Teen Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse

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Teen Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse
TeenZeen.org
Jan 25, 2012

Most people don’t become dependent on alcohol overnight, but it’s important to know what the signs of addiction are. If you think you or a friend might be on the path to alcoholism, now is the time to get some help and avoid the pain and problems that come with an alcohol addiction.

Alcohol abuse is the first step towards becoming an alcoholic. Many teens go through a period of alcohol abuse, which is often just considered to be a partying phase, but if it continues, you can definitely end up a full blown alcoholic. Whether you just enjoy a beer or two at a party, or head for the harder stuff like scotch and whiskey, alcohol has a tendency to cause problems. That’s why you need to know the symptoms so you can recognize them in friends or in yourself.

Alcohol Abuse
Alcohol abuse is the first step towards alcoholism and it is probably the biggest problem that results from teen drinking. Alcohol abuse usually refers to repeated drinking with bad consequences, but it can also relate to one time incidents, like when a kid drinks and drives just once and ends up crashing. Here are the most common symptoms of alcohol abuse:

• Drinking at inappropriate times: This might include drinking alcohol at school, work, or while driving, often causing some major and even deadly problems.
• Drinking even though it causes problems: For example, if you find that you are always getting in fights while drunk, but continue to drink, this would be considered alcohol abuse.
• Repeated alcohol-related legal issues: Some teens always seem to be getting busted for underage drinking, drinking and driving, or other similar problems.
• Failure at school and work, due to being drunk or hungover: This is actually a pretty common problem. Someone has a long night of partying and shows up for work the next day still buzzed or too hung over to really do their job.

Alcoholism
Alcoholism is quite different from alcohol abuse. It’s another level up and usually causes quite a few problems, like any dependency. The alcoholic can’t function properly (or so they believe) without a constant supply of alcohol. Below are some of the common signs of alcoholism:

• Drinking more and more in order to feel that buzz: This happens because your tolerance toward alcohol can actually be built up if you drink fairly often. Frequent drinking will mean you need a lot more alcohol in order to get drunk.
• Most of the person’s time is affected by alcohol: When you find that you spend the majority of your time trying to get alcohol, drinking it, or recovering from a hangover, chances are you are an alcoholic.
• Physical symptoms appear when alcohol is not available: If an alcoholic tries to quit, they’ll experience the typical symptoms of any addict: trembling, nausea, sweating and nervousness. An alcoholic will also crave alcohol and might even go to extremes to get it.
• Loss of control while drinking: This doesn’t refer to getting drunk, but when someone says they are only going to have one beer and then find they can’t stop after one, this could be a sign of alcoholism.

Both alcoholism and alcohol abuse are serious issues. Everyone has heard stories of drunk drivers crashing into families, but that isn’t the only problem with drinking. You can also end up with a police record, or a number of other problems thanks to reckless behavior while under the influence of alcohol. Know what the symptoms are and be sure to get help if you feel that you or a friend are leaning toward alcoholism.

 

[Peter]

Binge-Drinking.
Alcohol drinking in Australian teens, in recent years, has increased their tendency to binge-drink. I believe this type of drinking to be of great concern. The nature of binge-drinking can accelerate the manifestation of alcoholism, and provide an insidious belief that might keep a binge-drinker in longer denial than if they did not binge-drink.

Binge-drinking, as I understand it, is drinking large amounts of alcohol, either quickly over a short period, or continually over a long period of time. In either case, the problem arises when the liver has not the time to break down the alcohol in the bloodstream. Normally, the liver breaks down the alcohol chemical into smaller chemicals each time it passes through the liver. An overload of alcohol in the bloodstream keeps these smaller (toxic) chemicals, like formaldehyde, longer in the bloodstream. It is these chemicals that contribute to the chemical changes in the brain that set up associative triggers like craving. As a result, the binge-drinker may become even more susceptible to alcoholism.

Because a binge-drinker tends to drink to a point where their body forces the drinker to stop, or worse, they normally have extended periods of recovery. This could easily be construed as having some control over their drinking behaviour - until the next binge session. Such beliefs may extend their period of alcohol abuse or addiction. In many cases, because of the nature of addiction, where it never gets better only worse; binge-drinkers may notice that their cooling-off periods between binges have shortened. Or, their binging becomes more frequent. Some binge drinkers end up as daily drinkers. They have slowly replaced binge-drinking with continuous ‘top-up’ drinking.