Underage drinking costs the United States more than $58 billion every year. Also, teens that drink are 50 times more likely to use cocaine than teens who never consume alcohol.

These are two very scary statistics, yet many people don't even consider alcohol a drug. Alcohol is very much a drug and when parents treat it lightly or even encourage their children to drink it is a mistake.

Many experts consider alcohol a gateway to further drug use but alcohol all by itself can be very dangerous and has ruined many, many lives. Just as all drugs are poisons so is alcohol a poison. If it is taken in large enough quantities it can kill you. Even so it can impair you greatly and has caused many people to have car accidents ending in their own death and or the death of another, often innocent, person.

Again, just like with any drug alcohol can be very addictive. When a person develops an alcohol addiction he burns up his body's reserves of vitamins and his entire immune system becomes weakened. Besides the harm done by the alcohol you are getting the additional harm by opening up the body to other illnesses.

After a person has a drinking binge he will feel "hung-over". He'll feel miserable in every way. What has happened is that the alcohol burned up his vitamin supply in his body and the deficiency will cause him to feel tired or sick and usually have a headache.

If a person does this type of thing often enough he will develop both a physical and psychological addiction to the alcohol. When he gets to that point he will become not only a burden to himself but others as well. Many times when a person has an alcohol addiction it will take longer for himself and others to acknowledge there is a problem because alcohol is much more socially acceptable than most other drugs.

When it gets to this point many people will require rehab because there is too much damage for the person to handle it and recover without help. Usually, but not always it will be necessary for friends or family to push the addict into rehab because addicts will have very low confront by this time about his life in general and the plain hard truth is he is likely to need the help.

Don't let the addict of any age become a statistic similar to ones mentioned in the beginning of this article. They can be helped.