Alcohol & adolescent brains

According to the Science Daily website:

Whereas brain development during adolescence may initially serve to “safeguard” youth from certain effects of alcohol such as intoxication and [/tag]hangover[/tag], it will also likely make them more vulnerable to the longer-term effects of alcohol. A first-of-its-kind study uses rodents to examine development of acute tolerance to alcohol-induced social impairment among adolescents and adults. Findings show that younger rodents have nervous systems that quickly adapt to alcohol’s effects — called tolerance — which permits heavy drinking at an early age.

I drank alcohol quite regularly before I became a Baha’i and used to get drunk occasionally. When I was about 16 or 17 one of my friends was our doctor’s son. The doctor lived in a village a couple of miles from ours. One day, I had cycled over to see my friend; his dad offered us a drink, and I had a large measure of gin - I had developed a taste for gin, even at that age. My cycle ride home was very unsteady and I seem to remember singing loudly as I wobbled through the country lanes.

I enjoyed the spaced-out sensation I got from drink and could easily have become addicted to it, if I hadn’t become a Baha’i. I only ever drank myself senseless once. I was 17 and had been taken to a party in Cambridge. I drank and drank drank and had to be carried home. I lived in an attic and had to be pushed up the ladder to my room, where I wrapped myself around the portable gas heater I had up there. I could easily have set myself on fire, but the worst I suffered, God be praised, was a horrible hangover the next day.

I’m very glad that I gave up alcohol when I became a Baha’i at the age of 18.

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