Parenting Style and the Influence on Underage Drinking

by Lisa Frederiksen

NPR ran Allison Aubrey’s story, “Parenting Style Plays Key Role in Underage Drinking,” this week. I added the following comment to the discussion:

I absolutely agree with Aimee Stern – science. Science can help parents understand why brain development – especially that during ages 12-25 – makes underage drinking such a problem – not only in a person’s developing longterm problems with alcohol abuse/alcoholism, but in a young person’s missing neural network opportunities, as well. Science can also debunk many of the myths people believe to be true about drinking. One for example is that throwing up or drinking coffee can sober you up. Not true. Alcohol is not processed by the digestive system like other foods and liquids. It is metabolized by the liver, and it takes the liver about 1 hour to metabolize 1 standard drink (5 oz. of wine, 1.5 oz. of 80-proof liquor or 12 oz. of beer). Alcohol passes through the small intestine, into the bloodstream, dissolving in water and traveling to body tissue high in water content, such as the brain, where it “sits” while it “waits” to be metabolized by the liver. If a person drinks 5-6 drinks, it takes 5-6 hours (on average) for their liver to metabolize the alcohol. In the meantime, that alcohol is “sitting” in the brain, interruping neural networks, which is what causes a person to behave the way they do when they drink too much.

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