Agreement on Binge Drinking Spurs More Drunkenness Among Youth

You might say it’s an intuitive conclusion – young people drinking in a group tend to drink more heavily than they would if they were alone. Now what every parent of an alcohol-abusing child has known all along has been proven by a study at Durham University in England.

The author of the study noted the increase in binge drinking, public drunkenness and fighting in the streets among young people in the area and found that the social aspect of drinking influenced how much was drunk. Binge drinkers were those who drank enough in a sitting to get drunk or had ten or more drinks on one day without getting drunk.

Among five hundred young people surveyed, nearly one-fifth could be classified as binge drinkers. Those who were binge drinkers identified most of their friends as binge drinkers, and few who were not binge drinkers said that their friends binge drank. Which shows that binge drinkers tend to associate with other binge drinkers.

“Parents have always known that the people their children associate with can have a profound influence on their behavior and substance abuse habits,” said Derry Hallmark, Director of Admissions and a Certified Chemical Dependency Counselor at Narconon Arrowhead. Narconon is one of the country’s leading drug and alcohol rehabilitation centers, located in Canadian, Oklahoma. “Unfortunately, just getting a child away from binge drinking associates will not be enough to eliminate a drinking problem if the young person has become addicted. That’s when the family needs an effective rehabilitation service that gets down to the source of the problems that caused the young person to start drinking.”

One of the ways parents can detect substance abuse in their child is if he or she begins to replace their non-substance abusing friends with new ones that do abuse drugs or alcohol. The agreement on substance abuse within this group is almost certain to encourage substance abuse among all new members.

“One of the essential parts of overcoming addiction is restoring a person’s own individual integrity, and helping them find ways to make their own decisions for their own good survival, uninfluenced by group agreements,” added Mr. Hallmark. “One of the things that makes the Narconon program so successful is the Life Skills portion of the program in which people learn to break these damaging habits of the past.”

To find immediate help for someone who is having a problem with any kind of drug or alcohol, contact Narconon’s free addiction consultation and referral helpline at 1-800-468-6933 or visit their website at http://www.stopaddiction.com/. The Narconon program was founded in 1966 by William Benitez in Arizona State prison, and is based on the humanitarian works of L. Ron Hubbard. In more than 120 centers around the world, Narconon programs restore drug and alcohol abusers and addicts to a clean and sober lifestyle.