This side of alcohol shows how damaging it really can be, not only to the individuals" body, but to their relationships as well. We get to see a sensitive side of the alcoholic and sometimes view them as the victim. We get to see the various stages that lead up to the disastrous climax into which is either resolved by them getting help through counseling or ultimately killing their body by drinking themselves to death. This helps us to understand how real the severity of this drug is and how it can affect the people we love.
When thinking about how alcohol has impacted my life, I think about my ex-boyfriend, Michael. To this day we remain friends, but over the last several months, alcohol has flipped our relationship upside down. After Michaels" mother passed away last New Years from a drug overdose, the amount of his alcohol consumption went from a steady proportion to catastrophic levels of binge drinking. His total number of beers went from about eighteen to twenty-five beers throughout the course of a day. What made this situation dangerous was that he was underage and his family owned a country club with a fully stocked bar, making alcohol accessible to him at all times.
What bothered me the most about his drinking was that his family never once tried to intervene or question him about his newly formed habits. Instead the bartender's and waitresses would bring him beer after beer until he was so belligerent he could barely walk straight. The only way he knew how to cope with his mothers" death was to forget. To forget was to get drunk. This summer, Michael would start the day out by playing nineteen holes of golf with his friends and sometimes I would ride around with them. We would always have a cooler of beer in the golf cart with us. I would try to drink beer for beer with Michael, but by the tenth hole I could hardly stand. When the eighteenth hole came around, we were out of beer and conviently located by the clubhouse.
Alcohol Alert "Despite a minimum drinking age of 21, many young people in the United States consume alcohol." (NIAAA) From research done and statistics shown alcohol users are mostly found in ages 14-19; grade 8th -12th. Although other drug use besides alcohol may be a problem; in the soci...
