Alcohol & Drug Abuse Series

I'm working on another 3-part series on alcohol and drug abuse among highschool kids for Sweeps month. At first I balked at the unorginality of it but then it became clear that this was not another proverbial news story. Our series starts tonight at 11pm and continues Monday and Tuesday. What's so revealing is that kids are finally responding to the anti-drinking message because of a recent medical report about brain damage. Most of us have heard of alcohol consumption and ARBI or Alcohol Related Brain Injury. ARBI results in damage to the cognitive part of your brain (memory and thinking abilities) and difficulties with balance and coordination as well as long term neurological disorders. ARBI is more likely to occur if a person drinks heavily on a regular basis over many years but it is possible to develop ARBI if the drinking is aggressive enough, like binge drinking (what teenagers and college kids are guilty of). The hippocampus, the prefrontal area, the cerebellum; I'm working with doctors and social workers on this story so it's like a crash course in AMA journalism. The new report, published in the journal Alcohol: Clinical and Experimental Research, is downloadable as an abstract at this site - http://www.alcoholism-cer.com Testing on animals proved that young brains under the age of 21 are not programmed to make rational decisions, under the influence or not and when a teenager binge drinks, they are literally causing irreversible and permanent damage to their frontal lobe. I could go on and on and on about this interesting topic, especially since I have family personally effected by alcohol and drug abuse, but then you'd missing my evening series! Can't have that!!