Approximately 80.4 percent of students had at least one drink of alcohol during their lifetime, as indicated by www.dianedew.com/drnkstat.htm. That statistic implies that out of the estimated 2600 students that attend West Brook, approximately 2090 of them have consumed alcohol sometime during their life.

It is almost impossible to come across a teenager that hasn’t had at least a sip of some sort of alcoholic drink, whether it was beer at a party, wine on New Year’s Day, champagne at a wedding, or some sort of fancy drink they ordered on vacation with a bunch of friends.

All the same, when do people, particularly underage teenagers, reach their physical and mental boundaries on the amount of alcohol they can withstand before they collapse or engage in improper, indecent behavior?

It may be fun for a while to be hooked on that high of freedom and feel completely at ease, but what goes up must eventually come back down, or, to be technical, out your mouth. When people get drunk, they don’t realize their limits, so they tend to consume more alcohol than their body can handle, which leads to vomiting, headaches, lightheadedness, and a complete lack of judgment.

Rape and death are two of the worst and most dreaded outcomes of excess drinking. Being unable to completely function properly, how do teenagers expect to control themselves in situations where the choices seem so unclear? Nobody sets out to be raped or to kill an innocent bystander. However, the predicament is more than likely to happen in a situation where the person, especially a teenager, is unconscious.

Furthermore, if something unpleasant did in fact occur when a person chose to be drunk, who is really to blame? Although the dilemma is unfortunate, individuals should have the common sense to realize that there are negative outcomes following intoxication.

According to a study posted on www.montana.edu/wwwai/imsd/alcohol/Vanessa/vwrapefactsheet.htm, 55 percent of men committed sexual assault when they were under the influence of alcohol. In the same study, 53 percent of women who experienced sexual aggression on a date were intoxicated at the time of the assault.

Ways to avoid these circumstances is to not drink excessively, especially while being around members of the opposite sex. If people’s reactions and reflexes are sluggish and lethargic while under the influence of alcohol, they can’t honestly expect to be able to defend themselves when an individual who may weigh twice as much as they do and be significantly stronger than they are is attempting to attack them.

Nevertheless, that risk is taken when teens consume alcohol at parties. A high school party without alcohol is simply unheard of, but just because the liquid substance is present, doesn’t mean it is beckoning students and forcing them to consume it. Contrary to popular belief, fun can be had without being under the influence of a beverage containing the intoxicating liquid, much less five of those beverages.

Additionally, the survey also states in the year 2005, there were 16,885 alcohol-related fatalities, which accumulated to 39 percent of total traffic fatalities of the year. That’s 16,885 people who will never be able to go back home to their families, whether it be the victim or the person who was initially responsible for the accident.

It is in no way the drunk’s right to be able to take the life of someone else who had nothing to do with the drinker’s own personal, wrongful behavior. Innocent bystanders should not, by any means, have to pay for someone else’s decision to drink, above all, underage teenagers who, legally, should not be partaking in the act to begin with.

Drinking doesn’t always solely affect the drinker. More often than not, all they have to cope with is a hangover later on or the contents of their stomach suddenly reappearing magically in front of their face. However, what if that wasn’t all someone had to cope with following the deed? What if their trouble-free choice resulted in so much more?