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The Talk……The Other Talk
By Dr. Ken Briggs
All right,
now that I have you alone in the car on our way to
Aw, come
on, dad. You already told me where
babies come from and to just “keep it in my pants”.
No, not that talk. You know, the other talk.
The booze talk.
The underage drinking talk.
Whatever
for? Dad, you are such a dork. I’m just in 8th grade. I don’t drink.
Yeah, I
may be a dork, but I’m not a dumb dork.
I know that you’re going to face some pretty amazing pressure to
drink. You’re going to hear that
everyone is doing it…which isn’t true at all…and you’re going to continue to be
bombarded with media messages to drink that sell the idea that’s how people
really have fun.
Well dad,
duh. What’s the big deal? You and mom drink!
Right. We’re adults.
We can legally drink and we use it in moderation, one or two drinks
max. But we never binge drink to get
drunk. Also, we know what it can do to
us. That’s what I want to talk to you
about.
Whatever! What are you so worried about?
My
biggest worry is that when you try drinking you’ll like it. And if you like it, then you’re going to try
it again and then maybe a little more and then…
Yeah, dad. So?
All right,
here’s the deal about alcohol. It’s a
drug! It’s a psychoactive drug. It causes changes in brain chemistry and
alters consciousness. To be exact, it’s
a sedative hypnotic drug that can make you relaxed in low doses but that if you
drink too much, it can kill you.
But that
probably won’t happen, dad, because you’ll throw up or pass out before you
drink enough to kill you.
Ah,
good…you’re right. And that’s another
point. You see alcohol has two basic
actions on the cells in your body. It
irritates and it sedates. It’s a very
unstable solution and can even be burned.
Burned? Are you for real?
Yeah, you
could take a shot of an 80 proof beverage, which is only about 40% alcohol, put
it on a plate and put a match to it. It
will light and create a flame.
But most
of the kids I know who drink, only drink
beer. You couldn’t light beer. Get it?
Light beer?
Funny. You’re right about beer, but it has just as
much alcohol in it as a 5 ounce glass of wine, a wine cooler, or a 1.5 ounce
shot of 80 proof distilled liquor. But,
back to the irritation and sedation thing and your point about throwing up or
passing out: the reason your body barfs up alcohol if you drink too much is
that it irritates the cells in your esophagus, stomach and small intestines.
And that’s a good thing because the body treats it like a toxin or poison and
tries to get rid of it before more can be absorbed.
But you
don’t throw up every time you drink.
Right. Your body has another defense. Your
liver! It treats it like a toxin too and
steps up enzymes to metabolize the alcohol and excrete it through the
kidneys. You know…you
pee it out.
How does
someone pass out then?
Good
question. Remember I said alcohol has
two basic actions. Well the other action
is sedation and here’s how it works and another reason why I think teenagers
should not drink. As alcohol is absorbed
in the blood stream and deposited in the cells of the brain it sedates or
depresses nerve cells in the brain.
I don’t
want a science lesson now. We’re in a
car.
Hang in
there. By the way, being in a car and
drinking is another reason I don’t want you drinking as a teenager. Anyway, the first part of the brain to be
affected by the depressant effects of the alcohol is the cerebral cortex that
controls thinking and rational thought.
Now, normally your intellect…your ability to think…keeps your emotions
located in another part of your brain “in check” so that you don’t do stupid,
emotional things.
Kids my
age are always doing stupid emotional things.
Does that mean they have been drinking?
No way.
Again you’re right and you just hit on a big reason why
teenagers shouldn’t drink. Their brains are still developing and making stupid
decisions and acting like they’re “wacked out” is
part of the normal brain development of a teenage brain. They are learning how to become adults.
Who wants
to be an adult?
Doesn’t matter. Your brain is programmed to
develop so that the intellect becomes more refined and more capable of keeping
your emotions in check. It’s what
maturity is all about.
Dad, we
already had that maturity talk.
That’s
not what I mean. Can you imagine the
result on the brain when the intellect is sort of put to sleep by the
depressant effects of alcohol and the emotions are allowed to come out?
Yeah,
major fun!
Maybe. And that’s why people like to drink. The alcohol makes
the brain lose its ability to control emotions and when the emotions
come out they are a lot of times fun and all about
being silly and crazy. No question
alcohol can take away inhibitions and make people feel good. But the emotions are drug affected and kind
of put the brain in what I like to call moral or physical jeopardy.
Oh now
we’re going to play jeopardy?
No. it means that
because the cerebral cortex is no longer able to control the emotions, anything can happen.
What do
you mean, dad? I thought you were going
to talk about passing out.
I’m
getting there. So let’s say you have two beers.
The alcohol in the beer depresses some of the cells in your cerebral
cortex, which, under normal circumstances, is the
part of the brain that causes you to think well. You now have a buzz and your emotions begin
to come out and they aren’t being checked as well as they should by your cerebral cortex.
So without being able to think clearly, you decide to have another beer
and pretty soon the intellect is out of the picture and your emotions take
over. This is the moral and physical
jeopardy thing I was talking about. It
is during this time that horrible things can happen to people, anyone really,
even adults, but especially teenagers because of lack of experience and lack of
complete brain development.
What kind
of horrible things?
Stupid,
horrible things like fights, injuries ,car wrecks,
having unsafe sex, rapes, even murder.
That’s
the extreme dad. That’s not going to
happen.
It is the
extreme, it does happen and it could happen to you. Stuff like that happens in Ellensburg and Cle
Elum every day.
More likely you will probably say or do something stupid that gets you
in trouble with mom or me, with your friends, the cops, or someone who doesn’t
appreciate what you did under the influence.
Drinking may seem fun at the time but truly, I am so worried about what
it can do to you. Bio-chemically, you
are in moral and physical jeopardy and it worries me to death that something
bad could happen to you if you start drinking as a teenager.
Ah dad,
nothing’s going to happen to me.
I don’t
want you to take that chance. Now back
to working your way to passing out. If
you kept drinking, the next part of the brain to be affected is the part that
controls your ability to move and talk and see clearly. In other words you would become a major klutz
who begins to slur your words. Now
because the intellect is depressed, who knows what you might try to do. Certainly, driving is out of the question yet
some people still try to do it and they wind up killing themselves and even
worse, innocent people who were just trying to get somewhere. It makes me sick to my stomach.
Me, too, dad. I wouldn’t want some drunk
killing you or mom or my bother or sister.
I couldn’t take that.
Exactly. And yet some people still don’t get it or the
alcohol doesn’t let them get it. Now let’s say you continue to drink and you
haven’t wound up hurting yourself or someone else. The alcohol continues to be absorbed in the
neurons of the brain and can depress some of your semi-voluntary functions of
your body such as your own ability to take a deep breath, blink your eyes, and
so forth. It is here, that normally a
person will pass out if they haven’t already vomited the booze out of their
digestive tract. Passing out prevents you
from drinking anymore alcohol and normally prevents anymore alcohol from being
absorbed into the “deeper” parts of your brain that control vital functions
such as breathing, heart rate, and digestion.
It is at this stage where all too often someone…usually teenagers and
college students…gulp large quantities of alcohol and wind up dead from alcohol
overdose.
Dude,
what should I do if I ever found someone passed out?
Great question. The first thing is to try to
wake them up. If you can’t wake them up,
then you need to call 911 and monitor their breathing and pulse. Do CPR if necessary until the paramedics can
get there. They could have taken another
drug, even an over-the-counter drug that
interacts with the alcohol making this type of thing a lot more common. Usually, you can wake them up a bit and they
most likely will get upset with you.
That’s okay. Just make sure they
are lying on their side in case they vomit.
Choking on their vomit could kill them or cause a
type of pneumonia that is very hard to treat.
Dad, this
has been a good talk. Do you have any
other cool stories?
No
stories. But there is just one more
thing that I want to mention. As you
know there are some members of my family and your mom’s family that have had
some problems with alcohol in their lives--maybe even alcoholism. You need to know that you may be genetically
predisposed to having those same problems especially if you drink as a teenager
before your brain is fully developed. It
can cause some serious changes in your brain chemistry that may make you four
times more vulnerable to becoming an alcoholic at an earlier age.
That
would suck. Dad, did you ever drink when
you were a teenager?
I did. And I don’t want you to make the same
mistakes I did. We know a lot more about
brain research and other affects of alcohol on young people. If someone had told me what we talked about
today when I was younger, I would have been a lot better off!
Holy cow!
Can you believe we’re already in
Ken
Briggs is the Director of
Health Education at
The Kittitas County Community Network/Drug Free
Communities Coalition and the Community Network agency, through a federal Drug
Free Communities grant, are implementing the “Start Talking Before
They Start Drinking” campaign as a community service for parents.
