HOT TOPIC TUESDAY: Alcohol Awareness Month

My kids sometimes joke about me being a "wino" because I like a glass of Malbec with dinner. This changes to a "beer-o" if I have a beer with my chili.

The irony is that as an adult, I drink wine and beer mainly as a compliment to food. But as a teenager, it, as Monty Python would say, Something Completely Different.

As a teen, I had little appreciation for the exquisite marriage of fine wine with gourmet cuisine. Nah, back then, it was all about the buzz. Thankfully, I never resorted to drinking Thunderbird or Mad Dog 20/20, but some Ernest and Julio Gallo Hearty Burgundy might have been consumed.

The probably was, as with many teenagers, moderation wasn't in my vocabulary. Drinking back then was in binges, often with unpleasant results.

I'm not alone in this. According to the Surgeon General: Adolescents Drink Less Frequently Than Adults, But When They Do Drink, They Drink More Heavily Than Adults.

Not only that, teens use alcohol more frequently than they do all other illicit drugs combined, according to the 2009 National Survey on Drug Use and Health. Rates of current alcohol use in the survey were 3.5% among children aged 12 and 13, 13.0% among 14- and 15-year-olds, and 26.3 % among 16- and 17-year-olds. More than one million adolescents needed treatment for an alcohol use problem, although the vast majority did not receive it.

The worrying thing about alcohol use among younger teens is that, according to the Surgeon General, teens who report drinking before the age of 15 are more likely
to have other substance abuse problems during adolescence than those who start later; to engage in risky sexual behavior; and to be involved in car crashes, unintentional injuries, and physical fights after drinking, both during adolescence and in
adulthood.


(photo: Greenwich Time)


The National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence has declared April Alcohol Awareness Month, in recognition of alcohol's pervasive influence among adolescents, adults, and families.

Did/Does alcohol pay a role in your high school experience?

TEEN THURSDAY: One too many

When I picked up my daughter and her friends from the local First Lights festival last weekend, they got in the car and I became privy to MAJOR SCANDALE. A classmate of theirs at the high school had been drunk. The kid could barely walk and was ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwvomiting publicly. The tone of their conversation was was appalled and disapproving.

I listened like a good invisible chauffeur should, thanking my lucky stars that my daughter seems to have her head screwed on so securely. But I couldn't help thinking back to myself at her age; how I was making different and considerably less wise choices.

*Enters the Wayback Machine*

It was a different time. I was in high school in the late 70's, before Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No!" campaign (check out this PSA from the 80's)



and before the advent of Drug Education programs like Project DARE.

I mean seriously. We were watching movies like this:



Can you imagine a trailer like that being shown at your local multiplex these days? I can't see it happening. Times have changed.

My daughter is in her first high school play next weekend. And that's another thing that's weirding me out. I was a drama geek in high school and I smoked my first joint ever at a cast party. The kid who handed it to me wasn't a total stoner loser who ended up doing heroin and spending time in the slammer. He went to Harvard and has had extremely successful career in the financial world.

My kids know I was no angel in high school. Maybe being honest with them has helped them to make better choices. It's certainly given them ammo in arguments: "Well, at least I'm not as bad as you were, Mom!"

So how how about you? Were you a good girl/boy? And if you're old enough to have kids, are you honest with them about it?

Hot Topic Tuesday: Binge Drinking

Tomorrow we're spotlighting Mindi Scott's debut novel FREEFALL, about a guy, Seth McCoy, who was the last person to see his best friend, Isaac, alive, and the first to find him dead. "It was just another night, just another party, just another time when Isaac drank too much and passed out on the lawn. Only this time, Isaac didn't wake up."


I can't imagine being Seth, can you? The guilt you would feel over something like that would be horrible.

I think there's still this idea out there that as long as you're not driving, alcohol isn't really that harmful. And yet, almost every year, at least one story will hit the news about a teen drinking himself to death. And it probably happens a lot more than we hear about.

Underaged drinking was huge in the town where I went to high school. It's just what kids did. Every weekend it was all about finding out who was having a party. And if no one was having one, kids went to one of the well-known spots and made one.

I'm pretty sure none of us viewed alcohol as something dangerous. And yet, it can be, right? In more ways than one. There can be other ramifications too - like, I wonder how many teen pregnancies happen that wouldn't have otherwise happened if alcohol hadn't been involved.

Fortunately, I don't think I ever saw kids really binge drinking in high school. By binge drinking, I mean the kind of drinking you hear about where it's almost like an extreme sport - challenging each other to drink and drink and drink, until people are passing out. It sounds so scary to me!

Question of the day: I'm curious - Did you ever witness a scary episode of binge drinking when you were in high school or college? Did it change your feelings about drinking and/or parties?