Beginning in the 1980s, a new concern arose for parents of teenage children: the risk of their children becoming alcohol abusers. What alarmed parents most were the headlines in the media after every weekend:

"A teenager dies in a traffic accident. He was driving while intoxicated"; "Young man urgently hospitalized for alcoholic coma"; "Three injured by stabbing in a fight while drinking at the botellón".

With each passing year, the age at which adolescents start drinking alcoholic beverages becomes earlier and earlier. The younger the age at which drinking begins, the greater the risk of becoming an alcoholic.

Real testimonies of adolescents addicted to alcohol are often more helpful in understanding the seriousness of this phenomenon than statistics. For example, the following:

"I need to drink. I'm very worried about feeling dependent on alcohol. Nothing I have been able to do to stop myself since I started at 16 to disinhibit myself and cope with my shyness. I am now 25 and I know the lethal effects that this odious liquid causes in my brain, and, still, I continue to murder myself step by step. I have lost control over myself. Most teenagers my age drink as if it were a ritual. Of course, my parents don't know about it.

The well-known phrase "I need a drink" is very frequent in American movies, it is an emotional cliché to indicate that the character drinks to drown his sorrows or confess something that torments him. But those three words come from life itself. They are the first thing some parents say when they return home. They may be irrelevant when they are uttered sporadically, but not when their use is very frequent. In this second case, they express the imperious need to drink to get out of anxiety and feel good, even at the cost of not greeting the family...

Two extreme and opposing historical positions on alcohol consumption still persist. Plato stated that "boys should abstain from alcoholic beverages until the age of 18, since it is not good to pour oil on the fire". On the other hand, for Lord Byron alcohol cures all ills: "Wine consoles the sad, rejuvenates the old, inspires the young, and relieves the depressed of the burden of their cares".

 It is possible that the humorists' irony might give some heavy drinkers pause for thought. An example: "Rum plus ice damages the liver; wodka plus ice damages the kidney; whiskey plus ice damages the heart; beer plus ice damages the brain. Conclusion: How much damage ice does!".

The phrase "I need a drink" is no longer exclusive to adults; nowadays it is used by many teenagers and young adults and in some cases by imitation of their parents. They have been convinced by the myth that drinks make us more witty, optimistic and cheerful. The truth is different: alcohol is a depressant; after the initial brief euphoria comes a slump and language gets stuck.

 Being a teenager is always a risk to incur possible addictions. Some say they "get high" with a few drinks to "break the ice" at parties and be funny. The more sensible teens think otherwise: "I don't think it's okay to have to get high to have fun. I demand the right to be different, to be myself." "Being jolly is much better than getting jolly."

Adolescents do not financial aid their eagerness to try and experience everything. In addition, alcohol is still available to anyone and there is a high social tolerance for underage drinking.

It is therefore not surprising that the first consumption of alcoholic beverages is already a new rite of passage into adulthood. Some adolescents voluntarily run the risk of getting drunk, reaching the "tipping point" (a state of excitement almost bordering on drunkenness). Experience shows that this borderline is very difficult to maintain, because the body will ask them to drink more and more.

Some alcohol addictions are related to tensions and lack of affection in the family environment. Others are related to a lack of knowledge of the psychophysical conditions in which children return from binge drinking. But the most decisive factor is bad parental examples (lack of sobriety and celebrating everything with alcohol). No less influential are some educational omissions: not educating children in the virtues of temperance and sobriety and in the imaginative use of free time and manager .