Katy Nealson of Sun City Arizona celebrated her twenty-first birthday on Thursday. The Arby’s crew member celebrated by having drinks with a small group of friends. She described it as “a night she would never forget”. Nobody was injured that night, but that group of young, sweaty twenty-somethings had knowingly put themselves in danger and altered their lives forever.
For Ms. Nealson and other young people alcohol has become one of the hippest ways to destroy their lives. Alcohol puts the body at risk for liver damage, heart disease, and cancer. These ill effects are widely known, yet there is no consideration for the long-term effects these drinks will have on their future. Every shot could be a car accident, every beer a divorce.
Empowered by the legality of their consumption, twenty-one-year-olds are at the highest risk of creating future failures for themselves. Katy Nealson thought she had fun on her birthday. What she really did was default on a mortgage and give her best friend chronic diarrhea. Moving forward we must convince these young drinkers to look past the immediate thrill of poisoning themselves and instead at the eventual horrors that delicious poison causes. It might mean the difference between getting to still have a child born and having a child stillborn.