The A-Files, Alcohol A-Z for Alcohol Awareness Month: Underage Drinking

(online video and article)

Twenty-six episodes of 'The A-Files' air throughout Alcohol Awareness Month on YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, Alcohologist.com and AddictedMinds.com, among other web and social media sites. Episode U looks at underage drinking. Impaired driving crashes are the leading cause of alcohol-related deaths among teens, but it is not the only underage drinking concern. Nearly two-thirds of deaths due to underage drinking are not related to intoxicated driving, according to data analysis MADD compiled. Thirty percent of alcohol-related deaths in people age 15 to 20 are from homicides.

Fourteen percent are from suicides. Nine percent are from alcohol overdose. Other causes, such as drowning and household accidents, comprise the remaining 15 percent.
The group's blog also notes, “Compared with non-drinking classmates, teens who drink are more likely get pregnant, fail in school, become sexually assaulted or take their own lives.” They also point to teen alcohol use as an indicator for alcohol use disorders later in life. The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse andAlcoholism reports that teens who start drinking before age 15 are four times more likely to develop an alcohol addiction.

The European model of letting teens experiment with drinking at home – with meals or socially – doesn’t stand up to its alleged benefits of educating them about responsible use. Research from Australia’s National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre (NDARC) studied 2000 families over four years and proved it doesn't work. Ian Hickie from the University of Sydney’s says "In fact, it's the opposite, you've probably increased the chance that they'll drink irresponsibly in another place. It normalizes the behavior of drinking a toxin and known carcinogen, in addition to injuring a developing brain.

The health consequence is the most severe and overlooked part of the equation. According to the Federal Trade Commission, teens don't just drink; they drink excessively. More than one in eight sophomores and one in four seniors report binge drinking. A report from the Surgeon General notes that since the brain continues to develop into a person's mid- 20's, frequent binge drinking can have long-lasting effects on intellectual abilities. The brain’s frontal lobes are among the final pieces of the brain to fully develop in our 20's. They are important for planning, forming ideas, making decisions, and using self-control. When alcohol damage the frontal lobes of the brain, it is permanent. It's like luggage, you're stuck with it forever.

The entire 26 episode HD series is available on disc, along with fact sheets, for helping professions. See the preorder special at tr.im/AFiles


Visit alcohologist.com for a replay of CBS Sports' Power Up Your Health featuring Scott Stevens.  Another interview is on Alcohol Awareness.  Syndicated radio program Savvy Central Radio did this interview, too. Lucy Pireel's "All That's Written" included a feature called "When alcohol doesn't work for you anymore."  Details on the third literary award for Every Silver Lining Has a Cloud and the first for Adding Fire to the Fuel also can be found on www.alcohologist.com. Download the FREE Alcohology app in the Google PlayStore today. Stevens also is the public relations officer with AddictedMinds.com 

Immediate and long-term stroke risk connected to alcohol use

Stroke disables more people in the United States than breast cancer and is a leading cause of long-term disability. Evidence-based studies prove a connection between alcohol use, stroke onset and slower recovery from a stroke. (View the whole article and share the YouTube video)

Ninety percent of strokes are ischemic, where a blood clot halts the flow of blood to the brain. The University of California San Francisco notes the one in five strokes may be alcohol-related. That's 160,000 alcohol-related strokes every year, and 26,000 alcohol-related stroke deaths annually. That toll is more than two times the number of people killed each year in alcohol-involved traffic crashes.

Alcohol use is a risk factor for stroke because booze increases the progression of atherosclerosis, which is doctorspeak for a hardening of the arteries. The risk sharpens for those who have one binge weekly, or at least one hangover a year. That's from the UCSF study.

A separate study in the journal Stroke in Jan. 2015 found that people who average more than two drinks a day have a 34 percent higher risk of stroke compared to those whose daily average amounts to less than half a drink. By age 75, high blood pressure and diabetes are the leading stroke risk factors, but for men and women younger than 75, how they use alcohol increases stroke risk just as much as those other two conditions. In fact, Midlife heavy drinkers were likely to have a stroke five years earlier in life, regardless of genetic and lifestyle factors. Not coincidentally, either: Earlier Sobriety :60+ episodes point out prediabetes and type 2 diabetes (see episode 6) and high blood pressure (see episode) also are caused by alcohol use.

The stroke risk in those two studies, of course, is long term, but there's immediate danger as well. According to a 2010 Canadian study, one drink instantly doubles stroke risk. Two hours following that drink, the stroke risk remains 1.6 times higher than someone who isn't drinking. The stroke danger alone is reason enough to consider that sobriety is a better thing to have than to lack.

Visit alcohologist.com for a replay of CBS Sports' Power Up Your Health featuring Scott Stevens.  Host Ed Forteau led a discussion on risky myths of about "healthy" drinking.  Lucy Pireel's "All That's Written" included a feature on Every Silver Lining Has a Cloud called "When alcohol doesn't work for you anymore."  Details on the third literary award for Every Silver Lining Has a Cloud also can be found on www.alcohologist.com, plus the NEW book, Adding Fire to the Fuel, is now available. Download the FREE Alcohology app in the Google PlayStore today.

Behind enemy (head)lines: The real point of drug-hazards study is NOT pot safety

The argument over which is safer misses the point.

scottchan, FreeDigitalPhotos, used with permission

An accurate headline for the widely circulated Feb. 23 Scientific Reports study showing comparative risks of alcohol, tobacco, cannabis and other illicit drugs would read 'Yes, alcohol really is that dangerous.' However, the material of the study has instead become cannon fodder for those who wish to see marijuana legalized. Which wasn't the point of the effort.

The other drugs involved in the study were heroin, cocaine, tobacco, ecstasy, and methamphetamine. Only the danger of the substance was used to determine their findings. Researchers did not take any other factors into account. “Much of the harm from drug use is not inherently related to consumption, but is heavily influenced by the environmental conditions of drug use,” the researchers stated in their study.

The narrative of the study aims to give a relative probability of dying from ANY of the drugs. According to the book, Every Silver Lining Has a Cloud, quantitatively, alcohol is the third leading cause of preventable death and illness in the United States, claiming at least 89,000 deaths a year, and by the author's estimate, the number is significantly underexaggerated. Qualitatively, it causes more than 60 diseases aside from the disease of alcoholism. It creates complications for more than 200 different medical conditions from osteoarthritis to the common cold.

The new study does not reveal new information about how lethal the toxin and known carcinogen, alcohol, can be to otherwise healthy human tissue. Alcohol – and its metabolite, acetaldehyde (30 times more volatile than alcohol) – is the most dangerous drug, illicit or otherwise. The study merely announces the fact that the dangers of alcohol are exponentially higher than the dangers of marijuana, not that marijuana is safe, as pro-cannabis forces would claim.

A rattlesnake's venom is less toxic than an Inland Taipan's. So, which would you like to bite you today? It may be a good thing that meth users aren't as well financed, otherwise we would see a headline from the tweakers that 'Meth is safer than alcohol' as a conclusion to the study.

When the dialogue has digressed to the point of comparing one drug's safety to another, the conversation is akin to choosing on which side of the Titanic to place a deck chair. Where the research falls short of being a true call to expand legalization of marijuana, it should instead serve as a warning that the status-quo of alcohol policy may need to be addressed.

Pro-cannabis and pro-alcohol forces both miss the forest by bumping into trees like this study...  another cliche, but sometimes the cliches get it right. When you take the emotion out of the dialogue and stick to evidence-based -- not observational -- studies, the overwhelming preoponderance of research, including the new study, shows neither drug extends life or improves health.

(see full article)

Visit alcohologist.com for a replay of CBS Sports' Power Up Your Health featuring Scott Stevens.  Host Ed Forteau led a discussion on the health risks and myths of health benefits of drinking.  Lucy Pireel's "All That's Written" included a feature on Every Silver Lining Has a Cloud called "When alcohol doesn't work for you anymore."  Details on the third literary award for Every Silver Lining Has a Cloud also can be found on www.alcohologist.com, plus an interview with Christoph Fisher Books.  Mr. Fisher is an acclaimed international author from the UK, among his works is the Alzheimer's book "Time to Let Go."  Download the FREE Alcohology app in the Google PlayStore today.