January 1, 2008

by Donald O’Reilly

Are You a Teenager that Drinks?

It’s a great feeling when you tip the bottle back and let the liquid fly. The people that you couldn’t get are now having a staring contest with you from across the room. Even the people you could get with are looking even better. Time’s flying and you could care less about what’s going on with the world. Troubles are gone and every drink you take is another mile away from reality.

Almost all the teens today are drinking before they get into high school. They’re ruining their lives before they even begin. I almost got sucked into the world of alcoholism. Then, somehow, I clawed my way out of it. Now I hope I’m an example to the little kids to stay clean in high school instead of drinking and partying all the time. It may be fun while they’re doing it but not in the end. I have compared my life and grades to my freshman year and I like the outcome of who I am now, to what I was then. I realize how immature I was acting, and how much of a fool I made out of myself.

Various websites show that more than 40% of adolescents who drink are going to be alcoholics. They may have the choice now to drink, but in 5 years it will be a habit they can’t stop. Some students may be fortunate enough to snap out of this nasty cycle. Fortunately, I was one of the smarter ones and stopped drinking little by little.

My grades for the beginning of my freshman year were D, A-, D, A-, A-, A+ and B. then at the end of my freshman year, when I started drinking, my grades were D, C, F, F, B-, C+, and B. What an effect drinking made on my grades! These are not the grades I would like the college I am planning on going to see.

Most adolescents start drinking because of an older sibling that does it and they think it’s cool. So when you see someone under the age of 14 drinking, you can thank their household. In public, no one likes a drunken person. They just laugh at them because they’re making themselves seem stupider than they really are. Sooner or later they’re going to be known by everyone as a raging alcoholic who can’t handle their liquor and has abusive problems when they have been drinking. They will get into a car wreck and seriously injure themselves, or die, and either of those outcomes is not good.

Everyone thinks that drinking isn’t so bad when they’re young. They don’t look at their role models and see how much drinking has screwed up their lives. Most of the drinkers’ now a days have at least one parent that is an alcoholic so when they drink they don’t think there is anything wrong with it, till they don’t have a job, a life, and are not happy with what they’re doing in this world.

Drinking is a disease and you might be able to cure it, if you get help soon enough. So contact your local AA advisors and get in a class before the disease kills you!

Donald O’Reilly