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Dear Interested High School Student,
Even if there is no known history of addiction that you know
of in your family, there may well be someone who did or does
have a problem that is never talked about.... Someone like an
"Uncle Joe" who always seems to drink too much at weddings
or other family gatherings, yet nobody really talks about it...
or the parents of relative who always seems to fall asleep in
front of the TV after a few too many beers or comes home most
nights after work with the smell of booze on his or her breath,
has dinner, and goes to bed (the parents who most nights is just
not "there" for you).
Alcoholism (or any other drug addiction, for that matter)
is a shame based illness... most families will do anything to
keep this type of family history a secret... especially from
the kids. These families are awfully goos at hiding problems
suggestive of alcoholism, they often go to great lengths to call
it something else... I tried to make a point of this during my
talk.
So, asking if you can drink without any cause for concern
is like handing you a gun with a few empty chambers but with
the rest loaded, then telling you to spin the barrel, put the
gun to your head and pull the trigger... you never know which
chamber is loaded when you fire.
A child of an alcoholic is five times as likely to become
addicted as is a peer who had no family history... that does
not mean that you have no bullets in your gun, you simply have
less! What I mean is: you can't be sure...so , if you do drink
or use, you are taking some degree of chance. For some folks,
at any age addiction can be almost immediate...for some it may
take years to develop a full blown, out of control problem. The
catch is, there is no sure way to know how alcohol or other drugs
will affect you personally...just as you can't be absolutely
sure that there's no addiction hidden in your family tree.
While I'm at it, another of your fellow students asked this
of me: Can we have non-alcoholic beer the night before the game?
So called "non-alcoholic" beer still has a small
percentage of alcohol (read the label). This actually makes it
a low dose alcoholic beverage (dubbed by some in the addiction
field as "the future beer drinker's training drink").
For non-alcoholics who are calorie conscious, it's a viable
substitute. For an alcoholic, the smell, the feel or sight of
t he bottle and all of the other triggers associated with former
drinking patterns are often enough to eventually send alcoholics
back to the "real thing."
As an aside, why is it so important for you, as a high school
student to drink "non-alcoholic" beer or any kind of
beer prior to a game? Perhaps beer is already giving you a problem.
Think about it! |
