When it comes to alcohol, most people could say that they have had many good times that involved alcohol, but I think it is safe to say that everyone has their own opinion on it, whether it be a good one or a bad one. To many people think that they can have a drink or two and it will not affect their judgement or the way they drive. Unfortunately, they would be very mistaken because if we take a look at the statistics on alcohol we can see that it can severely ruin lives.
Internal organs get destroyed and your appearance goes down the drain. Alcohol has such a severe effect on your body if you drink recklessly. It can also demolish families if you let it run your life. People become so dependent on having a drink that they chose the drink over family, love, and friendships. There are many misconceptions that alcohol isn’t that dangerous, and I believe that has to be because so many people are misinformed about the negative side effects of alcohol.
If you take a look in the text book, it states that more people are addicted to the use of alcohol then they are to the use of any illicit drug. (Embar –Seddon, 2009). I believe that this is due to the fact that alcohol is so readily available to pretty much anyone at any given point in time. Looking at the statistics that surround alcohol, we learn many things that we may have never known. For example, according to the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence, approximately 17.6 million people are dealing with an addiction to alcohol. That equates to one in every twelve adults. (Wilcox, 2018)
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There are also well over seven million children who are witness to the effects of alcohol due to a parent in the household abusing the substance. The government has tried to make it harder to get such as needing to be twenty one years of age and have proper identification, but people have fund ways around that such as fake ID’S and family or friends buying it for them. There needs to be tighter laws on who and what can supply alcohol, and I believe that stores who sell alcohol should have certain equipment that can detect fake identification from real identification. I
f this equipment were to be readily available to businesses, I truly believe that more underage individuals would not be able to get their hands on a drink so easily. I remember reading a fact in school one day that when you get “black out” drunk, it is not that you do not remember what you did or did not do. When you get so drunk that you cannot remember what you did, it because your mind loses all ability to make memories at that time.
Alcohol can cause some serious harm to your internal organs without you even realizing it. The brain for instance is one of the most affected parts. According to the Alcohol Rehab Guide, alcohol can cause you to have a loss of coordination and memory loss, but it can also lead to severe irreversible damage to three different parts of the brain. (Galbicsek, 2018) Some short term effect of alcohol are forgetfulness, mood swings, and blurry vision. Some long term effects are heart disease, cancer, a failing liver, and ulcers that can occur in multiple places in the body. Kidney disease, cancer, and accidents are all listed in the top ten leading causes of death in the United States. All of these also state that we have a chance to lower all possibilities of these happening if we limit or cut out the use of alcohol. (Nichols, 2017)
Alcohol can cause serious damage to your heart whether you realize it or not. Excessive drinking, which is described as two drinks for a man, and one drink for a woman, can lead to heart failure such as cardiomyopathy, and cardiac arrhythmia, which in turn can also be the cause of sudden cardiac arrest. The American Heart and Health Association states that when it comes to women and pregnancy, that alcohol should be avoided altogether because it can cause severe birth defects and can also cause many problems for an unborn baby in utero, such as fetal alcohol disorder. (American Heart Health, 2014)
A few facts that are relevant to alcohol is the third leading cause of death that has to do with the type of life style you lead. Roughly 88,000 people die yearly due to drinking an excessive amount. (Wilcox, 2018) When people misuse and abuse alcohol, it costs the United States roughly 249 billion dollars. According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, roughly 600 thousand young adults between the ages of twelve and seventeen have alcohol use disorder.
If you break this number up, you would see that more females, roughly 300 thousand have this problem then males who sit right around 298 thousand. (NIAAA, 2018) According to Kathleen Hall, Men and women have different reactions to alcohol and most people do not realize that. People tend to think that you have a limit that has to do with your body weight, but according to Hall, it has to do with hormones, muscle and fat ratio, and many other things such as the makeup of your stomach enzymes and how much water is in your body. (Hall, 2016)
Alcohol has affected my life in a way that I never thought it would. My best friend who was like a sister to me, was driving in Parrish, Florid a one night with her fiancé on the way back from telling her mom that she was pregnant. As they were crossing an intersection, a driver did not yield and hit them on the passenger door, which is where she was sitting at the time. She died on impact and her fiancé died two days later in the intensive care unit. There were also two other passengers in the car, both of whom were good friends with Amber. One young man died, and the other has become paralyzed from the waist down.
He was told that he would never walk again. It turns out the driver had a blood alcohol content that was almost triple the legal limit. It took four years to get justice for them, and the guy got the minimal sentence with a potential for early release for good behavior. Just because a substance is legal does not mean that it will not be abused. Almost every day we hear on the news about someone who go a driving while under the influence or hit and seriously injured or killed someone because they were drunk. Alcohol is a prime example on how a common substance can change and destroy lives in a matter of seconds.
It would be a safe thing to say that alcohol and families do not mix. According to the American Addiction center, families who get into physical altercations, roughly sixty to seventy have alcohol involved. These fights happen because people who have alcohol dependency blow through family savings, ignore their children, and come home drunk so they start a fight. (American Addiction Center, 2018).
I have seen families be torn apart because of alcohol. Personally, I was adopted because my father as a drunk and he would beat on my mother if she did not make him a drink right away or if she made it wrong. I remember one time my dad saying he would kill me and my siblings if she did not bring home more whiskey for his old fashions. I believe it was that day that my mother decided to put us up for adoption to keep us safe.
Alcohol is the number one most abused substance, and that has to do in part with that it is a legalized drug. It can cause things such as high blood pressure, strokes, fetal alcohol syndrome and many other health risks. We are able to get our hands on alcohol so easily because it is so readily available. Teens are able to get fake ids from people, or maybe their parents supply it for them. People are dependent on alcohol and sometimes they do not even realize it, but they always have an itch for the next drink.
What people do not realize though, is that alcohol can rip apart a family, and your life in a matter of minutes. I have learned firsthand how alcohol can do this, as my best friend was ripped away from this world in a matter of minutes just because someone decided to have a few to many drinks and get behind the wheel. Even if you do not consider alcohol a drug, how can anyone be okay with the fact that you are putting your life, and everyone else’s life at risk just for a fleeting moment of fun?
