The Dangers of Alcohol Used Minors Essay Example for Free

The Dangers of Alcohol Used Minors Essay â€Å"Plastered, Hammered, Wasted, Drunk, Lifted.. These are all terms my friends use on any given Friday or Saturday night to ask if I want to party for the weekend! When we do get to parties, kids are doing keg stands (Where someone holds your legs up in the air, you grab the keg with both hands, and someone else feeds your beer through the hose upside down. ) We play quarters, beer pong, and flip cup. The drinking games are endless as in the alcohol available to teens. â€Å"Hey Ryan, let’s go out tonight, find a few girls, and throwback a few brewskies! Temptation to drink alcohol as a minor is everywhere! Some corner stores sell it to us, older brothers and sisters get it for us, or we can just wait for someone who looks cool to go in and buy it for us. Before having to do the research on teens and alcohol, I truly did not think it was that big of a deal. I though alcohol was acceptable because everyone does it casually and in order to be popular, you want to fit in at the parties. I believed I could drink 6 beers and 2 shots and probably arrive home safely. I’ve seen kids drink 11-17 beers and still be standing. The amount teens are drinking is truly scary. I have even seen kids get behind the wheel, not realizing how intoxicated they were until they had to get out of the car. These things all frighten me. I know my mom would completely devastated if she knew I was drinking and driving. I have seen tragedy in alcohol related events with my friends, and I do not want to end up being statistic like they were. In March of 2011, 6 of my friends were consuming alcohol and taking Zanax Bars. They weren’t driving, but were so intoxicated, the home caught on fire, and they didn’t wake up in time to get out. All six of my friends died. I’ve seen my friends get arrested and thrown in the back of Police cars for Intoxication. I’ve had a friend fall asleep because she was so drunk and died from crashing her car. The dangers that I have experienced personally go on and on. Having to write this paper has really opened up my eyes to the shocking statistics of teen and alcohol abuse. First, let’s discuss why teens drink alcohol in the first place. Teenagers, like adults, drink alcohol for many different reasons, although some of them are different for teens. Teens are more likely to start experimenting with drinking if they have parents who drink, if they have friends who are also deinking, and if their parents don’t give those clear messages about not drinking outside the house. Also, Alcohol is a powerful drug and changes how you feel. Some of the initial sensations at lower blood alcohol levels are pleasant. It really makes you feel good and lose all the inhibitions you have when you are sober. You will say and do almost anything. It is this sensation that many teens crave. Alcohol is a central nervous system depressant. So if you’re tense or uptight, drinking some alcohol will, at least in the beginning, reduce some of that tension and will help you â€Å" chill out â€Å". We as teenagers need to consider talking with an adult you trust or a counselor if drinking is something we really want to do. Drinking, especially heavy drinking(4 or more women, 5 or more men) can significantly increase your risk for alcohol-related problems and health problems even as a teenager beginning to experiment with alcohol. It can cause dependency early on, pushing teens to try other things, and either end up in Juvenile Hall, rehab facilities, or even dead. Significant relationships were found between young people’s drinking behaviors and perceptions of risk and protective factors in the family environment. Parental monitoring was strongly associated with modifying teen behavior. There is a real need for alcohol misuse prevention interventions and classes in the high schools. I am currently a sophomore and have not had any classes or assemblies about the dangers of alcohol in teens. Now, let’s discuss the dangers of teen drinking.. Teens don’t just drink. They drink to excess. As I mentioned before, I have seen teenage boys drink even as much 17-18 beers in a night. More than 7 percent of eighth graders, 16 percent of sophomores and 23 percent of seniors report recent binge drinking ( 5+ drinks on the same occasion). Binge drinking used to mean drinking heavily over several days. Now, though, it means drinking way to much in a short amount of time. Liquor stores, commercials advertising alcohol, all make drinking seem attractive and fun. It is so easy for teens to get caught up in a social scene with lots of peer pressure to drink to fit in. Teens love the feeling of alcohol and the way it makes us â€Å"Bulletproof. † We believe it will make us feel good, but don’t think about getting sick or hung over the next day. It helps to relieve stress, but eventually just causes more. Drinking also makes teens feel older and more free. Statistics show that the majority of current teen drinkers got drunk in the previous month. That includes 50 percent of the high school sophomores who drink and 65 percent of the high school seniors who drink. Underage drinking is linked to injury and risky behavior. We can get alcohol poisoning, which is potentially life threatening. It can cause confusion, vomiting, seizures, and low body temperature. Finally, when I am adult and have children, I will educate them before they come in contact with the temptations of being a teenager. It’s easy to see why using alcohol as a solution to problems, or a way of trying to cope, is trouble. Drinking should never take the place of talking things through and working out difficulties in other ways.