5 Strong Reasons Parents Should Not Drink Alcohol
While most would agree that young people should be kept from alcohol, many fail to apply the same precaution to parents and don’t see any real danger in alcohol. The heavy drinking lifestyle portrayed in Hollywood and pop culture directly mocks the wisdom of abstinence.
Consider these 5 arguments before drinking alcohol!
1. Consuming alcohol is unpredictably addictive.
If you never taste a drop of alcohol, I can personally guarantee your kids will never remember you as an alcoholic. In contrast, if you do try a taste, or 2 tastes or 3, you are exposing yourself to at least SOME possibility of alcohol addiction. Addictions rarely appear overnight — chemical dependency is a gradual process that may take years. Often people deceive themselves into believing they will remain moderate drinkers, and can’t see the gradual steps that are leading them to alcoholism.
2. The intake of alcohol ALWAYS affects your reasoning and decision-making skills.
Your sense of reasoning can make or break your career, your goals, your life pursuits, and more importantly the happiness of your family. Success, in many cases, is up to you. Even small amounts of alcohol can negatively affect judgment. We don’t want a heart surgeon walking into surgery after having a beer or two. For pilots, the FAA regulations say, “No person may act or attempt to act as a crewmember of a civil aircraft … within eight hours after the consumption of any alcoholic beverage.” Some people complain when laws get stricter for blood alcohol levels; they assume they are functioning just fine because their senses aren’t grossly impaired. The truth is — when lives are on the line and good judgment is critical, you should desire to be at your best.
3. Bad decisions (made under the influence of alcohol) have left behind much waste and too many regrets.
History is on the side of alcohol abstinence. You can pour through history books, you won’t find people praising alcohol for the role it played in their lifelong success, or describing the series of good choices they made thanks to alcohol’s influence. The opposite is true. Walk the poorest, most dangerous, and most depressed areas of big cities; you will find bar after bar as people re-inforce their lifestyle of bad choices with more alcohol. Visit a man in prison, and find him full of life regrets and guilt as he constantly remembers the picture of an innocent child who died from his drunk driving. Listen to a single mother tell her story of abandonment after a night of drunken indescretion left her with an unplanned pregnancy. All these people can testify that alcohol has a rarely-told history of destroying lives and creating regrets.
4. Your kids are really watching and being influenced by you and your choices.
Even if you can “handle alcohol” just fine, there’s no guarantee that your observant children have the same capacity. How many parents wish they would have been a better influence on their kids, but their chance is long gone! Their children grew up watching their parents drink socially, and simply took it to the next level when they began drinking. How many alcoholics were offered their first drink by their own parents? How many parents wish they would have modeled a life of abstinence for their children– and perhaps given their children a chance at a different, happier, more productive life.
5. It’s time to take a real stand against the harmful influences of youth.
Many parents are quick to work against the dangers of experimenting with illicit drugs — they will wear the T-shirts and join the marches and show the videos to raise awareness. Alcohol is responsible for more adolescent deaths than ALL the illicit drugs combined. Where is the parental interest in warning young people that alcohol is something to never taste? As the most widely-available drug in the world, abstinence from alcohol is your chance to show that you take the problem seriously. An example is worth a thousand words — so model what you preach about wise choices through your own example and don’t drink!