Alcohol Is A Drug, A Disease

Jennifer Bulbrook

My name is Jennifer Bulbrook, a Child and Youth Worker who has had the honor and privilege to work with youth in our community. When asking children of this generation to list names of drugs, very rarely will they name alcohol. I have ran drug programs and have came to the realization that many children and adolescents do not consider alcohol a drugand why because it is legal, you can but it at a local beer or liquor store.

Alcohol can take over a person's life, it can have a great impact on the individuals life as well as the lives of the loved ones around them. If you're close to a friend, parent, brother, or sister who has a drug problem, it will affect you in ways you may not easily realize, and then you can get the same symptoms and problems, even if you don't do drugs or drink.

Anyone can become addicted to alcohol, it does not matter how mature, responsible you are, your financial status, or what you do for a living. In order to help with one's addiction, one must identify the underlying issues. People drink, because, to start, it makes them feel good or erases feelings, but that's only the beginning. All drugs change the chemicals we have naturally in our brains and when the brain starts changing, adding to, subtracting from its own chemicals, that's a problem because those chemicals control our feelings and actions. Yes, alcohol may help one relax for awhile but the way the chemicals we all have in our brains work, you'll need more to get the same feelings of relaxation over time, then still more and the problems won't disappear, they'll get worse because you're avoiding them!

I am not only speaking as a professional but as someone who has personally experienced alcohols deadly effects. I am 25 years old with two small children and for the past seven years I have been struggling with my addiction to alcohol. Alcohol had taken over six years of my life. At first I would only have to consume a couple of drinks to take my pain away but soon I was drinking a 26er, sometimes more everyday, turning to the bottle when ever things were not going well, when I would have feelings of stress, anger, or depression. During the week, I was what you call a "closet drinker" where I would wait for everyone in my household to go to bed then I would crack open the bottle. On the weekend I would go out to the bar where I would get so polluted with the poison of alcohol that I would black out, I would wake up in strange places with strange people surrounding me. Alcohol would take away my feelings of depression but most of the times those feelings would resurface and hit me ten times harder and I became abusive (physically and emotionally) to those around me. Bigger yet, my main priority beca...