Facing the Music And Living To Talk About It by Nick Carter

Author:Nick Carter
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

N I C K C A R T E R

economic levels. I’ve seen reports that indicate nearly nineteen percent of

those between the ages of 12 and 20 have tried binge drinking and a CDC

survey found that as many as one quarter of all high school students and

adults between the ages of 18 and 35 have done it.

Experts say that more than thirty mil ion adults binge drink now,

and that number isn’t decreasing. I was also surprised to learn that

more than forty thousand people die each year in the United States

because of it—that’s half of all alcohol-related deaths in the country.

Medical reports say that not all binge drinkers are alcoholics, though

most have serious alcohol abuse problems.

The toll is steep. One study reported that those who binge drink

are fourteen times more likely to drive while intoxicated than moderate

drinkers. Approximately five thousand young people under the legal

drinking age die from alcohol-related causes each year, but those are

just the easy stats to collect. Who knows how many people die prema-

turely because of the damage they’ve done to their bodies and minds

from alcohol and drug abuse?

Medical research has found evidence that binge drinking can affect

the development of brains in teenagers, whose bodies typical y haven’t

reached full maturity yet. According to one study, binge-drinking teens

may actual y suffer a loss of white matter in their brains, which is the

tissue that affects learning and controls communication.

Drinking until you drop is a huge trend on college campuses in par-

ticular, but it’s happening off campus too. I’ve heard that there are con-

cerns about an increase in binge drinking among women with children. I

read a few years ago about a woman who killed herself and seven others

in a head-on collision while driving the wrong-way on a highway in New

York State. She was en route home from a camping trip with five children

in the car including her son, daughter and three nieces all under the age

of nine. Police found a bottle of vodka in the car and subsequent tests

showed that she’d had the equivalent of ten drinks in her system and that

she’d been smoking marijuana too.

It’s one thing to endanger your own life with reckless drinking and

drug use, but can you imagine kil ing your own children, loved ones and

other innocent people?

109

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.