A Dartmouth study in the May issue of the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs found that 10 to 14-year-olds whose parents allow them to watch R-rated movies are more likely to drink as teens.

Researchers studied more than 2,400 children. Almost a quarter of the children whose parents allowed them to view R-rated movies frequently confessed to having tried alcohol behind their parents’ back. Only 3 percent of the students in the trial who were forbidden to watch R-rated movies had ever tried a drink.

Dr. James Sargent, the principal investigator in the study, said that parental regulation of their children’s media habits “is a very important aspect of parenting, and one that is often overlooked,” and that “keeping kids from R-rated movies can help keep them from drinking, smoking, and doing a lot of other things that parents don’t want them to do.”

Sargent says he thinks seeing adult content actually changes children’s personalities. There has been research to back up his claim. A study he and another team published earlier this year suggests that children who watch R-rated movies become more prone to risk taking and sensation seeking.

Then again, my own experience is totally different. When I grew up, my parents took me to the movies every Friday night, and I saw my share of R-rated movies starting at a pretty young age. Times have changed, though. I haven’t let my kids watch any R-rated movies, but they have watched some PG-13’s. Maybe movies have changed, too. I mostly saw political or “issue” movies with my parents–Serpico, The French Connection–with a few Woody Allen movies sprinkled in. I didn’t drink or smoke or have sex as a teen, but I sure saw a lot of drinking, smoking and sex in the movies. Also, TV is now more sophisticated than it was. About the riskiest thing I watched was Fantasy Island. Now kids can learn about teen pregnancy and three-ways on TV. So I’m not sure how I feel about this one.

And try telling my 12-year-old daughter she can’t watch Glee…

There’s always the school of thought that watching or reading about risky behaviors provides a safe way to learn about the world, without actually doing all those things.

Whatever your beliefs, one thing is clear: there’s a whole other layer of  parenting that seems necessary in this complex, media-saturated world. Adult children of alcoholics, who often fear that their children will inherit their gene pool, can take comfort in the research, which suggests that there are some things parents can do to influence their children’s future drinking habits. Or are there?

As a side note, I’ve found Commonsense Media helpful in filtering media, even if they do tend to be a bit strict.

What are your thoughts? We’d love to hear them.

It seems to me that people in recovery might get sick of reading self-help books. Sometimes, a memoir can be refreshing, especially for teens struggling with drinking issues. Koren Zailckas’ fantastic memoir, Smashed, comes to mind. Now award-winning Canadian young adult author, Susan Juby, has written Nice Recovery, about her years as a teenage alcoholic.

Juby, who is 41 and has been sober for more than 20 years, says, in an interview in the Vancouver Sun, that she wrote Nice Recovery to “honour where I came from…I didn’t get here by accident. I’m really lucky to be having a functional life. I thought maybe it would be instructive, or I would scare people straight through my extreme lameness.”

Juby doesn’t have children, but she does offer advice for parents on how to approach drug and alcohol abuse with their children: 1) Keep the lines of communication open; and 2) “Kids should have an awareness [of the difference] between social drinking and experimenting with drugs and what addiction looks like, because there’s a big difference. Most kids are going to experiment, but some of them are going to cross that line [into addiction], so it’s great if they can understand what that line looks like.”

Photo Source

A study out of Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, set to be published in the Journal of Marketing Research later this year, found that public-service ads intended to reduce binge drinking may actually lead to more of it.

I’m not surprised. Remember those “Just Say No” public service announcements, back in the 80s? What I recall most is how teens (myself included) flipped the message around to “Just Say Yes” or “Just Say Screw You,” even if we were posturing in front of our friends.  Of course we had to flip everything around that adults told us to do–that’s a teenager’s job. Plus; what 17-year-old wanted to model herself after Nancy Reagan? Not moi.

Seems the ad councils haven’t figured out that phenomenon of oppositional thinking–i.e. if the powers that be say “X,” we’ll do “Y”–because they’re still creating those cautionary ads. The Northwestern study was based on interviews with 1,200 undergraduate students shown ads modeled after anti-alcohol ads that ran in Canada.

Today’s anti-drinking and drug ads may be more au courant and clever–one ad features a hipster bent over the toilet after a night of partying (see below right)–but they’re not working. Why not? Two words: Guilt and shame.

According to Jeremy Mullman in Advertising Age : ”It has long been assumed, of course, that guilt and shame were ideal ways of warning of the dangers associated with binge drinking and other harmful behaviors, because they are helpful in spotlighting the associated personal consequences. But this study found the opposite to be true: Viewers already feeling some level of guilt or shame instinctively resist messages that rely on those emotions, and in some cases are more likely to participate in the behavior they’re being warned about.

The reason, said Kellogg marketing professor Nidhi Agrawal, is that people who are already feeling guilt or shame resort to something called “defensive processing” when confronted with more of either, and tend to disassociate themselves with whatever they are being shown in order to lessen those emotions.

And it doesn’t have to be drinking that a viewer is feeling ashamed about in order to render the ads ineffective or damaging. “If you’re talking to a student about cheating on an exam, and one of these ads comes up, you can bet they are headed straight to the bar,” said Ms. Agrawal, who conducted the study along with her Indiana University colleague, Adam Duhacheck.”

It’s the cycle of shame and blame. You feel bad about something, so you drink (eat, smoke, substitute whatever bad behavior here). Then you get drunk, you get sick, and you beat yourself up about your lack of self control, etc. And what do you do to rid yourself of those hateful feelings? You drink.

So what’s the right approach? Nidhi Agrawal, who helped conduct the study, had two suggestions:  1) Place the ad in “more positive surroundings–such as in a sitcom or a positive magazine article” rather than in a “tense or negative context.” 2) Focus on how to avoid situations that lead to binge drinking rather than on the consequences of the behavior, “because attempting to shame people out of binge drinking doesn’t work.” She also said that “It’s important that the messages be toned down and as positive as possible.”

Richard Todd Aguayo of razorsharp creative put it best in a comment in Ad Age: “‘People don’t care to know until they know that you care.’ Wise words once spoken to me, and I have found them to be true. You can speak words of wisdom to someone, but unless they feel you understand where they’re coming from, they’ll just tune you out. But once you establish a nonjudgmental, empathetic dialogue, folks will be more apt to listen. I also find this to be true in most marketing situations…

That dialogue, that connection based on mutual experience and (more importantly) understanding is what opens the mind and the checkbook. And in the case of these PSA’s, opens the heart and by extension the conscious, to the possibility of a change in attitude and behavior.”

So perhaps the creators of these public service announcements could take a cue from AA, for example, where people who have walked the walk empathize and listen, rather than judge and advise. No one wants to hear Nancy Reagan, who as far as we know never suffered from an addiction, talking down to them from a podium, and no one wants to be taunted with worst-case scenario images that only make them feel worse.

An ad that might have spoken to me, as a college student: Ten Things You Can Do Instead of Drinking: 1) Take a bath, 2) Drink seltzer and cranberry , etc. Just positive ideas and alternatives, rather than lectures that spin the mind to rebellion.

Photo Source (Just Say No)

Photo Source (anti-drinking ads)

Recently, there has been a spate of novels, short stories, memoirs and non-fiction books published that touch on the topic of women and alcohol–Here is just a sampling:

MOMMY DOESN’T DRINK HERE ANYMORE by Rachel Brownell (memoir)

IT’S NOT ME, IT’S YOU by Stefanie Wilder-Taylor (personal essays written before the popular blogger/memoirist announced she was quitting drinking)

BLAME by Michelle Huneven (novel)

LIT by Mary Karr (memoir, see excerpt in Drinking Diaries)

“Intervention” a short story in Jill McCorkle’s collection GOING AWAY SHOES

TROUBLE by Kate Christensen (novel w/ lots of unapologetic drinking)

ONCE WAS LOST by Sara Zarr (young adult novel with alcoholic mother)

And for those of you interested in poetry, there’s FLAWED LIGHT: American Women Poets and Alcohol, a non-fiction book about women poets and alcohol.

Some of my personal, perennial favorites:

SMASHED by Koren Zailckas (memoir)

ROSIE by Anne Lamott (novel, featuring a woman struggling with her relationship to alcohol)

AT HOME IN THE WORLD by Joyce Maynard (memoir, & she’s the daughter of an alcoholic)

What are your favorite books that touch on the subject of women and alcohol? Favorite movies? Poems? Please share!

Last Spring, as I attended my fifth grader’s graduation from D.A.R.E. (Drug Abuse Resistance Education), I found myself acting like a kid myself–making snide remarks to my husband and getting all squirmy in my seat while I sneered at the suck-ups who read their winning essays.

“They’re like little robots,” I said. “We will ne-ver drink or do drugs.”

“Yeah, sure,” I found myself mumbling even though, throughout high school, I could have been a poster child for D.A.R.E., which is now taught in 80% of school districts.

So why the hostility and regression, on my part? Maybe it was the echoes of Nancy Reagan’s prissy, preachy “Just Say No” campaign, which seemed only to spur teenagers on to want to do more drugs, just to piss Nancy off.

But there had to be something else.

The uneasiness began when a female police officer came to a PTA meeting to discuss the program with us. After she spoke, the mothers in the audience had many questions. “I have a glass of wine or two on Friday nights in front of my children. Is that okay?”

And then someone asked the police officer, “Do you or did you drink?” “If so, do you tell your children?” The officer laughed and said something to the effect of, “I was kind of wild, but they don’t have to know that.” While I don’t feel the need to tell my kids the details of every college bender I ever went on, I don’t think I need to hide my moderate drinking from my children. That seems ludicrous. As the daughter of an alcoholic, I have a real problem with hiding things from my children (the elephant in the living room). Also, by making alcohol forbidden or taboo, it will only increase the thrill of sneaking.

After my daughter started her D.A.R.E. education, my daughter looked at a glass of wine in my hands like it was a gun.

Therein lies the problem with D.A.R.E.–they fail to make a distinction between that which is legal, accepted behavior (moderate alcohol consumption when you’re of drinking age) and that which is illegal (Drugs). In D.A.R.E. world, everything is bad. Period. While I’m grateful to the schools for trying to make kids more street smart and savvy, and I am all for it, I am not for moralizing. The facts, pure and simple, should speak for themselves. You can drink when you’re of legal drinking age. Period. Some people have a disease called alcoholism, and these people cannot drink. Some people drink too much and can get very sick, or even die. If you have a genetic predisposition to alcoholism, you should be careful. These kinds of facts are helpful, not: “Never drink.” Because the fact is (and the statistics bear me out), most teens will at least try drinking. The best part of the program is where they arm kids with ways to deal with peer pressure, and alternatives to drinking.

Equating drinking with drug use is, in my opinion, setting kids up for subterfuge and shame. Studies have shown that DARE actually increases girls’ drug use and drinking.

So what, then, is effective, if not DARE and its scare tactics? Addiction expert Stanton Peele has an interesting take on these programs:

“The prevailing prevention approach is to tell everyone not to do these things, claim no one successful has ever done them, and carry on with what everyone knows to be a complete fiction. (Think of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama.)

Well, this is not the whole story. Neural research indicates that adolescent brains program kids to try risky behaviors. It is unlikely we will soon prevent large numbers of teens from drinking and using drugs. Yet, subtracting the approximately 20 million current drug users from the 110 million plus people who once used, almost 100 million Americans have left drugs behind. Perhaps it can be good for young people to learn that as they mature they can, and will, straighten out and fly right?

This is the opposite of the approach of nearly all school drug education programs. Here the logic is to troop in people who have ruined their lives by their drug use and drinking, as object lessons in the evils of sin. But there are reasons to believe that kids reject negative messages from figures like these, and that purely scare tactics don’t work. Research on effective drug resistance programs finds that the best ways to prevent substance abuse are for kids to develop skills, feel good about themselves, have positive peers, and look forward to their futures.

From this perspective, Mr. Obama’s message that he briefly stumbled but then righted himself to achieve success may be just what the doctor ordered.”

D.A.R.E. is not the only program out there. Alternative solutions abound–programs, for example, that focus on developing positive behaviors rather than avoiding negative behaviors–and are worth looking into. While I believe it’s important to educate our children about drugs and alcohol and their effects, preaching and fear-mongering are not the answers. Instead of saying what we don’t want our children to do, let’s give them some ideas and role-modeling about what we would like them to do.

It’s the Night Before Thanksgiving, and chances are, your teens will want to go out and meet their friends or hang out with their older siblings. You’re so busy cooking, you’ll most likely be relieved to have the house to yourself. But before you let them go, check the liquor!

Turns out Thanksgiving-Eve Night–the night before Thanksgiving–is the biggest night for underage drinking, even more than graduation or prom night. The fridge and the liquor cabinets are stocked, parents are distracted by relatives and dinner preparations, and older siblings or college-age friends are around…

Most of us can remember going to parties in high school. I didn’t drink then, but even I ended up at my fair share of parties, and believe me, drinking was happening, and it was in someone’s parents’ house. I never, ever saw the parents, so were they all away, a la Risky Business? Supposedly, things were more lax back in the 80s, when I was growing up. But is that really true? There were parties in people’s houses then, and there are parties now.

It’s a fairly commonly held belief among parents that if you let your teens drink in your house, you are keeping them safer by knowing where they are and what they’re doing. But what about this scenario:  This month, a doctor and his wife were charged with giving alcohol to minors and corruption of minors after a party at their house. The police officers who ended up at the house rounded up nine teenagers in the basement, where they found beer bottles and cans, a plastic beer bong, a “beer pong table,” and joints. The parents said they allowed their 17-year-old son to host parties at the house and emphasized that they did not let any of the underage drinkers drive home.

In an article in The Pittsburgh Tribune, Carnegie Mellon University police Chief Tom Ogden said this about parents: ”They say, ‘Oh, just drink in the basement, but it’s stupid, it’s irresponsible, and it’s criminal. It’s a problem with the attitudes of these parents. Rather than tell their kids no and hold them accountable for their actions, they try to be their cool friends.”

Another policeman, Officer McDonough said, “They think because the kids are drinking in the basement that everything is fine, but how are they going to keep track of all those kids? And if one leaves and gets into a DUI crash, now innocent lives are being affected.”

Whether you do or do not let them drink in your house, teens will gather, and alcohol might or might not be involved. What is your stance regarding your (or other people’s) underage teens? Would you let your teens drink with their friends in your house? Would you host a party and if you did, would you stand there, monitoring everyone? This is one of those hot-button, no-win topics, it would seem…What do you think?  (As a postscript, I wonder how this issue plays out–or doesn’t–in other countries. Think of France, where teens have been sipping wine since they were kids. Would their parents get arrested for underage drinking? It almost makes one wonder if the drinking age doesn’t create certain problems of forbidden fruit…)

by Caren Osten Gerszberg

In the wake of the Diane Schuler tragedy and the resulting bad press of the average mom who drinks an average amount of alcohol in a responsible way—I say enough is enough. We need to stop demonizing ALL women and mothers who drink, because many of them drink in a manner that is okay, as in…moderately.

Perhaps the ensuing onslaught of negativity towards women who enjoy alcohol has one saving grace—that those who do have a problem, drinking in secret and getting behind the wheel of a car after one cocktail too many, will hopefully be motivated to address their habits and potential addiction for fear that such a calamity could be part of their own story.

But for the many women and mothers among us who enjoy a glass of merlot, a cold brew or the occasional martini, the media’s response is not an acceptable indictment. Women are entitled to partake in the cocktail clutch just as men do. Yes, we are the ones who typically drive the kids around, and play with the fire that turns out an evening meal, but just like men who pal around and throw back a few at the bar, poker table and tailgate, there are women who want to do the same. Only many are more likely to do so while the kids are playing nearby or while putting dinner together. As long as there is no danger, why is this equivalent female version of drinking being labeled as dangerous?

Which leads me to another issue—drinking in front of our children. I have three of my own, and drink regularly in front of them. They are aware of the pleasures their parents derive from a glass of wine and see them do so responsibly. Some people feel it’s setting a bad example to drink while the kids are around, assuming the younger generation will therefore mimic their “proper” behavior and forever stay away from the bad stuff called booze. But what about kids learning and understanding that mom and dad can have a drink because it tastes good and they like it? That parents are people who are allowed to partake in certain activities that kids can’t. Until a certain age, we can drive; they can’t. We can vote; they can’t. We can drink; they can’t.

I realize this is not a simple matter for some women. That drinking can be loaded with complexity. A family history or relationship with an alcoholic can turn the act of drinking into a web of doubt, guilt and fear. But that’s not who I’m addressing here. I’m speaking about those in control—those for whom drinking is not fraught, or complicated, but merely one of life’s simple pleasures. And that is nothing to be ashamed of.

Caren Osten Gerszberg is a co-founder and editor of Drinking Diaries. To watch her interview about women and drinking on the ABC News Now show, “Moms Get Real,” go to http://abcnews.go.com/video/playerIndex?id=8367782.

by V.C.

Nothing prepares you for seeing your 21-year-old son in handcuffs–still stinking of booze, beltless, pants falling down–led from the court pens at his arraignment for DWI.  Nothing prepares you for watching your baby hold out his hands as the cuffs are removed, or the noise they make.

With each clink of the cuffs, your heart breaks and you ask yourself, why was I such a bad mother?  Why couldn’t I save him?  Did I do too much or too little?

What flashed through my mind were a series of firsts when he was just a child.  His first steps, his first day at grammar school with his Power Rangers lunch box in hand, the look on his face when he hit his first home run.  And then much later, his first drunk.

He was fifteen at the time, and that night he wore the bill of his ball cap down low.  He sported his hip-hop clothes and his hip-hop swagger, and he told me he was just going to the park to hang out for a while.  He wouldn’t look me in the eye, though. And on this night, while my husband slept, I stayed awake, instinctively knowing something was off.  He came home, cap askew, eyes bloodshot.

“What did you drink?” I asked him.

“Nothing.”

“What did you drink?” I repeated, looking deeply into his eyes.

“Vodka.  Don’t tell Dad.”

“I won’t.  But you will,” I said.

Well done, Mommy, I thought to myself.  Have the boy take responsibility for his own actions.

The next day, my husband and I projected a united front as he confessed his sins to his father.  He had drunk vodka out of a Gatoraid bottle.  Alot of it.  We gave him the “talk” about drugs and drinking.  With a family history of alcoholism, we had more than a workable knowledge of the perils of drugs and alcohol.  Still.  We wanted to believe it was innocent—a mere experiment.  But Brian, as he grew older, seemed to gravitate to the seedier side of life.  He didn’t always go to school.  He’d gotten hurt playing baseball and had given up sports.  He wanted to be “cool” so he smoked cigarettes.  He smoked weed.  We confronted him all the time.  My cool, cocky son replied, “Don’t worry, I’ve got a handle on it.”  We wanted to believe him.

Soon the incidents of drunkenness escalated, and he just got better at hiding it from us.  Until he couldn’t.  He would come home drunk and collapse on his bed.  His room stank of booze.  One morning I found vomit next to the bed.  And then one winter break, when he was eighteen, I had had enough.

“You can’t live here anymore,” I told him.  “I won’t live with a drunk.”

He called me while I was at work contrite.  “I’m sorry.  I have a handle on it,” he said.  “But I don’t have a problem.  I got a little out of control, that’s all.”

“One day you will have to stop,” I said.

After each incident he behaved for awhile.  To show us.  To show himself that he had a handle on things.  But ultimately the feelings of Insecurity, of Less Than, of Fear were always simmering underneath his cool exterior.  He was big on the outside, but on the inside he surely felt small.  And now he’s 21 and legal, and so he’s begun drinking in earnest.  He’s allowed into bars any time day or night, and that’s where he goes to feed his feelings.

That day, I cried at that court rail, and I didn’t care who witnessed my tears. I cried because I had and STILL HAVE such high hopes for him.
After the arraignment he got into the car, still drunk.

“This was not so bad,” he said.

“No,” his Dad said.  “It’s much worse.  This is as good as it gets,” he warned.  “If you keep drinking, what you have in your future is more jail.  More pain.  Hurting someone else.  Hurting yourself.  Save yourself NOW.  We love you.  You are a good kid with a bad problem.”

Our son is not even aware of the ripple effect that his contact with the criminal justice system will have on his life.  It will affect job applications and work; there will be drug and alcohol testing for at least six months, car insurance will double for five to ten years, and of course there is our trust.  The shock to our system as parents hit us like a lightning bolt.
We hope that this is a wake up call for him.  We don’t need any other signs for we know that this is either the end of a problem and he will straighten up and get his act together, or it is just the beginning of a life gone awry because of alcohol abuse.

My son, my son, I want to hug him and shake him awake at the same time.  I want to slap him and then kiss his stinging cheek and tell him everything is going to be all right because I am his mother and I desperately want to make it so.  But even a mother’s love can’t put a Bandaid over a bullet wound, and so what I do is I tell him he still has the power to choose the life he wants to lead, and that he must choose wisely and choose well.  And then I echo his father’s words,” Don’t let this day be as good as it gets.”

As of this writing Brian is almost five months sober and we are very proud of him.

V.C. lives and works in the New York metropolitan area.  She is married and has two children.  She has written two memoirs, which are not yet published.

by Rachel Sarah

Seven months after giving birth to my daughter, her father walked out the door.  Now that my daughter is nine, she has asked me a bit about her dad (although not as much as I’d anticipated). I’ve said: “He was so excited to be your father, but he wasn’t ready.” That’s not the whole truth now, is it?

When I met my daughter’s father, on an airplane, one of the first things I noticed about him was the smell of alcohol on his breath. To most women, that would have been a red flag. But I had this rescue complex (some call it “co-dependency”!) and thought I could handle people, even help them, especially men. Yes, your typical wounded-bird syndrome.

I haven’t written much about alcoholism and how it has affected my life, but over three years ago, for a guest blog in the Washington Post, I wrote about having a baby with an alcoholic.

In four hundred words for a guest post, you can’t get too deep. So I tried to keep it honest and concise:  A year before I had my daughter, I knew that her father was bipolar – and an alcoholic. I also knew that I was co-dependent.

Readers came out in droves to respond. One guy said I was “irresponsible” for “getting pregnant by [your] bipolar, alcoholic boyfriend…”  Another reader–”Been there”–added, “Here’s some advice that will benefit all readers. Don’t have sex with bipolar alcoholics. And if you do, and you end up pregnant, put the baby up for adoption.”

They didn’t stop there, and I probably should have gotten some support. What I did instead was this: I closed up. I stopped writing about alcoholism. I haven’t written more than a few lines about being with an alcoholic. Until now.
 
Why? Because as the years pass – and my daughter gets older — I get concerned. You see, I grew up in a family that kept secrets. Alcoholism runs deeply on my mother’s side. We laughed at the men in her family, and got embarrassed. But we didn’t really talk about it.

And now, as I said, my daughter is starting to ask.

So, tell me: how honest and open should I be with her about her father’s alcoholism? She’s going into fourth grade now. She’s smart, spunky, and sensitive. At a recent pediatrician appointment, her doctor talked to me about the fact that depression and alcoholism run in her genes. 

So, if I don’t tell the truth, will I just be keeping secrets too? I take responsibility for my own addictions. I was obsessed with curing her father, and thinking that I could save him. But I’ve grown up, and moved on.

If I don’t come clean with my child, who will?

 
Rachel Sarah is the author of Single Mom Seeking: Play Dates, Blind Dates, and Other Dispatches from the Dating World  (Seal Press) (www.singlemomseeking.com). She’s also the founder of one of the top blogs for single parents, Single Mom Seeking (www.singlemomseeking.com/blog).