Family

Teenage Alcohol Abuse Starts in the Home

By J. Must

Teenage alcohol abuse is on the increase all over the world. This is a relatively new addiction to this age group and authorities everywhere are scrambling to understand why it is happening; what to do about it and to put the necessary essential programs in place to deal with it.

The authorities are so busy looking at the addicted alcoholics themselves and not at the two root causes of the problem.

There are, I believe, two big reasons causing this to happen so often today. Here we will deal with the root causes emanating from within the family home.

Yes, people get addicted to substances and abuse them but often the underlying problem is stronger than the addiction. To fix the addiction, one has to fix the original problem.

It is my experience with one of my children that made me look at this problem. It is terribly hard for a parent who loves their child, to watch them throw their lives away before they have even really begun. My experience was to show me that much of it was my fault for ignoring and/ or excusing something that was terribly wrong. My child's biological Father was an emotional abuser and I had not spoken out against it.

Disciplining a child is essential but there are a number of ways it can be done. But for those of us from the 'old school' we tended to do things the same way as our parents.

Emotional abuse is terribly hard to recognize when done by a 'trained' narcisitic personality. A narcissist is someone who is more than a "control freak" and will not stand for any opposition. He had held me as an emotional hostage but I had accepted this for over a decade due to my childhood conditioning from my Father.

Life does get checkered from a very early age, and it takes guts, knowledge, determination and a greater love than that of self to do something about it. Ignoring the problem doesn't make it go away. It often means that someone else has to pay the price. Eventually the price for me was simply too high but by this stage it was too late for one of my children. They tried to drink their problems away when it really wasn't their problem.

After seventeen years I finally said No; no more. This was not believed so I picked up the courage and left. If you are going to make a threat to a narcissistic personality you have to actually go through with it or else they just make your life even harder. By not carrying out a promise, you have just given this type of personality a big stick to beat you with and they waste no time in doing so.

It is teenage children raised in a household similar to this who take to alcohol and abuse it until they are close to, or become, alcoholics. They try to escape the pain of never being able to do anything right; of being punished for very minor misdemeanors in the name of discipline.

Teenage alcohol abuse is no laughing matter as it is based on pain.

Parents need to recognize a teenagers inability to deal with emotional pain before they become victims of teenage alcohol abuse.

See Also:

Children as young as 10 in rehab for alcohol abuse
Children as young as 10 are seeking treatment for alcohol addiction, while five teens and young people die each week in incidents tied to binge drinking. One in five teenagers now regularly binge drinks by the time they turn 16, with the rate jumping to about 50 per cent by age 18.

Preventing Teen Drunk Driving
Drunk-driving statistics show that, car accidents are the leading cause of deaths for American teens aged 15-24. The study also shows that 74 % of those car accidents involve young drivers that are not wearing seatbelts.

J Must is an Australian web publisher with experience and a passion for small business and Politics.