If you have a friend whose drinking concerns you, help them stay safe. If you can, try to keep friends who teens drinking alcohol have been drinking from doing anything dangerous, such as trying to walk home at night alone or starting a fight. Don’t get in a car with someone who’s been drinking, even if that person is your ride home. Ask a sober adult to drive you instead or call a cab or car service. The scientific name for alcohol that people drink is ethyl alcohol or ethanol.
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Instead, they Sobriety are due to other fatal accidents, including homicides, suicides, poisoning, burns, falls, and drownings. If you’re going to a party and you know there will be alcohol, plan your strategy in advance. You and a friend can develop a signal for when it’s time to leave, for example. You can also make sure that you have plans to do something besides just hanging out in someone’s basement drinking beer all night. Plan a trip to the movies, the mall, a concert, or a sports event. You might also organize your friends into a volleyball, bowling, or softball team — any activity that gets you moving.
Plan ways to help your child handle peer pressure
Underage drinking is a serious public health problem in the United States. Alcohol is the most widely used substance among America’s youth and can cause them enormous health and safety risks. Excessive alcohol use can harm people who drink and those around them. You and your community can take steps to improve everyone’s health and quality of life. It may require individual or group counseling, or an inpatient or residential treatment program (where your child stays until they have completed treatment). Ask your doctor which one or combined treatment is right for your child.
Alcohol use in teens: Risks and statistics
Sometimes people live in homes where a parent or other family member drinks too much. This doesn’t mean that they love or care about you any less. Alcoholism is an illness that needs to be treated just like other illnesses. If saying no to alcohol makes you feel uncomfortable in front of people you know, blame your parents or another adult for your refusal. Saying, “My parents are coming to pick me up soon,” “I already got in major trouble for drinking once, I can’t do it again,” or “my coach would kill me,” can make saying no a bit easier for some. If all your friends drink and you don’t want to, it can be hard to say no.
- While your rules won’t be the same or as rigid as when they were younger, having loose boundaries can be confusing and overwhelming for a teen.
- Remind your teen that underage drinking is illegal and that they can be arrested for it.
- It can happen in any family, regardless of income, status, or ethnicity.
- NIAAA’s Rethinking Drinking can help you assess your drinking habits and provides information to help you cut back or stop drinking.
- Because alcohol makes people feel less inhibited, they feel more at ease socializing when they drink.
- In fact, it takes tremendous strength and courage to admit your problem and decide to face up to it.
As a teenager, your child is likely to be in social situations where they’re offered alcohol—at parties or in the homes of friends, for example. Teenagers often feel invincible—that nothing bad will ever happen to them—so preaching about the long-term health dangers of underage drinking may fail to discourage them from using alcohol. Instead, talk to your teen about the effects drinking can have on their appearance—bad breath, bad skin, and weight gain from all the empty calories and carbs. You can also talk about how drinking makes people do embarrassing things, like peeing themselves or throwing up. Since alcohol is a depressant, using it to self-medicate can make problems even worse. If your child is regularly drinking on their own or drinking during the day it could be they’re struggling to cope with a serious underlying issue.
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