About a month ago, I was passively watching television until a governmentally funded advertisement caught my eye. In this commercial, a young child goes to the family refrigerator and gets his father a bottle of beer. Then a stereotypical narrator says, “When some parents crave their favorite drug, they’ll even use their own kids to get it. Alcohol is the number one drug problem in this country. Not marijuana, not cocaine. Don’t be fooled. Alcohol is a drug” This commercial alarmed me because the majority of people I know consume alcohol. I decided to investigate alcohol and see how bad this dangerous “drug” really was. My findings were very shocking and they led me to question a central federal policy and the effects of alcohol. While most of us know that alcoholism is a disease, we may not recognize it as a disease that affects the entire family physically, emotionally and spiritually. Sometimes alcoholics feel responsible for the problem drinking itself. They are hurt and upset and respond with resentment, bitterness and fear. They are determined, angry or fearful efforts to do something about it. Sometimes there own behavior is inappropriate. They scream, cry, yell, plead, pray, threaten or refuse to communicate. They make excuses and protect the alcoholic.While alcoholics are so focused on the drinking and behavior of the alcohol, they don’t realize that other members of their own family are affected too. It is easy to see the direct impact of the alcohol on the drinker. We don’t understand how the non-drinking parent can have a problem when they aren’t the one who is drinking. A friend of my was a drinker, but before he realize that it was killing his mom he kept drinking. One day, on the way to work, he stops to buy beer. His mom was worry about him because of his drink problem. The night he bought the beer, he crashed his car killing 5 members of a Mexican family. After the...
