Picture Joe. He’s an average American High School student. And he’s just downed his sixth shot of bourbon whiskey on a chilly Saturday night in the middle of the uneventful month of November. As his friends cheer him on, he struggles with the hesitation to try weed for the very first time. He just can’t bring himself to smoke the bud.
Joe’s attitude is common among many High Schoolers (and possibly by most people in society as a whole): he views marijuana in a very harsh way while regarding alcohol in a very light manner. When asked, Juniors Yehuda Mirwis, Dovid Rozehzadeh and Yoni Mann expressed a very popular truth: they would hesitate much more when it came to inhaling weed than they would when it comes to alcohol consumption.
This hesitant behavior when it comes to weed is more than appropriate. But why don’t High School students have an equal fear of alcohol? In point of fact, the dangers of alcohol are far greater, far more life-threatening.
Firstly, it’s rare that someone will become addicted to marijuana. Yet a staggering 15% of society is already addicted to alcohol.
I recently interviewed a former alcohol abuser who was addicted for 25 years (she preferred to remain anonymous, so I will not reveal her name in this article). She explained that the addiction “creeps up slowly” on the addict. In her case, the drinking was initially just a way to make it easier to fall asleep; it then escalated to drinking earlier in the evenings.
Thinking back over the progressive stages in which her addiction began to rise, she recalled that there was “no one moment to this sly process.”
Eventually she got hooked by the substance and didn’t even realize it until the addiction was years old. When I asked her why she didn’t stop drinking sooner, the response was terrifying.
She identified alcohol addiction as a disease, stating that the “mind does not work, even when sober” and that there is “no logical course of action. When you wake up [hungover], you say that you’ll never do it again, and then at 5 o'clock [pm], you’re in the liquor store.”
She added that her behavior “ruined relationships and set a bad example for my children.”
Alcohol consumption can also cause violent behaviour. Alcohol penetrates the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain which controls how one behaves. This reduced functioning of the brain while under the influence causes 40% of violent crimes in the world.
Furthermore, alcohol abuse can also cause cancer. The constant consumption of alcohol can lead to fibrosis, which is the thickening and scarring of one's connective tissue within their liver to the point of decay. This syndrome may then lead to cancer.
In 2017 a group of the nations’ top cancer doctors begged the public to bring its alcohol consumption to a halt, because of alcohol’s correlation with cancer (especially breast cancer).
As I related this information to my interviewee, she looked at me with terror and guilt in her eyes. When I asked why she looked at me this way, she responded with foul language and then apologized. She explained that she didn’t know these facts and, for the first time, realized that she, a former breast cancer patient, may have brought that illness upon herself.
At that moment, I thought to myself: “How can someone be addicted to alcohol for 25 years and not even know the ramifications?!” This moment proved to me the importance of this article. I must inform the young people around me before they make the same mistakes as earlier generations.
Finally, if you are not convinced yet of alcohol’s dangerous properties, let’s discuss death.
Throughout the entire world, alcohol is the leading risk factor for death for people between the ages of 15 and 49. This means that the most common cause of death is alcohol for people our age and beyond. Yet we play around with it like its a toy.
Imagine if a heart attack was tangible. Now imagine going out and toying with it to experience how it feels. Don’t let your imagination go too far; realize that this is the reality, as dumb as it may sound.
Alcohol accounts for 12.2% of all male deaths. As the medical journal The Lancet put it, “there is no safe level of alcohol consumption.”
To put this into perspective, in 2014 alone, 30,722 deaths were attributed to alcohol. The Center For Disease Control Prevention added that this number is only accurate for deaths directly from alcohol; however, deaths that are indirectly caused by alcohol (such as a car accidents while intoxicated) total to around 90 thousand people per year.
As your friend, teammate, classmate or just the guy you see in the hall, I beg you to use this information wisely. It was my job to inform you, and now it is your job to be careful. Fear the risks of addiction, behavior, illness and death, for they are not to be taken lightly.