Every year in the U.S., roughly 5,000 people under the age of 21 die from an alcohol-related incident including car crashes, homicides, suicides, alcohol poisoning and other related injuries.
Alcohol is a substance that impairs judgement when consumed and can lead to drinking and driving, unintended sexual activity, violence or other dangerous behaviors.
Men are consistently more likely than women to drink in excess and are 2 times more likely to be involved in a fatal alcohol-related car accident. Offer to be the designated driver for your parents and loved ones to ensure that everybody makes it home safe.
70% of 18-year-olds admit to drinking an alcoholic beverage at least once, while 80% of college-aged students report consuming alcohol.
Binge drinking is when a large amount of alcohol is consumed in a short period of time. For men, this is 5 or more drinks within 2 hours, and for women, 4 or more.
18 to 34-year-olds binge drink the most. Binging can lead to unplanned pregnancy, car accidents, spread of sexually transmitted disease, violence or alcohol dependence.
2/3 of the high school-age students who drink do so to the point of intoxication.
Approximately 17% of men and 8% of women will be dependent on alcohol in their lifetime.
There are roughly 80,000 deaths that are related to alcohol abuse every year, making it the 3rd highest cause of death in the U.S.
Alcohol abuse can lead to long-term health issues like cardiovascular disease, cancer of the throat, liver, or mouth, anxiety and depression, dementia, liver disease and much more.
Detoxification (detox): This may be needed immediately after discontinuing alcohol use and can be a medical emergency, as detox can result in withdrawal seizures, hallucinations, delirium tremens (DT), and in some cases may result in death.
Rehabilitation: This involves counseling and medications to give the recovering alcoholic the skills needed for maintaining sobriety. This step in treatment can be done inpatient or outpatient. Both are equally effective.
Maintenance of sobriety: This step's success requires an alcoholic to be self-driven. The key to maintenance is support, which often includes regular Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meetings and getting a sponsor.
Alcoholism often reduces a person's life expectancy by around ten years.The most common cause of death in alcoholics is from cardiovascular complications.
There is a high rate of suicide in chronic alcoholics, which increases the longer a person drinks. Approximately 3–15 percent of alcoholics commit suicide, and research has found that over 50 percent of all suicides are associated with alcohol or drug dependence. This is believed to be due to alcohol causing physiological distortion of brain chemistry, as well as social isolation. Suicide is also very common in adolescent alcohol abusers, with 25 percent of suicides in adolescents being related to alcohol abuse.