Adolescents who break away from the parental home and make the transition into society as independent members are in constant conflict with their new environment. In the struggle to achieve this independence, they reject instruction to the same extent that they emulate role models. They often focus on those qualities that seem to them to be a special expression of adulthood and a privilege of adults. However, since their environment itself is not without its faults and their own judgment is not always sufficiently developed, they make many a mistake. This also applies to the question of alcohol consumption.
Alcohol – danger for development
Severe liver damage, fatty liver, and alcoholic hepatitis (inflammation of the liver) or cirrhosis of the liver are the dangerous conditions that can accompany alcohol addiction. The number of young people for whom drinking alcohol has become a more or less constant need is alarmingly large and constantly increasing. Many of them drink alcohol in the belief that they are thus acting in a very adult manner. This fallacy cannot be blamed on young people. Rather, it results from the faulty behavior of the adults around them. It can be seen that children who are not yet of school age receive their “children’s liquor” at family celebrations. In many homes, children can snack in wine and liquor glasses without warning or punishment. Also widespread is the bad habit of allowing young people to toast in public with their father and other family members at their graduation ceremony after school, confirmation or youth dedication. This misdirection continues in many teaching and training companies and especially in dubious circles of acquaintances. Pushy advertisements and displays of alcoholic beverages, the infinite number of pubs, of unsuitable places of amusement and the bad example set by adults are also part of the environment of the growing youth and exert their unfavorable influence. It is therefore no wonder to note with concern that the consumption of alcohol is shifting more and more into the younger years. The concern arises mainly from the fact that what is adopted at a young age very easily becomes a habit, and alcohol consumption is particularly harmful at a young age. Several billion euros are spent annually in Germany alone on the purchase of alcoholic beverages. What is the reason for this enormous consumption of alcoholic beverages? (Talking about the value of alcohol as food and its usefulness in medicine is not the place here. Both, moreover, are vastly overestimated). Alcohol is enjoyed because it provides a pleasant, light mood. Worries and burdens of everyday life no longer weigh under the effect of alcohol.
Effect of alcohol
So how does this effect of alcohol come about? In the cerebral cortex of humans, there is a constant interplay between excitations and inhibitions. These processes of excitation and inhibition reflect the experiences that man gathers during his development, and ultimately establish the balance between man and his environment that is necessary to maintain existence. Circumstances that disrupt these processes also disrupt the balance between man and his environment. Unless alcohol is consumed in such large quantities as to cause a general paralysis of the functions of the central nervous system, alcohol paralysis acts very specifically on the inhibitory functions of the central nervous system. Prudence, judgment, self-control, etc. are lost under the effect of alcohol. This results in the increased urge to move and talk, the overestimation of oneself and the increased need for recognition, the unmotivated laughing and crying of the intoxicated. However different the individual behavior of the intoxicated may be, one thing is always common: In drunkenness, the world of being, of reality, is exchanged for the world of appearance, of illusion. Under the effect of larger quantities of alcohol, misjudgements and wrong reactions occur, the consequences of which are so well known that they need not be mentioned here in detail. However, the consequences must be all the more drastic the less such experiences as prudence, judgment and self-control have already become fixed character traits, i.e. the less the personality is developed.In fact, it can also be proven that adolescents are generally much more unrestrained in drunkenness than adults, and accordingly the consequences are also more serious. In addition, adolescents suffer the consequences much more severely because they are only at the beginning of their development. Like many prostitutes, ill-considered and unconquered experiences under the influence of alcohol became the cause and the beginning of their drift. Many a life is destroyed by alcohol before it has actually begun.
Alcohol Abuse
In addition to these immediate and visible consequences, disorders in the development of the personality occur after regular alcohol consumption among adolescents, the connection of which with alcohol consumption is not readily apparent, and which are therefore also difficult to record statistically. The integration of adolescents into society as independent members does not take place without conflict. In this process, the moral and social views, the ability to judge and the self-confidence of the young people are formed. Qualities are developed that are necessary for the shaping of a purposeful and responsible life. Avoiding a solution to conflicts by numbing oneself with alcohol and thus taking refuge in the world of deception instead of dealing with reality is a fatal temptation for young people. People who follow such a path will be poorly able to cope with the difficulties and often quite harsh demands of life, if they do not succumb to them altogether. Damage of this kind is very serious, since, according to a number of well-known scientists, the number of young people affected by it is in the hundreds of thousands.
Diseases caused by alcohol abuse
The changes in character following chronic alcohol abuse can eventually reach such degrees that those affected become unbearable to those around them and have to be institutionalized. Unfortunately, this increasingly affects adolescents as well. Chronic alcohol consumption also leads in many cases to severe changes in the organs. Inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract, liver shrinkage, skin changes and more are frequently occurring consequences of excessive alcohol abuse. Most of these damages are nowadays attributed to vitamin deficiency. The vitamin deficiency occurs because the alcoholic meets his energy needs to a large extent through alcohol and not, as necessary, through normal food rich in vitamins. This vitamin deficiency sufficiently explains the fact that organic damage occurs more easily in adolescents than in adults under alcohol abuse, because the growing body has a high vitamin requirement. For all these reasons, it must be welcomed that the Youth Protection Act (JuSchG) also stipulates a ban on serving and selling alcoholic beverages to children and adolescents under the age of 16 and a restriction on serving alcoholic beverages to adolescents between the ages of 16 and 18, regardless of whether the adolescents are alone or accompanied by their parents or other adults. Violations of this law are punishable by stiff prison sentences or fines. However, these laws will not be fully effective until they are understood, advocated and supported by the people who are responsible for the education of children and adolescents: parents, teachers and educators.
