When I was a sophomore in high school, I enrolled into a substance abuse class. At that time period, I did not realize that alcohol abuse in reality was a sub division 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 people throughout the world. I also learned quite a bit about alcohol treatment and the various alcohol rehabilitation that are often available to alcohol abusers.
Some of the negative results correlated with alcoholism and alcohol abuse that I learned about in this class absolutely frightened me. The ruined lives and many problems experienced by most alcohol dependent people made me feel like I never wanted to drink alcohol when I became old enough. Stated differently, I did not want to face the wreckage and devastation that alcohol addicted individuals almost always encounter.
Ponder upon this for a moment. What fifteen-year-old individual wants to face premature death due to his or her drinking behavior? What adolescent wants to become so out-of-control regarding his or her drinking that drinking alcohol becomes the object of one’s life? What adolescent wants to go to one of the local alcoholic rehabilitation centers to deal with alcohol-related problems before he or she becomes twenty-one?
What adolescent wants to go through 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 serious issues in every area of his or her life? Drinking later in life after a person has a career, a family, and develops personal responsibilities makes sense. But why would a teenager want to sacrifice his or her education, employment, finances, and relationships for a life that focuses on irresponsible drinking?
These issues were so significant that I talked about some of them in class throughout the school year. What was totally unbelievable to me was the number of students who openly didn’t care about the damaging effects of hazardous drinking that I talked about. It was almost as if they couldn’t be troubled with the truth and how these results can ruin their lives. For the first time in my life I started to comprehend something that my grandfather used to emphasize throughout my youth: you can lead a horse to water but you can’t force it to drink.