenagers can use as an excuse for turning to alcohol. The reasons young people begin drinking, however, are many and varied. Although many young people begin drinking for the same reasons, every teenager has his or her own particular motive for taking that first drink of alcohol.
“A FACT OF LIFE”
In A Six-Pack and a Fake I.D., Susan and Daniel Cohen write that most young people will drink alcohol for the first time before they turn twenty-one. They claim teenage drinking is so widespread that teens consider it an ordinary activity, one that
Harry Potter film star Daniel Radcliffe (pictured) says that during the filming of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince he relied on alcohol to enjoy life. He quit drinking in August 2010 when he realized how much alcohol was hurting him.
they and most of their friends feel they have a right to do even though it is illegal: “Drinking—it's a fact of life that you confront in your teen years. You may consider drinking a pleasure, a right, and a social necessity. Your parents, your school, and the over twenty-one world in general may consider your drinking a problem—and they have made it illegal to boot. But you're not going to let that stop you!”25
It is hard for many teenagers to believe they are doing anything wrong, because in a few years they will be able to drink legally. The fact that many adults in their lives drink alcohol also makes them question why they cannot. It is especially hard
for teenagers to think drinking is wrong if their parents or close relatives are heavy drinkers. A recovering alcoholic who chose to use a pseudonym wrote online that his father accidentally conditioned him to believe drinking was a good thing by giving him sips of beer when he was a small child. He wrote that because “my father was always ‘happy’ when he was drinking [I] quickly equated drinking with happiness.”26
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“BECAUSE I CAN'T”
“Because I can't do it responsibly. Because one drink doesn't relax me; it only energizes me and makes me want more. Because I can't get out of my own way if I drink. Because my life is better sober. Because, towards the end of my drinking, I didn't have a life any-more.”—Anna David, author of the novel Party Girl, who began drinking at age twelve, explains why she quit
Quoted in Caren Osten Gerszberg. “Interview with Anna David, Author of the Memoir, ‘Falling for Me.’” Drinking Diaries: From Celebration to Revelation, October 12, 2011. www.drinkingdiaries.com/2011/10/12/interview-with-anna-david-author-of .
Teenagers also have a difficult time rejecting drinking because they are bombarded daily with television commercials, newspaper and magazine advertisements, and billboards extolling the virtues of various brands of beer and alcohol. The media blitz reinforces their belief that drinking is normal. “We Americans live in an alcohol rich environment,” James B. Jacobs writes. Jacobs is a law professor who has studied the drunk driving problem in the United States. In Drunk Driving: An American Dilemma, Jacobs claims that society's overwhelming acceptance of alcohol is one reason why so many people drink, teens and adults alike. Jacobs also explains that the reasons people start drinking, and then often find it hard to stop, are due to the way alcohol affects people psychologically and emotionally:
Drinkers seek reduction of tension, guilt, anxiety, and frustration. From personal experience and from viewing
countless television and movie dramas, we have become accustomed to people turning to alcohol to cope with a hard day, family problems, or bad news. People also imbibe alcohol to loosen up, let down their hair, release inhibitions. [People] also turn to alcohol to fortify confidence, enhance self-esteem, and increase aggres-siveness. 27
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Reasons Why Teens Drink
Teenagers have many and varied reasons for drinking. In Teens Under the Influence, Katherine Ketcham and Nicholas A. Pace list some of the reasons why teenagers drink:
Many kids use drugs for the same general reasons adults use drugs—to get high, to feel happy, stimulated, relaxed, or intoxicated; to ease stress, frustration, tension, disappointment, fear, or anger; to take their minds off their pain or their troubles. Kids may start drinking or using other drugs to impress their friends, to rebel against their parents or society, or because they don't want to be seen as preppies or suck-ups. [They may drink] to fit in, or to avoid drawing attention to themselves. If they belong to a gang, they may use drugs to win respect, be cool, or just because that's what everyone else is doing. [Teens] who are anxious or fearful may use alcohol and/or other drugs to boost their self-confidence. Extroverted, outgoing teenagers may use drugs because they like the company of other fun loving, risk-taking kids.
Katherine Ketcham and Nicholas A. Pace. Teens Under the Influence: The Truth About Kids, Alcohol, and Other Drugs—How to Recognize the Problem and What to Do About It. New York: Ballantine, 2003, p. 25.
The basic psychological and emotional benefits people seek when they drink are common to both teenagers and adults. However, teenagers have their own unique sets of circumstances that can push them toward taking that first sip of alcohol. One of the most powerful is that they are trying to leave childhood behind and gain what they perceive as the exalted status of being an adult.
ADULTHOOD AND PEER PRESSURE
Toren Volkmann did not start drinking heavily until he went to college; when that happened he could not stop and became an alcoholic. After Volkmann managed to quit, he and his mother, Chris, wrote a book about his descent into alcoholism. Toren wrote about why he believes so many young people start drinking: “I think teenagers view alcohol—and I certainly did—as something that's very glamorous.”28 The powerful attraction teenagers have for alcohol and the almost magical qualities they feel it will endow them with are strongly rooted in their desire to become adults.
Teenagers often feel trapped in the twilight zone between childhood and adulthood. Drinking is something they cannot legally do until they are older, so having that first drink becomes a rite of passage to adulthood, like getting a driver's license, going to college, or working to support themselves. Or as Mike explained when he was asked why he began drinking in high school at age sixteen: “It makes you feel like one of the older guys instead of a little kid.”29
An equally powerful reason teenagers start drinking is peer pressure. Alexandra Robbins wrote The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth, a book that explains why some people who are not popular in high school become successful as adults. Robbins interviewed many young people about their fierce desire to be popular. She said in an interview that peer pressure to conform to accepted standards of conduct among fellow students leads many young people to start drinking so they will be accepted and respected:
Many surveys report that the average age students begin drinking is about 14. Many students told me that they start to feel pressure to drink in seventh grade. Anecdotally, teens say that they drink to have fun and to let off steam, but mostly to fit in. They think that everyone else is drinking, so they figure they have to conform. Also, they want to prove that there's “more to them” than what classmates see at school. They figure if they drink, that proves that they can party. 30
One of the big reasons teenagers drink is peer pressure. Pressure to conform to the accepted standards of conduct among their peer group leads many teenagers to start drinking so they will be socially accepted.
Behavioral psychologist Reid K. Hester wrote an online article for Selfhelp Magazine about why teenagers drink. On February 18, 2011, a reader who identified himself only as “Texas” posted an online comment on the article in which he gave his own explanation of why junior and senior high school students drink: “Teenagers drink because they are a part of an age group that is a part of a social group that drinks. It's popular to have fun, that's a common fact. [There] is also the fact that it's not allowed so it kind of gives it that rebellious factor.”31 The same need to fit in and be liked can also lead older teenagers to start drinking. It happened to Volkmann when he left home to attend college: “At college, you'll encounter a whole new group of people, many of [whom] drink regularly. I got sucked into that very lifestyle, and after a while, I found it did me no good. There is so much pressure to drink not only from your friends, but to just fit in when you go off to college.”32
Wanting to act like an adult and peer pressure are the two main reasons young people start drinking. But teenagers, like adults, also drink alcohol because of how it makes them feel.
CHANGING HOW THEY FEEL
Most people like to drink because of the powerful effect it has on their emotions. Hester, who has studied the effects of alcohol on teens, explains how alcohol can affect people: “Alcohol is a powerful drug and changes how you feel. Some of the initial sensations at lower blood alcohol levels are pleasant and it is this sensation that many teens, as well as adults, seek…. If you're tense or uptight, drinking some alcohol will, at least initially, reduce some of that tension and help you ‘chill out.’”33
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“MAYBE I WAS BORED”
“I don't know why I did it. It wasn't peer pressure… a lot of my friends don't drink at all. My parents don't drink. [Mostly] I drank hard liquor. Maybe I was bored. It was a small town, and it seemed like there wasn't anything else to do.”—Michelle, who began drinking heavily on weekends at age eighteen and later quit, does not know why she started
Quoted in Barbara Strauch. The Primal Teen: What the New Discoveries About the Teenage Brain Tell Us About Our Kids. New York: Doubleday, 2003, p. 174.
Other drugs like marijuana, cocaine, and heroin create similar mood changes. But alcohol is easier for teenagers to get, so it is usually their first choice to get high, the feeling of euphoria that can accompany drinking. Teenagers are especially vulnerable to wanting to feel better, or at least different, because of the tremendous changes taking place in their lives, including the anxieties of dating and learning to socialize with other young people. Jeff drank for the first time at age thirteen when he took a bottle of his father's liquor and shared it with a friend. He said he learned to like drinking because it made him feel good and made him more comfortable in social situations: “It made me
feel good. All my anxiety and shyness left and I could talk to girls and other people and dance at parties with no nervousness. It definitely helped me feel more at ease. I was more outgoing when drinking. I did start going to more parties when drinking because I was socially more comfortable when drunk.”34
Wendy began drinking so she could fit in at school: “I never felt like I belonged anywhere. [But] I could be whoever I wanted to be when I was drinking.”35 Wendy had her first drink when she was twelve, and her first heavy drinking experience came a year later during her first date when she went to a dance. When other students passed around a bottle of whiskey, she drank so much that she became violently ill. But Wendy liked how alcohol made her feel and continued drinking despite that first awful experience.
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“LIQUID COURAGE”
“Alcohol makes me feel good, you know, happy, crazy, full of myself. It gives me liquid courage—I feel I can do anything. I don't always like myself when I'm sober. But after a few six-packs I feel much better about myself.”—Thomas, who was locked up in a juvenile detention center and had been arrested a dozen times on various criminal charges during his teenage years
Quoted in Katherine Ketcham and Nicholas A. Pace. Teens Under the Influence: The Truth About Kids, Alcohol, and Other Drugs—How to Recognize the Problem and What to Do About It. New York: Ballantine, 2003, pp. 3–4.
Being more comfortable socially is one of the many reasons teens drink. Another reason is to ease their emotional turmoil over a wide range of problems. Anger motivated John to begin drinking at age fifteen. After his parents divorced, John had become close to his grandfather. His grandfather's death made him so angry that he began drinking to feel better: “I was angry that he was taken away. I didn't understand. I was lonely. I was a latchkey kid. I just started doing stuff because I was so angry, I think.”36 The Kids Are All Right is both an autobiographical book
Alcohol is a powerful drug that changes how one feels. Moderate drinking tends to lead to feelings of euphoria and a reduction of tension.
and movie about what happened to Amanda, Liz, Diana, and Dan Welch after both their parents died in just a few years. In 1985, when their mom died three years after their dad, nineteen-year-old Amanda said she and sixteen-year-old Liz turned to alcohol to relieve their depression: “We often escaped the sadness by partying.”37
The emotional changes alcohol creates in drinkers is this powerful drug's main attraction. The reason alcohol can make people feel different is how it works in their bodies.
Unhappy teens suffering from depression often turn to alcohol to relieve the symptoms.
HOW ALCOHOL WORKS
In a book on alcoholism, James R. Milam and Katherine Ketcham write that alcohol is not only a powerful, dangerous, and sometimes deadly drug but also one that is mystifying in how it affects people: “Alcohol is an infinitely confusing substance. In small amounts it is an exhilarating stimulant. In larger amounts it acts as a sedative and as a toxin, or poisonous agent. When taken in very large amounts over long periods of time [it] can be damaging to cells, tissues, and organs.”38
When people drink, their bodies begin absorbing alcohol immediately—5 to 10 percent of alcohol is transferred to the bloodstream directly through the lining of the mouth. After a person swallows a sip of beer, wine, or liquor, the stomach and small intestine speedily absorb the alcohol. The first small doses of alcohol increase blood flow, accelerate the heart rate, and stimulate brain cells to speed up the transmission of nerve impulses. This is due to the calories alcohol contains, which, as food, make the body feel good. Those simple physical changes can ease emotional tension and make people feel happier. Alcohol also makes people feel good because small doses of it boost levels of dopamine, a neurotransmitter in the brain related to pleasurable sensations.
However, the effects alcohol has on people change as they continue drinking. It is then that alcohol reveals its true nature as a powerful central nervous system depressant, one that is generally classified with drugs such as barbiturates, minor tranquilizers, and general anesthetics. As a depressant, alcohol depresses—slows down—operation of the central nervous system, which includes the brain and the spinal cord. Depressed performance of the central nervous system from alcohol consumption creates the slurred speech, impaired physical coordination, and other physical and mental symptoms of intoxication.
A standard drink is defined as one that contains 0.5 ounces (14g) of alcohol. Because of their varying alcohol contents, that amount of alcohol is found in 12 ounces (340g) of beer, 5 ounces (141.7g) of wine, or 1.5 ounces (42.5g) of 80-proof distilled spirits such as whiskey or vodka. The human body can process alcohol at a fixed rate of one drink per hour, so people who consume more than one drink per hour will have increasingly high levels of alcohol in their blood. The level of intoxication drinkers experience is linked to the body's blood alcohol concentration (BAC), the amount of alcohol in the blood measured in percentages. A BAC of 0.10 percent means a person's bloodstream has 1 part alcohol per 1,000 parts of blood. A BAC of 0.08 percent is legal proof in every state that a person is drunk.
People become intoxicated because alcohol affects their brain, which controls their physical functioning as well as their
emotions. The speed and severity with which people become intoxicated depends on several other factors besides how much alcohol they drink or how fast they consume it. One is the size of the drinker. Someone weighing 250 pounds (113.4kg) will not become as drunk by the same amount of alcohol as someone weighing 125 pounds (56.7kg); their blood supply is correspondingly bigger, so their BAC will not rise as rapidly as that of a smaller person drinking the same amount of alcohol. People who have eaten recently or eat while they drink absorb alcohol more slowly because their body is absorbing food as well as alcohol. Women generally metabolize alcohol more quickly than men, which means they can become intoxicated more quickly. Some people are also able to drink more without being affected by alcohol because of their unique body chemistry.
Teenagers are more susceptible to the effects of alcohol if they are drinking for the first time or have not drunk alcohol very often. Adults who drink regularly develop a tolerance for alcohol that lessens its effects on them. Young people are also
The same amount of alcohol is contained in 12 ounces of beer, 5 ounces of wine, or 1.5 ounces of 80-proof liquor.
less experienced than adults in handling the physical and emotional effects alcohol causes in drinkers.
Thus, different people become drunk at different rates. Although alcohol's effects on drinkers are similar, they are also many and varied, and they change as people keep drinking.
THE EFFECTS OF BEING DRUNK
BAC levels determine how drunk someone is. As BAC increases, so do the symptoms of intoxication. In A Six-Pack and a Fake I.D., authors Susan and Daniel Cohen explain the basic effects alcohol has on people at various BACs: “Alcohol alters the way you think and move. By 0.10 percent, speech is slurred. By 0.15 percent [people] have trouble walking. By 0.30 percent, people might start throwing up and becoming confused and unaware of where they are. At 0.40 percent, people start passing out and [this is] also the level that can kill someone.”39
At its highest levels, alcohol acts as a poison that can kill drinkers by depressing their brain activity so much that they stop breathing. This form of death is known as alcohol poisoning. This can happen because alcohol affects the brain more strongly than any other part of the body. The brain's fatty material readily absorbs alcohol when the bloodstream delivers it, which means that there is truth in the saying “That drink went right to my head.”
Alcohol that hits a person's brain affects not only how it controls the body physically but also how the drinker will react mentally and emotionally. Harry Milt, author of Alcoholism, Its Causes and Cure: A New Handbook, explains that this impairment sneaks up on people as they keep drinking: “With the first drink or two an illusion may be created of clarity of mind and thought [but] as the alcohol continues to bathe the brain, consciousness becomes blurred, thinking is slowed down, the content of thought is [reduced], memory is blurred. Concepts are poorly formulated, reasoning is foggy, judgment is blunted.”40
Higher levels of alcohol can cause emotional changes in drinkers, including making them angry over small things that happen, which is why fights in bars are common. Alcohol also reduces natural inhibitions that keep people from doing dangerous
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How Does Alcohol Make People Feel Good?
The main reason people drink is that alcohol makes them feel good. When their bloodstream channels alcohol to the brain, it affects the nucleus accumbens. This specialized part of the brain is the seat of emotion and pleasure that is responsible for feelings of gratification, such as when people eat to satisfy hunger. When alcohol and other addictive drugs hit the nucleus accumbens, the nucleus accumbens releases dopamine, which produces feelings ranging from mild happiness to euphoria. Newsweek reporter Sharon Begley explains how this works:
An illustration of a nerve synapse. When alcohol enters the nucleus accumbens it causes the release of dopamine (seen crossing the neuron), which produces feelings from mild happiness to euphoria.
“Drugs of abuse increase the concentration of dopamine in the brain's reward circuits,” says Nora Volkow of Brookhaven National Lab. The drugs do that more intensely than any mere behavior, be it eating a four-star meal or winning the lottery.[Dopamine] produces a feel-good sensation. Eating cheesecake or tacos or any other food you love activates it. So does winning a competition, acing a test, receiving praise and other pleasurable experiences. The pleasure circuit communicates in the chemical language of dopamine: this neurotransmitter zips from neuron to neuron in the circuit like a molecular happy face.
Sharon Begley. “How It All Starts in Your Brain.” Newsweek, February 12, 2001, p. 40.
Alcohol reduces natural inhibitions that keep people from engaging in risky behaviors they would never consider while sober.
or foolish things. People who are drunk may engage in dangerous activities they would never consider when they are sober, such as car surfing, being promiscuous, or driving when they know they have had too much to drink. This happens because large amounts of alcohol destroy people's ability to understand what is happening to them physically, intellectually, and emotionally.
One of the effects of drinking too much is that intoxicated people usually do not realize how severely alcohol has affected them. For example, when eighteen-year-old Keaton Leon Hannah was arrested on June 17, 2011, in Verdigris, Oklahoma, a Verdigris police officer claims he heard Hannah say, “I'm sorry I didn't realize I was so drunk.”41 Drinking had robbed Hannah of the ability to understand how severely alcohol had impaired his ability to drive and to make good decisions.
Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2012 Gale, Cengage Learning
Source Citation
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Uschan, Michael V. "Why Teens Drink and the Effects of Alcohol." Teens and Alcohol, Lucent Books, 2012, pp. 27-[41]. Hot Topics. Gale Health and Wellness, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/CX2572600009/HWRC?u=lincclin_tcc&sid=HWRC&xid=1155d96b. Accessed 22 Nov. 2019.