Once alcohol takes control over you, it's hard to break free
Alcohol is now known to be equally dangerous to cocaine and other dangerous drugs that affect the health of the abusers but the fight against it is much relaxed or slow.
A group of doctors in America believes that before the government loses or wins the campaign against cigarettes, cocaine and other dangerous drugs without considering alcohol much it would have claimed millions of lives.
During my youth, I witnessed the effect of alcohol on some of my teachers during lessons in the classrooms. When it’s eating time, we had nothing to talk about than the stinking or stench of alcohol we smelled on a particular teacher.
I could also remember my mother on many occasions counseling an alcoholic living in our neighborhood. When my mother didn’t see him any longer passing in front of our house to buy the strong locally prepared drink, she thought he has got the message.
Unknowing the man changed his route to avoid my mother seeing him. Eventually, the man succumbed to illness and died. The postmortem revealed that he died from excessive drinking.
In America, medical statistics has it that nearly 14 million over 18 are alcoholics. Another 1.3 million suffer alcohol dependencies. Overall, almost 8% of adults have problems with alcohol, costing the economy an estimated $100 billion a year in health care costs and loss of productivity. Fatal road accidents worldwide much are also related to alcohol.
Indy Mehigan, 17, a transformed alcoholic, once terrorized the streets of Lowestoft, Suffolk in Britain. According to her “I was just 12 when I first swigged vodka with my giggling mates in the school toilets. A few years later, I had turned into a violent, drunken youth who taught of nothing but smashing someone’s face."
"Then a friend told me about Positive Futures, a youth project in Lowestoft that helps teenagers with addiction and other problems. With their help, I left the gang and started a college course, and I’m now retaking my GCSEs.
I’m also doing a course that I can mentor other kids. These days when I see gangs of youths, I’m the one who crosses the street. But I also feel sorry because they are wrecking their lives.” She said. (Culled from Daily Mirror, Saturday, February 23, 2008, edition)
This is the confession of a young girl who has been into the abyss of alcohol drinking but now out of it and piously and consciously stepping out to help others. As a nation, people have to understand the crisis in alcohol abuse for a number of reasons.
Drinkers may find it legal, pleasurable and even beneficial but at the end of it all when hooked let’s us view its disastrous effect on humans and on the roads. Besides the death alcohol has caused; it has also attributed to many broken homes, painful divorce separation and juvenile crime.
Alcohol is not just a closet problem but a full-blown health crisis that is crippling our nation as well as families. Kick it early or don’t go for it at all.