Day: May 8, 2008

Culture and Learning to Drink: What Age?


By: Micaela, Richard, Colleen, and Caitlin

In a 1983 landmark study conducted by Harvard psychiatrist Dr. George Valliant, it was found that young men who grew up in homes where alcohol was forbidden at the dinner table were seven times more likely to become alcoholics. The following year, the United States Congress voted to raise the legal drinking age to 21.

Responsibility is a lesson that all parents want to impart to their children. But because of this federal law forbidding alcohol consumption until the age of 21, most parents fail to teach their children responsible drinking habits. The question becomes, why is drinking different than any other life lesson?

In a New York Times article entitled, Can Sips at Home Prevent Binges? Eric Asimov confronts this very question. With two young boys who are fast approaching adolescence, Asimov discusses how difficult a decision he and his wife face. Should they slowly and responsibly introduce alcohol at the dinner table? Or should they, as the government mandates, forbid alcohol consumption altogether? The answer isn’t a simple one.

After the collapse of Prohibition, nearly all states instituted a minimum legal drinking age of 21. However, by the early 1970’s, twenty-nine states lowered the minimum legal drinking age to 18,19, or 20, while also extending other privileges, like the right to vote, to younger citizens.

In the late 1970s the national mood about teenage drinking underwent a drastic change because of several highly publicized studies that examined the correlation between the younger drinking age and motor vehicle crashes. Teenage alcohol abuse was deemed a devastating problem that corresponded to more traffic injuries and fatalities among America’s youth. The advent of these studies coupled with the nationwide campaign effort by Candy Lightner and her organization, MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) primed the American people for major change in legislation.

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It’s Our Fault: Denial, Disease and Addiction

By Danny Smith, Jimmy Wilson, Will Yeatman, Rachel Guerrera, and Mark Hinken

It’s our fault. But let’s spread the blame. The burden also lies on the shoulders of the educational community. And society itself. There is a serious misconception that exists. This misconception is that chemical dependence is not a disease. By not recognizing chemical dependence as a disease, society continues to hold harmful stereotypes about alcoholism and drug addiction.

The goal of this blog post is to address this major problem facing drug addicts and alcoholics. Society enables chemical dependence by causing denial. Denial helps create a vicious cycle that traps addicts. They tell themselves they do not have a problem and reject the idea to others that a problem exists.

However, denial is not just prevalent in cases of chemical reliance. It is common in everyday life, seen in issues concerning body image, gambling, sex and social interaction. In these cases, like addiction, denial stems from the social stigmas produced by society.

In today’s culture having a slim and fit body is heavily desired and expected. People who do not conform to the lofty standards set by models and Hollywood elite often feel abnormal and subject to ridicule. As a consequence anorexia, bulimia and dysmorphia have become more common among the current population. However, though these three eating disorders are labeled as real diseases, they are viewed as taboo in society. Therefore, people who suffer from anorexia often deny to others or even themselves that they really have a problem with a serious disease.

US society does not often pair diseases such as anorexia and alcoholism with diseases like cancer and Parkinson’s disease. Yet they are all chronic diseases. If the United States came to view chemical dependence with the same empathy as cancer, we could help eliminate the destructive low self-esteem and denial found in chemically reliant individuals.
Continue reading “It’s Our Fault: Denial, Disease and Addiction”