Alcohol abuse statistics demonstrate the fact that alcohol abuse among teenagers is increasing in the United States. What are some of the reasons for this? Quite a few alcohol dependency experts articulate that liquor, beer, and wine advertisements produced by the media are an important reason for the rise in teen alcohol abuse.

Other alcohol abuse authorities declare that the increase in teenage alcohol abuse is due to the toleration and accessibility of wine,liquor, and beer in our society.

Still other alcohol dependency specialists declare that quite a few of our teens engage in dangerous drinking because of the increased pressure that they live through.

From a somewhat different standpoint, due to the fact that both parents in more than a few families work full or part-time, the lack of parental guidance evidently has to play a major part in the expansion of teen alcohol abuse. And last of all, an assortment of alcohol dependency professionals emphasize the point that the rise in adolescent alcohol abuse is due, in some measure, to our permissive society.

Coping Skills Education and Hazardous Drinking

One component of teen alcohol abuse that looks as if it poorly reported in the alcohol addiction research literature, however, is the absence of educational programs that teach teens how to upgrade their coping skills so that their harmful drinking behavior is radically diminished or done away with.

Stated another way, science has disclosed the fact that there is an indirect association between poor coping skills and hazardous drinking. In essence, this means that the worse the coping skills, the greater the prevalence of alcohol abuse. To the extent that this is a valid line of reasoning, why isn’t coping skills training a significant part of the educational core curriculum in all of our high schools, junior high schools, and elementary schools?

A Society That Underscores Adolescent Coping Skills

Let us construct a scenario for descriptive purposes. Let us imagine a society in which all people are taught how to achieve first rate coping skills all the way from kindergarten up to and including the twelfth grade.

In such a society, when life gets complicated, students who are ”coping skills experts” will be able to respond in a healthier and more successful manner, as opposed to others who fail to apply their coping skills.

More explicitly, students who display first-class coping skills will be more able to think proactively and engage in first-class decision making as opposed to teenagers who, because they were unsuccessful in their attempts to implement top-of-the-line coping skills, are drawn to the “quick fix” of abusive drinking.

What would happen in the above “ideal” society, what’s more, if students not only received exclusive coping skills education but also received an exceptional education that emphasized the short term and long term devastating costs associated with drug abuse and alcohol abuse? Emphasizing these kinds of drug and alcohol abuse facts, along with more highly developed coping skills instruction, it is advocated, would help students avoid the obvious attraction with adolescent drinking and, for that reason, would drastically diminish the abusive drinking behavior exhibited by the youth in our country.

Adolescent Excessive Drinking: Conclusion

There are certainly several sound reasons why so many of our adolescents abuse alcohol. Such a tricky issue demands a far-reaching and more applicable preventative and educational response by our parents, politicians, students, and educators so that our teens can learn how to cope with life’s predicaments in a more rewarding and accountable way rather than resorting to hazardous drinking behavior to solve their difficulties.