Drink smart, start early?
March 26th, 2008 by KimI sometimes wonder if my perspective on drinking might be different had my parents allowed me to drink when I was in high school.
As it was, my parents did not encourage drinking before I was 21. I believe that the bulk of their reasoning was: I should not drink before I was legally allowed to do so, and that was that.
But parents — and their concerns — drop almost completely out of the picture when many 18-year-olds go to college. On many campuses, alcohol is readily available to students of all ages and becomes a staple of the social scene. If students are surrounded by such a climate for three years before most reach the legal drinking age … well, peer pressure can do in even the most conscientious, law-abiding kid.
Flash-forward to the 21st birthday party. For many people I know, this involved getting absolutely plastered and passing out somewhere, hopefully near someone who was responsible — or at least sober — enough to put you in your own bed and make sure you didn’t expire overnight.
It’s tough to debate the merits of allowing students to drink alcohol before they reach 21, or before they are unleashed unwittingly upon Animal House-like frat parties every weekend. The big problem is: underage drinking is just that — it’s against the law.
Still, the growing problem of binge drinking on college campuses has led some to question if there might be a way to stop students from becoming absorbed in the “black-out drunk” culture before they even arrive on the scene, that is, years before they turn 21.
New York Times wine blogger Eric Asimov asks today in his blog, “The Pour” — “Should wine be a family affair?” In a related column, he debates the merits of introducing his two sons, 16 and 17, to wine as a complement to a meal, while trying to impress upon them the potential dangers of alcohol. He muses:
It would be easy to preach abstinence to children until they’re 21, but is it naive and even irresponsible to think that teenagers won’t experiment? Might forbidding even a taste of wine with a meal actually encourage secrecy and recklessness?
And:
In the best of all possible worlds, I suppose, young adults would not touch alcohol until they turn 25 and then would instantly understand the pleasures of moderate consumption. It seems to me as silly to imagine that as it is to expect the same at 21.
Does introducing teenagers to alcohol in moderation before age 21 encourage them to be more responsible drinkers? Asimov cites a 1983 study by Dr. George E. Vaillant, a psychiatry professor at Harvard, which compared 136 men who were alcoholics with men who were not.
The study found that men who grew up in families where alcohol was forbidden at the table, but who drank alcohol away from home, apart from food, were seven times more likely to become alcoholics than those whose households allowed wine with meals but where drunkenness was not tolerated.
Believe it? I’m not sure, and I think like with most things, it depends on the person and the situation. But if teaching a teenager how to enjoy wine with food can encourage less black-out nights, it’s definitely worth a second thought.
March 27th, 2008 at 10:16 am
College and drinking seem to go hand-in-hand. I was a Resident Advisor and Hall Director and worked in Housing at two Universities. I could assume that residents would drink, do drugs, etc. no matter what. It was almost as if it were a lottery to find who was breaking policy, and some or many were the unlucky one(s) being addressed (least fun part of the job, addressing policy violations, bah).
Each semester we would have floor meetings to discuss issues and other things with residents and I always made it a point to encourage safety first because people were going to do what they want and if that’s the case they should be looking out for their own well-being and that of others.
I think the real question we should ask is: How do we as a society encourage responsible behavior regardless of age? Drinking, drug use and bad decisions are more a problem of people as a w