Teen addiction

Introduction

“Teen addiction” is a treacherous trouble facing society and parents generally. More and more people are taking possiblly unsafe and addictive prescription medications and more and more teens are getting into their parent's medicine cabinets and expriementing with different drugs, their consequences, and becoming addicted themselves, creating hazardous environments everywhere. There is an epidemic in the United States? one that is very sickening? and disturbing. The epidemic I am speaking about is alcoholism amongst teenagers. This has become one of the more alarming problems facing the country today. More and more youth's are going toward drinking now than ever before and there doesn't seem to be a stop coming anytime soon. The average age for starting drinking now? for males is 11? and for females? it is 13 years old. The National Institute of Alcohol Abuse estimates that people who begin drinking before the age of 15 are nearly 4 times as likely to become dependent on it as they grow up as are people who began drinking at the age of 21. This is very alarming? and needs to be stopped as soon as a solution can be found. The estimate being used is that three million teenagers are out-and-out alcoholics today (Jerome? 15).

There are also estimates that several million more have a serious problem that they can't cure on their own. The three leading causes of death for persons between the ages of 15 and 24 are car wrecks? homicide? and suicide? all of which are related in some way to alcohol usage. Alcoholism is also connected to mental disorders such as depression? anxiety? oppositional defiant disorder? or antisocial personality disorder (Jerome? 15). The best way to fight the addiction of alcoholism is through self-help support groups? which give you advice from professional health care workers. Your treatment of the disease should also include family members because your addiction may also be a result of family history. Sometimes the addiction can't be cured in isolation? and you need to seek outside help? in such a case it is best to have family? and professionals on your side. The only way we can hope to stop this problem is to educate more on the dangers of alcoholism especially on teens today (Jerome? 15).

Analysis

Every year since 1975 researchers from the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan? in conjunction with the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)? have conducted the Monitoring the Future survey (Abram? 26-27). The survey asks eighth-? tenth-? and twelfth-grade students whether they have ever used alcohol? tobacco? or drugs and whether they currently abuse these substances. Recent results of the yearly survey show that after declining throughout the 1980s? drug use among teenagers has increased during the 1990s. The survey also reveals that alcohol and tobacco abuse have remained unacceptably high. This state of affairs prompted Health and Human Services secretary Donna Shalala to declare that the entire nineties generation of high school students is at risk for addiction and dependence on drugs? ...