[BlingRacer]

Considering all the guys I have dated who were in the military, I wouldn't trust them with a gun or a beer

That's worth repeating!

And let's be brutally honest...while many well behaved, intelligent young men go into the military, there are also a lot of young men (and women) who choose the military because they lack other options...they didn't do well enough in school to get a scholarship, etc. So while you're getting some good folks, you're also getting a lot of bottom of the barrel folks who simply don't have any other schooling or career options open to them...Every one knows what they counselors tell a C student who wants to have a career....Go the military! They also encourage students with behavioral problems to go the military route because it will "straighten them up."

I've dated a few military guys and they were some of the strangest men I ever dated and not the most mature men either. Note, I'm referring to YOUNG men here, not older ones...Most of the older military men I've met were very awesome people.

[AdamW]

Originally Posted by BlingRacer

That's worth repeating!

And let's be brutally honest...while many well behaved, intelligent young men go into the military, there are also a lot of young men (and women) who choose the military because they lack other options...they didn't do well enough in school to get a scholarship, etc. So while you're getting some good folks, you're also getting a lot of bottom of the barrel folks who simply don't have any other schooling or career options open to them...Every one knows what they counselors tell a C student who wants to have a career....Go the military! They also encourage students with behavioral problems to go the military route because it will "straighten them up."

I've dated a few military guys and they were some of the strangest men I ever dated and not the most mature men either. Note, I'm referring to YOUNG men here, not older ones...Most of the older military men I've met were very awesome people.

Living the first fourteen years of my life on Camp Pendleton, I can attest to this. It seemed like my dad had to get up every night around two a.m., and bail one of his kids out of jail.

And I completely agree with your last paragraph. The older Marines are the most respectful people. It's the young ones people need to be wary of.

[cowgurly02]

Originally Posted by GeM

I think parents should encourage responsible drinking.
Of all my friends growing up, the ones who drank with their parents developed a more responsible outlook on drinking, whereas friends whose parents shunned drinking are some of the most out of control drinkers I know.
I think when parents fervently forbid something, later on their children will go buck wild (like in college or when they've moved from home) because they don't have their parents telling them what to do anymore.

Agreed. Like I said in my first post, at 16 my parents were letting me have 1 or 2 beers/wine coolers with them on special occassions (weddings, new years, etc...). They let me go to parties and always encouraged me to call them for a ride home even if I just had 1 drink, and I had no fear of getting grounded or losing priviledges. Because of this I have always drank a lot more responsibly than most of my peers! I know many kids who were too scared to call their parents for rides and would drive home drunk, the ones with the strictest parents (I know my one friend especially!) would be the ones getting plastered every weekend and hiding it from their parents.

My parents were always very open with me about alcohol and taught me to drink responsibly. I grew up in a home where my parents did drink, responsibly. In winter almost every night my dad would sit down with a beer and watch the hockey game. I grew up watching people drink responsibly and being open with me about it, so I think that's why I never drink and drive, don't drink all the time and usually just have 2 or 3 drinks when I do and that's good enough (except on special occassions like my stagette last spring LOL).

I've seen way more out of control high school students from super strict families who don't teach them about alcohol and how to drink responsibly.

[HappyHoof]

Honestly, this is just one of those questions... Every parent will handle the situation differently. I am still underage (I'm 20, the legal age limit here is 21) and I do drink, usually once or twice a month. I drink a couple of shots, and I'm good. For the night. I drink for the relaxing buzz, not for the ****-your-guts-out-die-of-a-hangover-in-the-morning full on drunk. And, even when I've had a little too much (which isn't much, since I'm a total light-weight) I still act responsibly. It is hard for me to understand anyone who says, "I'm sorry, I was just really drunk and didn't know what I was doing. Man, I don't even remember last night..." My friend is an alcoholic in denial, and she is like that. Once she starts, she just can't stop. I am to the point of not hanging out with her, because she seems to feel that if she doesn't have any Vodka, the weekend is ruined. She can't have fun. So, there are two sides to the underage drinking coin. I am--and have always been--a responsible drinker. Even at seventeen, when I had my first drink. My friend has always been a person who can't remember what she did the next morning. And I don't think there was anything anybody could have done to stop her. In fact, the way her father handled her teenaged rebelliousness did nothing but push her out of the house and into drugs, drink, and danger... I am not saying to ignore the problem, but it is something that can be overdone... My parents were very lax, and even threw my eighteenth birthday party and allowed me to drink. But, they did encourage responsibility and intelligence. (When drinking or otherwise.) As a parent myself, I believe I would fall somewhere close to the way my parents handled me. I would not encourage drinking, but, given the choice between my son drinking out with God only knows who and staying at home where I can watch him, I believe I would choose the latter.

[Tack Collector]

Originally Posted by LifeIsGrand

Parents, how would you respond to your kids going out and drinking underaged?

What would your punishment be if you found out? Did you drink when you were a teenager? Did you get caught?

Discuss!!!

Well, I'm not a parent, nor a step-parent now, but if I'd caught any kids going out drinking, they'd be staying in a lot more except to go to school, on the school bus, lol.

Explain to them that all of the alcohols are toxic including ethanol. And ethanol is merely the least toxic one, and the "high" is your body's response to the toxin.I know this is from Wikipedia but here's a little read about toxicity of alcohols:

Toxicity

Main articles: Short-term effects of alcohol and Long-term effects of alcohol

Most significant of the possible long-term effects of ethanol. Additionally, in pregnant women, it causes fetal alcohol syndrome.


Ethanol in alcoholic beverages has been consumed by humans since prehistoric times for a variety of hygienic, dietary, medicinal, religious, and recreational reasons. The consumption of large doses of ethanol causes drunkenness (intoxication), which may lead to a hangover as its effects wear off. Depending upon the dose and the regularity of its consumption, ethanol can cause acute respiratory failure or death. Because ethanol impairs judgment in humans, it can be a catalyst for reckless or irresponsible behavior. The LD50 of ethanol in rats is 10.3 g/kg.[5]
Other alcohols are substantially more poisonous than ethanol, partly because they take much longer to be metabolized and partly because their metabolism produces substances that are even more toxic. Methanol (wood alcohol), for instance, is oxidized to formaldehyde and then to the poisonous formic acid in the liver by alcohol dehydrogenase and formaldehyde dehydrogenase enzymes respectively; accumulation of formic acid can lead to blindness or death.[6] Similarly poisoning due to other alcohols such as ethylene glycol or diethylene glycol are due to their metabolites which are also produced by alcohol dehydrogenase.[7][8] An effective treatment to prevent toxicity after methanol or ethylene glycol ingestion is to administer ethanol. Alcohol dehydrogenase has a higher affinity for ethanol, thus preventing methanol from binding and acting as a substrate. Any remaining methanol will then have time to be excreted through the kidneys.[6][9][10]
Methanol itself, while poisonous, has a much weaker sedative effect than ethanol. Some longer-chain alcohols such as n-propanol, isopropanol, n-butanol, t-butanol and 2-methyl-2-butanol do however have stronger sedative effects, but also have higher toxicity than ethanol.[11][12] These longer chain alcohols are found as contaminants in some alcoholic beverages and are known as fusel alcohols,[13][14] and are reputed to cause severe hangovers although it is unclear if the fusel alcohols are actually responsible.[15] Many longer chain alcohols are used in industry as solvents and are occasionally abused by alcoholics,[16][17] leading to a range of adverse health effects.[18]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Po...of_ethanol.png

Methanol is the next one after ethanol and here is a study of its effects. Blindness from drinking it is just the legendary one. http://oehha.ca.gov/air/chronic_rels/pdf/67561.pdf

[Tack Collector]

Originally Posted by allison finch

I worked eight years as a paramedic in Colorado, and I wish I could tell you about the drunk-and dead-teenagers I scraped off the pavement after fatal car crashes. Often they weren't the only ones killed, either.

BTW, I think it is irresponsible for parents to encourage their underage children to drink. It helps them set patterns that may stay with them a long time.
Just MHO.

Exactly. Drinking alcohol solves no problems. It usually just wastes time and money, and may have some serious consequences that you'd have steered clear of if you'd remained aware and sober. If you are depressed, get an antidepressant, b/c it makes no sense to fight depression with a toxin. If you are bored, then move to a less boring town that offers some intellectual stimulation and more interesting people. If you are shy and you drink to loosen up, try a Toastmasters Club, or take the Dale Carnegie Course, or join a civic organization, or join a gym.

[JPD]

I'm 20, and I drink underage.

Here the legal age is 21. I have NEVER been irresponsible about my partying. I don't mind going every weekend, but most times its 2-3 times per month. You either have a DD with you to take you home, stay at sleep at the party house, or you walk home. End of story!!!

You can have responsible fun. And yes, I have been drunk beyond reason but I have never been in trouble and neither have any of my friends.

[PyroTekNik333]

I'm not a parent so I can't really answer the what would you do question, I'm not sure what I would do in that situation.

But I want to say that it's not just the safety aspect that keeps me from drinking (I don't and won't drink) I have three major reasons for abstaining, two don't apply to every person out there but one applys to every human that ever was

First is that I have HUGE tendency's toward addictive behaviors (for example, without my daily mountain dew I am irritable, tired and often sick) as does the majority of my immediate family (even if they won't admit it)

Second, the affects of alcohol on an immature brain (even at 21 your brain is not fully mature) are downright scary, not only short term but long term it can lead to several forms of dementia and one study says that it contributes to one in four cases of dementia (not the sole cause except in the case of alcohol dementia) and after seeing a family member go through dementia I can tell you that it's not only sad but can be incredibly frightening if they are violent (many are)
Dementia and Alzheimers run in my family as well as depression (though I seem to have missed that gene thankfully)

Third, I'm on some meds due to a medical condition (bad genes that I didn't miss lol) that are dangerous to mix with alcohol.

That's why I don't drink and why I wouldn't want my immaginary kids to drink.

[red00jeep]

If you have a good head on your shoulders, you have a good head on your shoulders. You can drink and not be an idiot about it. Smart people know not to get drunk in public, at parties, or with people they don't know. I don't think under aged drinking is a horrific thing, as long as the person controls themselves.

I went to a party last night, and a kid I didn't even know came in ALONE barred out on Xanax. I was in the kitchen, and I watched him come in and take 19 ******** shots of Grey Goose. He started to get really wobbly, so someone sat him down on a chair. His eyes started rolling back in his head, and he was loosing consciousness. His "friends", most of who were as ****ed up as he was, were shaking him, trying to get him to wake up. Well, he didn't like that too much, and he punched this kid in the face, HARD. They let him sit for a while, and then someone decided he needed to go to the hospital. They walked him out the front door, he tripped on the door jam and fell on his face, and busted his head open. Eventually, a group of guys carried him to the backseat of an SUV, and someone who hadn't been drinking took him to the ER.

Apparently he does something similar to this every weekend. If you have no self control, you have no self control. He should know not to drink if it puts him in this state, yet he continues to do it. I very much doubt his parents encourage it, but I'm sure he blows them off and goes out anyway. From what I've heard, he's been to military school, been to jail, and he just doesn't care. You can't control someone that doesn't care.

I was at that party last night completely 100% sober, and drank water the whole night. I offered to go to watch my friends and take care of them if need be. I wasn't even needed, none of them drank to get drunk, they all controlled themselves perfectly well, and all slept in the house and didn't even think about asking for their keys, which I took at the beginning of the night.

I don't drink much anymore, just occasionally when I am alone with my boyfriend, and even then it's just 1-2 glasses of wine. I partied quite a bit, almost every weekend, when I was a Freshman and Sophomore (15-16), and a bit when I was a junior, but I'm over it now. I look back on some of those nights, and I'm so grateful my best friend and I didn't end up in a bad position. I thank god I was around good people, and had many guys that watched me and took care of me. While I would like to believe I was smart about it (generally, I was) I did make some choices I know I wouldn't make now. I don't find drinking fun anymore, and I would much prefer being the sober friend taking the keys .

ETA;

Originally Posted by GeM

I think parents should encourage responsible drinking.
Of all my friends growing up, the ones who drank with their parents developed a more responsible outlook on drinking, whereas friends whose parents shunned drinking are some of the most out of control drinkers I know.
I think when parents fervently forbid something, later on their children will go buck wild (like in college or when they've moved from home) because they don't have their parents telling them what to do anymore.

This is sooooo true. Kids have to have some exposure, so it's not so much a "forbidden fruit".

[Kodachrome]

More than anything else, I am going to teach my kid about RESPONSIBILITY and drinking. My mom always told me that if I was out somewhere and got wasted, to call and she would come and pick me up - no questions asked. The only time I would be in trouble is if I was caught drinking and driving, or drinking and then getting into a car with a drunk.... etc. I guess she believed (like I do) that kids are going to be kids to some degree. I will ALWAYS tell my kids that if they drink, it will disappoint me, and the dangers of alcohol, etc..... educate educate educate.... but if they STILL make the decision to drink, I want them to know that they can trust me before they feel like they have to make ANOTHER bad (and even life threatening) decision. KWIM?