Underage Drinking Issues

s any parent/teacher/anyone that teens consider too mature for their intimate secrets will tell you, underage drinking is starting to become a royal pain. Incidents like coming home reeking, of god knows how many gallons of what they fondly refer to 'booze', kicks any parent into immediate action. The first solutions that come to mind are "I'm gonna make sure he never sees a dime of that sky high pocket money again. I'm gonna confiscate his phone, his vehicle, his this, his that, his blah blah blah..." A more lenient parent or a 'Talking it out' believer would sit down with his child and have an acutely awkward and embarrassing talk with his beloved child about the ill effects of alcohol and how it disappoints them that their beloved child has been drinking. Though the latter strategy usually has a painfully short-lived albeit positive effect, the former simply flares up the already hormonally unstable youngster and inspires him to flout even more rules.

However, being a teen myself, I am not about to, outrageously, advise any parents on what to do to prevent alcohol abuse by their children. Rather, I'm going to talk a bit about what I perceive a major reason for this problem. (I'm actually being more effective by making an attempt straight at the root of the problem.)

As a part of our school assignment, I recently read a poem called "The Schoolboy" by William Blake. (Even though I enjoy language, I'm still not abnormal enough to read poetry for pleasure, though I have to admit, it is sometimes quite interesting) The poem, as I perceive, criticizes the whole system of binding a child to school and taking away his youthfulness and merriment, leaving his childhood almost void of any fond memories. This is what got me thinking (which I consider to be a great feat for Blake). As any boring statistical analysis will tell you, teenage drinking, smoking and taking drugs is on the rise. Acquainted with quite a few drinkers and smokers myself, i have come to realize that they find these indulgences a way to escape. A way to escape the rapidly exacerbating situation of too tight a schedule and round the clock tuitions (No, I am not exaggerating, I know innumerable people who couldn't find time enough to say "mosquito cream!" to save their lives). All this sums up to a whole month's load of fun and joy replaced with monotonous tuitions and paperwork worth twenty seven headaches. A human mind, specially one in the stage of development could only handle these many brain cramps. The easiest solution that comes out to be is to party one or two Saturday nights of the month and to let go of everything entirely. It is exceptionally inviting to drink up and not only forget your workload, but also relieve yourself of the infamous teenage dramas and broken hearts. Those who don't have so much of work load indulge just to be a part of the crowd and to mix in.

Now of course everyone who disagrees with me will remind me of the "angelic" and "innocent" teens who control themselves and never drink. A pattern that I have noticed among my fellow mates is that teens who don't drink up have other ways of escaping, like reading, watching movies, playing music and stuff. And of course, there always are the few workaholics who just enjoy desk work and have non-existent social lives. You can always find one in every classroom, usually alone, and always with a pen in his/her hand scribbling away like there was no tomorrow.

Of course there are a few other reasons too, like the need to experiment with everything, problems at home, parental negligence etc. By saying all this, do note that I am not trying to prove all the other theories wrong, but merely putting forward another contributing factor. Being a teenager myself, you have to admit, I do know a bit more about such problems than the grown ups do. So as a quick sum up, I'd just like to say that, if you really do want to solve the problem, then don't just give us talks, and definitely don't confiscate stuff. It honestly pisses everyone off. Stop trying to prop all of us on a production line and cramming up our lives with 20 hours of work a day. Allow our minds to develop in ways other than filling up as much as you can with mathematical theorems and all the "knowledge". No matter how much you may hate me for saying this, most of the teachers don't even make an effort to make a class remotely interesting, and most of the parents don't care to listen to these pleas by simply rating us lazy and ungrateful. Unless you are willing to change the system a bit, don't expect to see a change in all these drinking and smoking problems. Anyway, all this typing is making me hungry and parched (I must have something delicious, which no doubt, my mom would frown upon). I leave the rest to you.