What I Learned About Drug Abuse and Alcohol Dependency in High School
When I was a sophomore in high school, I registered for a drug abuse class. At that age, I did not understand that alcohol abuse in reality was a sub category of drug abuse. While taking this class and learning more about drug and alcohol abuse, I read a lot about Alcoholic Anonymous, their meetings, how their programs have twelve steps, and how successful the Alcoholics Anonymous recovery program has been for individuals throughout the world. I also learned a lot about alcohol treatment and the various alcohol rehab clinics that are repeatedly available to alcohol abusers.
Some of the detrimental outcomes related to alcoholism and alcohol abuse that I learned about in this class definitely scared me. The ruined lives and frequent serious issues experienced by most alcoholics made me feel like I never wanted to drink alcohol when I became old enough. Stated briefly, I did not want to face the damage and devastation that alcohol addicted people almost always experience.
Let this sink in for a moment. What fifteen-year-old person wants to face premature death due to his or her drinking behavior? What young person wants to become so out-of-control regarding his or her drinking that drinking alcohol becomes the object of one’s life? What young person wants to go to one of the local alcoholic rehabilitation centers to deal with alcohol-related problems before he or she becomes an adult?
What adolescent wants to experience alcohol withdrawal symptoms when he or she tries to stop drinking? Why would a person engage in drinking to such an extent that it would cause difficulties in every area of his or her life? Drinking later in life after an individual has a career, a family, and develops personal responsibilities makes sense. But why would an adolescent want to sacrifice his or her education, employment, finances, and relationships for a life that focuses on excessive drinking?
These issues were so important that I talked about some of them in class during the school year. What was utterly inconceivable to me was the number of students who essentially didn’t care about the negative effects of abusive drinking that I discussed. It was almost as if they couldn’t be troubled with the facts and how these effects can destroy their lives. For the first time in my life I started to comprehend something that my grandfather used to articulate all through my adolesence: you can lead a horse to water but you can’t force it to drink.