14-year-0ld alcoholic
Dear Doug:
My 14-year-old daughter has been drinking after school. She’s never been in any trouble, but this has me concerned. I don’t get home from work until the evening. What should I do?
Signed,
Concerned Mother
. . . . .
Dear Codependent,
Other columnists might correctly point out that you need to insure your daughter has no access to alcohol. They might accurately tell us that youth who drink before age 15 are four times more likely to “become” alcoholics than those who begin drinking later in life. However, the use of the word “become” implies there is something other than genes at work. There isn’t.
People do not “become” alcoholics; they trigger the disease. The distinction is essential for proper treatment. If they “become” addicted to alcohol because of life or psychological problems, we should be able to treat the afflicted person therapeutically. Time and again studies using such “talk therapy” have ended in grotesque failure.
Recovering alcoholics almost always inform us they triggered their addiction during the first drinking episode. Actress Drew Barrymore admits she was drinking addictively by age 8. The person who is predisposed to alcoholism–meaning he or she inherited whatever genes it takes–is never too young. Therefore, your daughter may have–in my view, has–already triggered this disease.
Alcoholism isn’t caused by a “cry for help,” or to “escape from her feelings,” as other columnists might respond. It isn’t caused by “something [that] happened to her” or by trying to “hide and numb her feelings.” It occurs because the predisposed person processes the drug alcohol in a way that impels her to drink addictively. This is largely due to the fact that early-stage alcoholism causes varying degrees of egomania, which is magnified as the disease progresses. It appears to observers as a “Supreme Being” complex. If I thought I was God-like when drinking, I wouldn’t want to stop either.
This sense is often described by recovering alcoholics as one of “power,” which looks like “courage” and, to victims, abuse and unnecessarily reckless behaviors. This both constitutes and explains the misbehaviors that all-too-often destroy the lives of those who the recovering alcoholic loves the most.
Other columnists might correctly suggest that the girl would benefit from inpatient rehabilitation or a 12-step program for teenage alcoholics (such as Alateen), which implicitly acknowledges that incipient alcoholism has been triggered. However, we need to call a spade a spade. The problem cannot be treated by making up excuses for alcoholic drinking, which serves to excuse continued drinking. Only by grasping the fundamental idea of alcoholism–that it is caused by a differential biochemistry, which in turn causes behavioral symptoms including misbehaviors rooted in egomania–can the affliction be properly treated and arrested.
(Source for story idea: “Family Matters by Stephanie,” Stephanie Anderson Ladd, M.A., November 2, 2007, The Mountain Enterprise, Frazier Park, CA.)