National Gordie Day

9/24/2009 was National GORDIEday across the United States, Canada and the WORLD!

National GORDIEday is an alcohol and hazing awareness event held each fall. The Gordie Foundation coordinates efforts with colleges, universities and high schools, and provides educational materials to participating institutions. The Second-Annual National GORDIEday was held during National Hazing Prevention Week.

The story behind this foundation and the event is tragic. get more info at: http://www.gordie.org/Gordies-Story.aspx

Researcher find that drinking by young teens may predispose brain to addiction.

From Join Together.org:

"Brain changes caused by drinking before age 15 could predispose adolescents to a lifetime of alcohol dependency, HealthDay News reported Sept. 18.

Researcher Arpana Agrawal of the Washington University School of Medicine, who studied alcohol use among twins, said that early drinking "may induce changes in the highly sensitive adolescent brain, which may also modify an individual's subsequent genetic vulnerability" to addiction.

Agrawal found that age of first alcohol use corresponded with a greater number of alcohol dependency symptoms. Those who started drinking later in life were less likely to be dependent even if they were genetically predisposed to addiction, the study found."

I have found that not starting at all completely prevents the addiction to recreational alcohol.

Teens Who Eat Infrequent Family Dinners Likelier to Drink, Smoke, Use Drugs

Compared to teens who have frequent family dinners (five or more per week), those who have infrequent family dinners (fewer than three per week) are twice as likely to use tobacco or marijuana; more than one and a half times likelier to use alcohol; and twice as likely to expect to try drugs in the future, according to The Importance of Family Dinners V, a new report by The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University.

The moral here is to spend time with your family to give them the best chance of making good decisions about substance abuse.

This is not at all surprising to me. A study of 14,000 binge drinkers found that 12 percent admitted driving after their most recent episode of heavy alcohol consumption, the Associated Press reported Sept. 1. I would actually bet the real percentage is more like 35-40% but not that many people would actually admit it. How many people do you know who are actually responsible enough to make travel arrangements other than driving home 100% of the time. My anecdotal sense of it is that most all binge drinkers have driven home drunk on more that one occasion. I have to ask, will they think it is worth it when the odds eventually catch up to them and they end up being a drunk driving casualty or hurt somebody else.