Alcohol Threatens Young People Who Fail To Understand Its Potential To Kill

Once upon a time, alcohol was seen as a medicine. It has been used as a stimulant, an analgesic, and as a vehicle for dispensing herbs to the sick. In today’s world, alcohol is, for more than 18 million Americans, a recipe for disaster.

These Americans are classified as dependent on or addicted to alcohol, based on annual phone surveys. This doesn’t mean that they were asked if they were addicted, it means that they were asked if they had various characteristics. A “yes” answer to enough of those characteristics put them in the dependent/addicted category.

Of these 18 million Americans, more than 15 million abuse alcohol by itself. The other 3 million or so abuse alcohol with a second or even more drugs. Particularly among young people, abusing alcohol with prescription painkillers seems to be a growing problem.

While alcoholism is always a threat for people who abuse alcohol, there is yet a reason why some young people will heavily abuse alcohol yet never become addicted. It’s because their abuse of alcohol will kill them before they have a chance to become an alcoholic. They will fall victim to either an alcohol-related accident or injury or direct alcohol poisoning.

The website www.compelledtoact.com lists hundreds of college students who were killed in alcohol-related incidents, most of them on campuses, in dorms, fraternity or sorority houses. A few were victims of accidents caused by a drinking student.

In some cases, the person who died was not only drinking but also abusing prescription or illicit drugs. In other cases, there were falls from buildings and car and pedestrian accidents that took these young lives. But in an amazing number of cases, it was just the fact of consuming more alcohol than a young body could handle that killed. In some cases, the blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of the person who died was simply astonishing.

Like Gary DeVercelly Jr who died in 2007. A student at Rider University, Gary had a BAC of .426%. That’s more than five times the legal limit for driving. A BAC of .35% to .5% can kill. He had been drinking at an on-campus frat party.

In 2008, Tony Lee Miller of South Central College near Minneapolis died with a BAC of .435%

Daniel Miller (no relation to Tony) of the University of Idaho died of alcohol poisoning in 2009 after playing “drinking games” with friends. He had a BAC of .45% when he died.

In 2010, Matthew Tembo, 22, died in a fraternity house after drinking too much vodka at a birthday celebration on the Carnegie Mellon University campus.

And a Clemson University student, Tyler Jacob Karolczyk, was found dead in November 2011. A preliminary examination showed alcohol poisoning to be the suspected cause. Earlier in the evening, he had been “heavily intoxicated.”

Every year, there are more of these deaths. And alcohol poisoning deaths are some of the most preventable deaths of all. It could be argued that all a young person needs to know is that they need to stop drinking after a certain number of drinks and that they should never drive or operate a moving vehicle (snowmobile, boat, etc) after drinking. These simple rules would eliminate the majority of alcohol-related deaths among our young.

The better path would be to give these young person sufficient goals and understanding of the problems related to substance abuse that would prevent these drinking episodes.

Until the problem is clearly understood by the younger population, it’s possible that America will continue to lose some of its brightest young citizens to alcohol poisoning and other alcohol-related causes.

While long-term alcohol rehabilitation programs like the one at Narconon can prevent the alcoholism that can result from youthful drinking, it can’t help if the young person doesn’t live long enough to be rehabilitated.  

References:

http://compelledtoact.com/

http://oas.samhsa.gov/NSDUH/2k9NSDUH/2k9Results.htm#3.1

http://www2.wspa.com/news/2011/nov/14/10/clemson-student-death-investigation-ar-2695472/

Narconon schools receive effective drug education and prevention lectures throughout the year to stop addiction before it starts. Call 800-468-6933 for more inform