You would have to live in a cave not to have heard about the dangers of alcohol for adults and teenagers. It isn't the best kept secret. Most of the dangers exist in abuse rather than moderate usage, but at this time in the United States for people under the age of twenty-one in the United States it is against the law to drink or buy alcohol if you are not twenty-one years old.

By the time teenagers reach high school, and sometimes even in middle school, they begin to break away from the parental influence and begin to take risks to experiment with the forbidden. Because it's found in in most homes, alcohol is the first choice of drugs among teens. The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University indicates that almost 80% of all high school students have used alcohol socially at least once. The Duke University site references a 2002 Monitory the Future Survey as stating that "30% of twelfth graders reported drinking five or more drinks in a row in the two weeks before being surveyed (Johnston etal, 2003)." These are very high percentages, which might come to a surprise to adults reading this page, but in fact doesn't shock most teenagers.  It obviously isn't something we aren't familiar with and it's obviously something we are all faced with.

Throughout history alcohol has been used at meals, in religious ceremonies, and for medical purposes. Although adults who use it in moderation don't necessarily experience problems, it's critical that we look at it as a drug which can be addicting. It is a psychoactive substance which can change our consciousness and change our perceptions and behavior. This means what we wouldn't normally do might be something we would do under the influence or something we would normally do we would fail to do. Alcohol is a depressant or sedative that slows the activities of the brain and spinal cord. There are short and long term affects of alcohol that must be considered before drinking.

Even adults must understand why they drink so that it doesn't become an addiction with them. If used for the wrong reasons, it can become a crutch and when this occurs, it often becomes an addiction. Ice Today estimates that there are 100,000,000 drinkers and 10,000,000 chronic abusers in the United States today. According to USDA Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2005, in 2002 55% of Americans were drinkers which was fewer than 50 to 100 years ago.

 That's enough to indicate that there is a definite addicting characteristic of alcohol to make sure if you are going to drink, you are going to be very careful why and when you do.

Most of our parents have warned us about how dangerous alcohol is, but we are confused when we see our parents drinking. Most adults do drink and so it's difficult to "do what they say and not what they do." It's easy to call our parents hypocrites, but are they?

• First, we need to accept that in the United States the legal drinking age is twenty-one (21), so to drink before that time is actually breaking the law. If they were to provide us with alcohol, they would be breaking the law.
• Secondly, the reason most teenagers want to drink is to "party and get wasted." For the most part, parents don't have this goal in mind.
• Thirdly, do teenagers have the maturity to know when we have had enough and to stop before we would compromise our values or safe well-being? Unfortunately, there are too many adults who drink and drive, endangering themselves and others. We will discuss this as well since it applies to both adults and teenagers.

So while adult drinking is condoned by most adults, teenage drinking remains outside the law and generally not considered acceptable.

Since alcohol will affect the central nervous system, we can easily perceive that our reactions to circumstances will not be the same as before the alcohol affected our system. hen this occurs, there is an change in what a person does, how he/she reactions to different stimuli. Since it affects vision, hearing and even our emotions, our response to certain circumstances is greatly impaired.

Alcohol is a depressant, which means it slows the function of the central nervous system. Alcohol actually blocks messages trying to get to the brain. This alters a person's perceptions, emotions, movement, vision, and hearing.