Last August over 100 college presidents signed a letter asking legislators across the U.S. to lower the drinking age from 21 to 18 because they believe it’s impossible to stop young people from drinking. Called “The Amethyst Initiative” the coalition  includes college presidents from Johns Hopkins, the University of Maryland, Washington and Lee, Colgate, Syracuse, Sweet Briar, Duke, Tufts, Dartmouth, and other schools. The group insists with a higher legal drinking age, binge drinking on college campuses has gotten progressively worse.  

Fast-forward 11 months to the July 12 editorial in The Washington Post that maintained a lower drinking age won’t stop binge drinking. As a recent study published in the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry noted, the higher drinking age has led to a decrease in binge drinking nationwide, with the exception of college campuses.

Lowering the drinking age won’t make binge drinking disappear, on college campuses or otherwise, a fact The Amethyst Initiative appears to ignore. They also disregard that binge drinking typically results in acute intoxication which can be detrimental to a person’s health in a number of ways:  

• Brain function is impaired, resulting in poor judgment, reduced reaction time, loss of balance and motor skills, or slurred speech.
• Blood vessels dilute causing a feeling of warmth but resulting in rapid loss of body heat.
• Alcohol intoxication increases the risk of certain cancers, stroke, and liver disease (such as cirrhosis) when excessive amounts of alcohol are consumed over an extended period of time.
• Alcohol consumption also poses risks to pregnant women and their developing fetus.
• Alcohol consumption increases the risk of motor-vehicle traffic crashes, violence, and other injuries.
• Binge drinking can also result in death.

As illustrated by the Pierson family in my novel, Shades of Darkness, Shades of Grace, binge drinking as an adolescent can lead to deeper alcohol problems as an adult. So instead of complaining about the higher drinking age, college administrators might do well to put more thought and effort into enforcing it.

April is Alcohol Awareness month and the battle of alcoholism and its effects on one family’s history are integral to the story being told in my novel, Shades of Darkness, Shades of Grace. The Pierson family portrayed in the book has suffered the blight of alcoholism for at least four generations, with two of the children, Kay and Paul, forced to confront their dependency. The point of this subplot is to not only illustrate the character’s flaws, but to acknowledge that the problem of chemical dependency is a far-reaching and can affect anyone. But Kay and Paul’s struggles are meant to give the reader hope; hope that it is possible for addicts to reclaim their lives, finding grace or salvation in sobriety.

When Kay suspects Paul’s drinking has reached levels that point to dependency and abuse, this is not the first time those concerns have been expressed by the Pierson family. After his first wife’s death, Kay recognizes Paul’s attempts to salve his pain through alcohol. Never actually confronting him, the Pierson family believes Paul has found redemption in Pamela, and they push their fears aside. The Pierson family makes the mistake that many families confronted with chemical dependency do - they rationalize that the problem was only temporary and has been dealt with satisfactorily. But as Kay and her Mother realize Paul does have a problem, Kay recounts the Pierson family history and its path of devastation.

For Kay and her brothers, it begins with underage drinking as it does for many individuals. Underage drinking has reached epidemic status in the United States, with an estimated 10.8 million youth engaging in some level of alcohol consumption. These huge numbers of young Americans engaging in both illegal and risky behavior is behind the Surgeon General’s March 2007 report, the Surgeon General’s Call to Action to Prevent and Reduce Underage Drinking. While Jack manages to escape the ravages of alcoholism, Kay and Paul’s battles with chemical dependency as adults are not at all unusual. According to the Surgeon General’s report, 40% of adults who began drinking before age 15 experience chemical dependency problems. With almost half of adults who begin drinking as teens suffering chemical dependency related difficulties later in life, Kay and Paul are far more typical than many may realize.

The relapse that Paul suffers after three months sobriety through attending Alcoholics Anonymous is also quite common. According to a study published by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) in 1989, nearly 90% of recovering addicts are likely to relapse at least once during the first four years of their sobriety. What triggers Paul’s fall - an argument with Kay regarding his ex-wife - is not an unusual response. Two other triggers leading to high risk behavior in recovering addicts include social pressure and interpersonal temptation.

It’s this episode that pushes Kay and her family to confront Paul with the knowledge that his chemical dependency is a problem they believe A.A. alone cannot solve. Kay gives Paul insights into the severity of her own battles with alcoholism by explaining her spouse, Tim, made it clear she had a choice to make. She could choose either alcohol or her marriage, but in the latter choice Tim demanded sobriety. Kay exhorts Paul to take a chance on sobriety, the only course of action that will allow him to discover who he really is as a person, reclaim his life, and find salvation from the ravages of chemical dependency.

Is recovery easy? Hell no. No one knows better than a recovering addict that real life is littered with temptation and good intentions gone awry. So an addict may relapse more than once, may hit bottom more than once, and may even lose their life to an addiction. When a fellow addict told me this about my alcoholic brother, I thought it was the cruelest thing I’d ever heard. When my brother died from his addiction, I suddenly understood.

As tough as getting and staying clean and sober is, no one knows better than a recovering addict that the saving grace offered by sobriety, of reclaiming a broken life and turning it into to something meaningful is well worth the sacrifice to achieve it. If you or someone you love is struggling with an addiction to alcohol, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services offers excellent resources as does the Resources page on my site.

It’s the Holiday Season - presents, parties, and an uptick in drunken driving arrests. For law-enforcement officials and impaired drivers, December is National Drunk and Drugged Prevention Driving Month. In many states December is also the month law-enforcement officials crack down on DUI’s through a heavier presence of officers on the roads, sobriety checkpoints, and tougher Minimum legal drinking age (MLDA) laws.

Sobering Statistics
Every day, 36 people in the United States die and approximately 700 more are injured in motor vehicle accidents involving an impaired driver.

In 2006, 13,470 people died in alcohol-related crashes, accounting for nearly one-third (32%) of all traffic-related deaths in the U.S.

In one year, 1.4 million Americans were arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol or narcotics. This accounts for less than 1% of the 159 million self-reported incidents of driving under the influence reported each year.

 Alcohol-related crashes in the U.S. cost approximately $51 billion a year.

In Shades of Darkness, Shades of Grace, a key scene occurs at the Pierson Companies employee Christmas party, where Paul’s wife Pamela flies into a drunken rage. Attending parties this holiday season, make sure you’ve made arrangements for getting home safely.

Plan ahead. Always designate a non-drinking driver before any holiday party or celebration begins.

Take the keys. Do not let a friend drive drunk.

Be a responsible host. If you’re hosting a holiday party, remind your guests to plan ahead and designate a sober driver. Provide non-alcoholic refreshments, and make sure all of your guests leave with a sober driver.

If you’re attending a holiday gathering in a hotel and you plan to drink, make arrangements to spend the night.

There’s another new review for Shades of Darkness, Shades of Grace. It’s predominantly positive, which is always nice. Once of the things you learn about reviews as an author besides which reviewers genuinely relate to your work, is what annoys a reviewer about the story.

In this case, the reviewer apparently didn’t care for the alcoholism sub-plot which, which just as it did in real life, affects the lives of the Pierson family. The reviewer writes that family’s history of abuse is graphically illustrated and used these words to describe it: dysfunction, denial, codependence, and enabling.

I won’t deny the description. Dependency is never pretty, yet the strong reaction still surprised me. Even in these more “enlightened times” alcohol abuse or any kind of chemical abuse still makes us uncomfortable. We talk about it more than we used to, but the topic still makes us squirm because we’re all too aware of the dysfunction, denial, codependence, and enabling behaviors it forces us and our families to admit to. And, quite frankly, we’d rather not admit to any of it.

The cold, hard truth is that alcohol dependency and abuse taints the lives of millions of Americans. Nearly 14 million Americans - 1 in every 13 adults - abuse alcohol or are alcoholic. Drunk driving causes approximately 16,000 deaths per year, which accounts for only 25% of alcohol-related deaths. And each year, alcohol is implicated in the deaths of some 85,000 Americans, making it the nation’s third leading cause of death after smoking and obesity.

Such statistics and the dysfunction that goes along with it were some of the reasons for the novel. In having survived the ravages of alcoholism, I believed it was my obligation to detail what happened to generations of my family so that others might recognize themselves or someone they know, and change course before it truly is too late. After absorbing the review, I realized the sub-plot had made this reviewer very uncomfortable. Perhaps that isn’t such a bad thing.

A new school year is upon us and earlier this month more than 100 college presidents signed a statement, Choose Responsibility, to lower the drinking from 21 to closer to 18.  Like many they believe the current drinking age is a massive failure leading to huge number of under-age drinking, drunk driving, accidents, sexual assaults, etc.

Not everyone thinks lowering the drinking age will solve the problem or is even that intelligent of an idea. Steve Chapman, a syndicated columnist for the Chicago Tribune, argues that for all the problems of under-age drinking associated with the current age, there have been marked improvements: “It’s bizarre to blame the higher age for today’s staggering undergraduates. According to Monitoring the Future, an ongoing research project at the University of Michigan, binge drinking h as not risen since 1988, when 21 became the minimum drinking age throughout our country. Among college students and other college-age Americans, the rate is lower today than it was then, and the decline has been even higher among high-school students.”

Since 1988, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reports drunken driving deaths have decreased across the board, but most noticeably in those younger than 21. In that group, the number of alcohol-related fatalities has dropped by nearly half, even as the number of traffic deaths not involving alcohol has remained stable.

This is an argument that is not going to disappear any time soon.  If anything, Chapman suggests that rising the drinking age to 25 might have a better chance of solving the problem. From the perspective of a recovering alcoholic, I can’t help but wonder that if the drinking age were higher when I was a teenager (it was 18 at the time), would I have experienced fewer detrimental problems with alcohol dependency that nearly ruined my life and that of several family members in adulthood?   

More than 100 college and university presidents across the country signed a statement calling for a public debate on the drinking age. “It’s time to rethink the drinking age. 21 is not working,” the statement begins. College presidents from Ohio State, Dartmouth, Duke, and Gustavus Adophus (St. Peters, MN) want an engage in a serious debate on the drinking age, the reality of college life, and how those two elements align.

Under-age drinking and later problems in life with alcoholism are key plot points in Shades of Darkness, Shades of Grace, mirroring an epidemic currently facing the U.S. The Pierson children begin drinking as teenagers and two of the three face adult struggles with alcohol and chemical dependency. That’s part of what makes the debate surrounding lowering the legal drinking age so controversial. Some facts to consider:

More the 1,700 U.S. college students are killed each year amounting to approximately 4.65 per day as a result of alcohol-related injuries.

Underage drinking spawns the future heavy and addicted drinkers upon which the alcoholic-beverage industry depends for the majority of sales. Persons who begin drinking before age 15 are four times more likely to develop alcohol dependence problems at some point in their life compared with those who are 20 or older when they consumer their first drink.

There are an estimated 10.8 million underage drinkers in the U.S. between the ages of 12 and 20.

There is no data to support or refute lowering the drinking age, but many administrators on college campuses believe such a dialogue would be beneficial. Such a conversation is necessary because of the accepted place drinking continues to hold in American culture. For example, since last fall Minnesota has experienced five deaths on college campuses of young people engaged in binge drinking, and all were under 21. Officials at St. Cloud State believe the deaths clearly point to a serious problem that should be a national concern.

Drinking among American youth is a serious health problem on college campuses and elsewhere. The Amethyst Initiative suggests that lowering the drinking age to 21 has been a dismal failure particularly on campus and is seeking more realistic alternatives. As a recovering alcoholic who began drinking in the girl’s bathroom at 15, I’m one of the statistics that became an alcoholic in adulthood, so the lowered legal drinking age has made perfectt sense. Two colleges in Atlanta also oppose the idea of lowering the drinking age and there are bound to be others.

It’s clear that both sides of the argument have merit, but it’s a debate that involves teaching responsible behavior as well as understanding the consequences. Binge and underage drinking aren’t just a phase or part of growing up. The repercussions are very real.