When I was in the tenth grade in high school, I enrolled into a substance abuse class. At that time in my life, I did not understand that alcohol abuse in truth was a sub division of drug abuse. While taking this class and learning more about drug and alcohol abuse and particularly about drug abuse and alcoholism symptoms, 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 rehabilitation and the different
signs of alcoholism that are frequently exhibited by abusive drinkers.
Some of the detrimental end results correlated with alcoholism and alcohol abuse that I learned about in this class certainly frightened me. The ruined lives and countless difficulties experienced by most alcohol dependent people made me feel like I never wanted to drink alcohol when I became old enough. More to the point, I did not want to face the damage and devastation that alcohol addicted individuals almost always go through.
Ponder upon this for a moment. What person 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 ingesting 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 difficulties before he or she becomes twenty-one? What individual wants to drink so excessively that she or he experiences an alcohol overdose?
What youth wants to deal with alcohol withdrawal symptoms when he or she tries to quit 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 a person 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 centers on excessive drinking?
These issues were so important that I talked about some of them in class during the school year. What was totally incredible to me was the number of students who openly didn't care about the detrimental results of irresponsible drinking that I talked about. It was almost as if they couldn't care less about the facts and how these outcomes can wreck their lives. For the first time in my life I started to figure out a saying that my grandfather used to say to me throughout my adolescence: "you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink."
And even at my young age, I also began to understand how invigorating, important, and beneficial it is to remove yourself from the debilitating and unhealthy effects of drug and alcohol abuse if you want to amount to anything in life.
