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Alcohol

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Michael Anzilotti
The Effects of Alcohol & Future Decision Making Through my Alcohol Awareness class, I learned some valuable information in statistics, such as Scientists once believed that human brains reached their maximum growth in childhood; however, recent research indicates that brain development continues until about age
25. The Consumption of alcohol during the adolescent years can affect brain development and may result in long-term negative effects. Alcohol can interfere with adolescents’ ability to form new, lasting, and explicit memories of facts and events. Additionally, I learned that the pharmacological effects of alcohol and other chemical substances most immediately interfere with optimal brain functioning. Continued use of alcohol and other drugs over time may keep youth from advancing to more complex stages of thinking and social interaction. In addition to this there are several neurological impacts that underage drinking can have on adolescents. Psychoactive substances such as alcohol produce pleasurable feelings and may diminish stress and emotional pain. These chemicals can turn on the brain’s reward system, which makes people want to repeat the use of substances to obtain the same feelings. Eventually, substance use can alter the structure and chemical makeup of the brain, leading to brain disorders. Some additional health risks that underage drinking incurs includes risky sexual behavior, alcohol poisoning and additional mental health disorders. The impacts alcohol induces on sexual behavior includes that Youth who drink alcohol more commonly engage in sexual intercourse when drinking, have sexual experiences at an earlier age, have sex with multiple partners, engage in unprotected or unplanned sex, experience unexpected pregnancies, have babies with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum disorders, and contract sexually transmitted diseases and

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