In recent decades, the problem of teenage alcoholism has reached an alarming scale. According to some sociological surveys, 72% of adolescents drink alcohol daily.
Why do teenagers drink alcohol?
- An unsuitable situation in the family. This includes families where alcoholic parents are abused, and families where "connivance" is flourishing or too strict guardianship.
- Social environment. Adolescents tend to imitate parents, older comrades or other "authorities" in behavior and way of life, so if they consume alcohol in a close environment, the teenager also becomes attached to this addiction.
- Perverse advertising of alcohol and easy accessibility.
- Adolescents may start drinking alcohol because of physical or mental trauma.
Effect of alcohol on the body of a teenager
The young organism grows and develops, therefore for teenagers alcohol is more harmful than for adults. Particularly harmful alcohol affects the unformed psyche of a teenager: leads to mental degradation, various disorders in the emotional-volitional sphere (control of one's psyche and actions). The adolescent has a significant decrease in mental activity, sleep is disturbed, and as a result, there is constant fatigue. Along with this, the adolescent has a sharp change of mood: apathy to everything around can be sharply replaced by an unreasonable aggression.
The harm of alcohol for adolescents is not limited only to the influence on behavior and lifestyle, even more seriously alcohol affects the internal organs and organ systems.
- The influence of alcohol on the adolescent's insufficiently mature brain is explained by exposure to harmful chemicals: ethanol in ethanol (ethyl alcohol) causes irreparable harm to brain cells. The teenager not only intellectually degrades, but also instantly gets used to alcohol.
- Permeability of thin walls of blood vessels in adolescents is much higher, so the use of alcohol leads to fatty degeneration of liver cells, which entails a violation of the synthesis of enzymes, a breakdown in protein and carbohydrate metabolism.
- Under the influence of alcohol, the gastrointestinal tract fails: the production of gastric juice decreases, its composition changes. In addition, alcohol leads to pancreatic dysfunction, which is fraught with pancreatitis and even diabetes.
- Low-quality cheap alcohol can lead to serious poisoning with consequences for the cardiovascular, digestive and other systems.
- Under the influence of alcohol, the immune system ceases to "protect" the adolescent from infectious diseases, such as ARVI, urinary tract infections, and inflammation of the respiratory tract.
- Alcohol - an incentive to promiscuous sexual intercourse and infection with sexually transmitted infections: hepatitis B and C, HIV, AIDS. Also, the appearance of early pregnancy in adolescent girls, abortion and subsequent gynecological problems is not ruled out.