Age at first drink, a new study

overseas
Fri, 02 Oct 2009 00:59:29 +0000

I grew up with wine with a fancy family dinner and I may drink a couple of glasses a week with friends now 50 years later. I started on the alcohol path at age 12. I believe it is cultural as well. My son grew up in a society where wine/beer consumption is normal with teens. He went to college already aware of the impact of drinking and told me he thought that the American college kids went crazy with alcohol. He had never seen anything like it. And as an aside, he said he had never seen kids speak about their parents in such a bad way. He grew up in a Mediterranean culture where family is everything and the place, as my dear parents said when visiting, the place is about 50 years behind the times. In my mind, it is connected. I am not a sociologist so I don’t know the hows and whys of it. Its not the alcohol, its the place we create in society for our teenagers.