This is some serious shit…

In my recent blog post about drinking in the young adult audience, I adressed the issue that alcohol is more serious than we realize in our society. We have all seen young people in society at maybe bars, on spring break cruises, girls nights out, or maybe just even on the street; there  always seems to be that group of college or high school kids that have had a bit too much to drink. They may be walking crookedly, taking shots, making out with the opposite sex and of course yelling loudly ( I have even been one of these young people). Adults give us this look of, “oh what has our generation come to” and walk hastily away.

 This is how young people are though, we study hard in school and we want to party hard on the weekends. It seems almost as if we are justified by society in our pusrsuit of a good time because we are young and only have a certain amount of  time to let our hair loose before adulthood. When adults look at intoxicated young people it’s almost always accomapnies a thought of ‘I remember those days’. Our society accepts and recognizes that as young people we are vivacious and this time will soon pass in our lives. However that’s the problem for many that time doesn’t end and can become a person’s whole life. Society thinks that alcohol is so innocent because it is legal, but don’t realize that we aren’t playing with innocent toys. This is something that controls our young developing brains and leads us to a road of destruction. It’s all fun and games before someone becomes addicted.

Let’s give an example. On Thursday night I was going to go out with a couple friends in the Castro district, to celebrate the end of midterms. We are warranted right; it’s been a hard week. In college, celebrating always means alcohol, because it seems that we need that in order to have a good time. It is so interesting how casual this idea seems to us, we don’t even realize how instilled this notion had become.  An aquatanice I see at the bar that night, gets to talking about how many drinks he has consumed. So I mention that I only have one drink a night because I have a problem with abusing alcohol. He laughs and says, ” I know what you mean, last year in school I was getting drunk everyday.” At this point I am quite surprised by his answer, because telling someone you have a drinking problem doesn’t seem to be a laughing matter to me. I also think to myself, maybe this guy has a bigger problem than me. Then I say well my counselor told me I should only drink one drink a night. The tone of the conversation totally changes and he says, wow ya if you have a counselor you really must have a problem.

This situation sums up all the things that are wrong with drinking culture around the world. This person was legitmantly drinking everyday to the point of intoxication and he believes that drinking is still a laughing matter. However I have never been to that point. I am trying to be a resposible adult and control my alcohol consumtpion before it gets too out of hand and I am the one with the problem. This shows that we don’t take drinking as serious as we should.

This sitaution showed me that we as a society have so many differnet ideas on what is correct and incoreect about alcohol consumption. So I am going to clear things up with what the experts say.

 The first and most important step is to realize that alcohol is a drug, and it has some serious side effects and consequences. Like alcohol poising, seizures and even death. It can also ruin relationships with friends, and make you loose your job and house. I believe that some people realize this but the next thought that comes into their minds is that can never be me.  According to the article titled, “A Snapshot of Annual High-Risk College Drinking Consequences“, 1,825 college students between the ages of 18 to 24 dies of alchol related causes and 31 percent of college age students have met the criteria for alcohol abuse.  Here is an article called, “What are the dangers of alcohol“, read this article for more information

The second step is to be honest about your realtionship with alcohol and know your limits. Here is a self test to let you know what a healthy relationship with alcohol looks like. On this website, it mentions something very important in the headline, one alcoholic drinks counts as 12 oz of beer, 5 oz of wine and 1.5 oz of hard liquor. Every person can handle a different amount of alcohol for their body weight, gender, and genetics. So it is important to know how many drinks makes you buzzed, tipsy and drunk. A good amount is under the .08 blood alcohol level which is the legal limit for driving. Check  this website out to learn more about blood alcohol levels and the number of drinks that are best for your body.

The third step actually comes down to action. After learning what is the correct limit for yourself, it would be harmless if an action didn’t arise from this knowledge. The most important thing is knowing how many drinks you are going to have before you even set foot in the bar. This makes it easier to stick to your limits if you are aware of it and have made a concious decision to abide by this. I am not saying don’t have fun, because even consuming the correct amount of alcohol can lead to a healthy buzz but without all the conseqences.

The most important thing about alcohol consumption isn’t the age limit but knowing your limits. I believe that every country should have a mandatory alcohol awareness class before they are able to drink. Similar to driver’s education. Until next time.