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Dangers of alcohol essay
Dangers of alcohol essay
Negative impacts of drinking alcohol
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Why the Drinking Should be Raised
Do you know what kills more teenagers than all drugs combined? Alcohol! Alcohol is a contributing factor in almost every car crash. Alcohol slows down your brain and makes you do things that you will regret later. Alcohol also effects students and young adult’s welfare. Clearly alcohol has a negative effect on life.
Alcohol is a depressant which means when people have alcohol their reaction time is slowed down, which is why drink-driving over the legal limit is well, illegal. Your reaction time is the part of the amygdala which is where all the instinctual reflexes come from to help you brake, swerve and drive straight away. If your reaction time is slowed down however, you won’t notice the car in front of you has stopped until it is too late. That is why alcohol contributes to most if not every car crash.
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Consuming too much alcohol makes you have slurred speech, blurred vision, difficulty walking and an impaired memory. The day after partying and drinking you will wake up hangover which is a pounding headache. Having a hangover effects peoples learning, achievements and makes daily life harder. Being hangover also effects your social life, your family and friends do not to be around someone drunk or grumpy, alcohol can make you unfriendly and unsocial to be around. Being drunk can sometimes kill people not from car crashes but from accidents, like falling over again and again until their head hits a concrete slab and because they are so disorientated they won’t get up and call someone to take them to
Each year, about 5,000 teens are killed or injured in traffic crashes as a result of underage drinking and about 1,900 are due to car accidents. (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and U.S. Department of Transportation) In the newsletter, safety in numbers by National highway traffic administration and U.S department of transportation “Of all the people who died in motor vehicle crashes during 2012, 31 percent died in crashes involving a drunk driver, and this percentage remains unchanged for the past 10 years” (Vol 1, 2013). Crashes involving alcohol include fatal crashes in which a driver had a BAC of .01 g/ ld. or higher (Underage Drinking Statistics)). Deadly crashes involving alcohol are twice as common in teens compared to people 21 and older. This is because teens’ judgment skills are harmed more by alcohol. Teens who drink not only risk hurting themselves, they risk hurting their friends, family, and even strangers when driving intoxicated. Teens and parents both need a strong reminder that underage drinking is illegal and can have disastrous consequences. According to Health Day News, “one study found that in 2011, 36 percent of U.S. college students said they'd gone binge drinking (five or more drinks in one sitting) within the past two weeks, as compared to 43 percent of college students in 1988. Since 2006, the current law has reduced the rate of drunk driving crashes among young Americans” (Preidt, 2014 and DeJong, 2014). This proves that lives have been saved after the legal drinking age increased. According to an article in Time Magazine called “Should the Drinking Age Be Lowered?”, “lowering the drinking age to 18 would stop infantilizing college students, but it would probably kill mor...
Alcohol is causing too many deaths. Each year, excessive drinking is responsible for the deaths of 80,000 people in the United States, 4,700 of which are young Americans (6). Alcohol by itself is dangerous; this danger is (made greater) when individuals consuming it are allowed to drive a vehicle. Research has shown that a pedestrian struck by a vehicle moving at 40 miles an hour has a fifty percent chance of getting killed as a result of the impact (9). A distracted or impaired driver will not be able to react as fast as a non-impaired driver, meaning a drunk driver is a more dangerous driver than a sober one.
Alcohol is the most abused drug in the United States. There are more than 5,000 deaths of people below the age of 21 every year due to underage drinking. Many teens drink due to stress or difficult home life. Underage drinking can affect all aspects of life, including physical, psychological, and even your social life.
Car crashes are the leading cause of death for teens, and about one-third of those are alcohol related. Don’t be that person that lets a drunken driver on the streets; be the difference.
The use of alcohol by adolescents is implicated in about one third of all fatal crashes involving teens.
Effects of Drinking and Driving I’ve never seen drinking and driving on a daily planner or heard anyone say I think I’ll get a DUI today. I have heard people say “it’s my life, and if I want to drink and drive I will”. Well, it’s not just your life that is affected by the results of drinking and driving. When you make that choice to drink and drive you are taking the lives of family, friends, and strangers into your hands. You don’t have to get into an accident and kill somebody for the results to destroy you or someone else’s life. Drinking and driving can be the cause of many traumatic life changing events.
Alcohol is the most widely used drug among youth. It causes serious and potentially life-threatening problems for this population. Research indicates that drinking is associated with risk-taking and sensation-seeking behavior among adolescents. Alcohol has disinhibiting effects that may increase the likelihood of unsafe activities.In 1997, 21 percent of the young drivers 15 to 20 years old who were killed in crashes were intoxicated. For young drivers, alcohol involvement is higher among males than among females. In 1997, 25 percent of the young male drivers involved in fatal crashes had been drinking at the time of the crash, compared with 12 percent of the young female drivers involved in fatal crashes.According to national data, drowning is the leading cause of injury-related death among adolescents and young adults. Factors contributing to youth drowning include alcohol which can severely affect a swimmer's coordination and judgment. Forty to 50 percent of young males who drown were drinking when they died, and an equal percentage of all diving accidents are alcohol related.Approximately 240,000 to 360,000 of the nation's 12 million current undergraduates will ultimately die from alcohol-related causes.
To add, the alcoholic’s family is in a turmoil. The alcoholic can become violent to those around him or her. This can become fatal to anyone. Bottles left around the house can lead to children grabbing ahold of the alcohol and them themselves enjoying it. The younger drinking starts, the more chance that child has of becoming an alcoholic. The alcoholic can find it hard to find a job due to being drunk constantly. They will have less ambitions. They could end up neglecting their family; children, parents, and spouse. Depression can also develop.
Teenage drinking has become a big problem around the world the studies have shown between seventy to eighty percent of every teen has had an alcoholic beverage. (ClayPool 2) That is about half of the students in a public school. 1.9 million teens from the day they turned twelve to the age of twenty are considered heavy drinkers. (Well-connected 21) But only twelve out of fifteen actually have a problem drinking alcoholic beverages. (Goodwin 63) Many teens die in traffic accidents each day from the age sixteen to nineteen. There has been around 2,700 teens in the United States killed and almost 321,000 were treated for injuries suffered by motor-vehicle crashes, but then were released to go home. The cost to repair the damages of an alcohol-related accident is estimated to be around one-thousand, five- hundred all the way up to one-hundred, forty-eight billion dollars. ("Teenage" 64) But alcohol-related crashes also cost American taxpayers one-hundred billion dollars not just the driver. ("Drinking") Days of the week with the highest deat...
Drunk driving accidents are the number one killer of adolescents (Teenagers and peer pressures. (n.d.). Retrieved November 1, 2013, from). Mixing drinking while driving can be deadly. Teenage drunk driving accidents not only affect the person drinking while driving, but it also can kill or harm others (Alcohol problems and solutions. (n.d.). Retrieved November 1, 2013, from) (Teen drinking and driving. (n.d.). Retrieved November 1, 2013, from) . Every single accident provoked by drinking and driving could have been prevented. If underage drinking is illegal, why do young people do it ? Teenagers usually are influenced by their elders (Alcohol problems and solutions. (n.d.). Retrieved November 1, 2013, from). In the United States, one out of ten 12 through 14 year olds have tried alcohol and continue to do so on a regular basis . There is a more than fifty percent of probability that young adults that have tried alcohol at a younger age may become alcoholics in the near future (Alcohol fatalities. (n.d.). Retrieved November 1, 2013, from). So, why do teenagers take so many risks with their health and behind the wheel? The answer is simple teen drivers tend to think they are invincible and more needs to be done to educate teens on the dangers of drinking and driving.
The biggest problem with drunk driving by young adults is the high rate of traffic accidents. Although young drivers ages 16 through 25 makeup only 15% of U.S. licensed drivers, they constitute 30 percent of all alcohol-related driving fatalities. This is double the amount of licensed drivers in that age group. Inexperience with both drinking and driving may contribute to this disproportionate rate. Nationwide in 1996, people ages 15 to 24 died in fatal motor vehicle crashes and 45 percent of those deaths were a result of alcohol (NHTSA 4). So it comes to no surprise that traffic crashes are the leading cause of death in the United States for people younger than 25 (NCHS 98).
Alcohol is something that people use to help with multiply different things and some studies have shown that alcohol may help protect our bodies from cardiovascular disease. Alcohol does have side effects to our health the surroundings around us and can cause violence, vehicle crashes and even suicide. Alcohol does have an effect on people that many social drinkers may not realize. Many people usually have tried alcohol around 13 years of age and high school students consume more wine coolers that are sold in the U.S. and they drink more than 1 billion beers a year. To understand the effects of alcohol, it begins with the brain. It is a curiosity as to why people feel the need to drink and drive. The way the brain works while influenced with alcohol has always fascinated me. Drinking and driving is one of the biggest decisions that alcohol leads to. The National Public Services Research Institute (NHTSA) did a study on 600 people who admitted driving while under the influence of alcohol. They described in detail the decisions they made leading up to the occurrence of driving while impaired like whether to take part in a drinking event, how to get to the event, how much to drink, and how to get home. The people being interviewed revealed more than 2,000 individual decisions that led to alcohol impaired driving. The decisions were then broken down into several categories as shown on the graph attached. Little is known as to what leads people to continue to drinking and driving. But as research shows, people do think, prior to drinking, how they will get home. It’s after they have already had been drinking that they decide to get behind the wheel.
Neurotransmitters are chemicals that help transmit signals from one nerve in the brain to another (Drinkaware). Drinking decreases our mental sharpness and judgment. According to the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, “1,825 college students between the ages of 18 and 24 die from alcohol-related unintentional injuries, including motor-vehicle crashes” (NIAAA,). Another problem that affects us mentally is addiction. Alcohol is very addictive and people go through withdrawal. (Brittanica, Mark Keller). Alcohol affects human’s bodies and causes them to die at a young age. Alcohol harms your organs such as the heart, liver, pancreas, and the brain. (NIAAA). Also, there is an increase of developing cancer around the mouth, esophagus, throat, liver, and breast (NIAA). Consuming alcohol came lead to people taking actions they might not have taken when sober. Regular drinking lowers the levels of serotonin in your brain. This leads to depression and
Drunk driving is extremely impactful on the lives of you and others. While drinking and driving, you are not just endangering yourself, you are also endangering the lives of others. The driver of the car does not just control the car with their hands and feet. They need their brain to function properly so that you are able to react to objects on the road quicker and control the car. If you drink then drive/ drink while driving. Alcohol affects your brain in many ways that inhibit your ability to drive. Alcohol will affect your reaction time, it slows your reflexes which decrease your ability to react to objects on the road. It affects your vision, in can impair your color perception, and night vision. It slows down the movement in the muscles in your eye causing your visual perception to change. Alcohol affects your ability to track. You will not be able to judge the position of cars ahead of you, you won’t be able to judge the
Alcohol is a very serious and dangerous drug, although it is not treated this way anymore. College students have taken drinking to a new level in which, for many, is very scary. Alcohol is much more dangerous than many would think. Kids see a night of drinking as a great way to have fun and party but do not see the consequences. Getting drunk and even blacking out can lead to many problems. When alcohol is consumed in unhealthy amounts, it can lead to not only short-term effects, but long-term ones as well.