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Ethics And Counseling

A Look at Peer Pressure: Teen Age Drugs and Alcohol Consumption
Abdullah Conte
Brown University

Abstract
This paper covers a lot of issues as peer pressure is concerned. As one read on, the factors explored, give us a good reasoning of how teens, adolescents face problem especially growing up in this challenging and contemporary world. Statistics gathered from different sources and the world wide web, the DSM IV is used to describe some of the diagnosis associated with the activities most youths are involved with.

Drug Addiction

Drug use is an increasing problem among teenagers in today's high schools. Most drug use begins in the teenage years; these years are the most crucial in the maturing process. During these years adolescents are faced with the difficult tasks of discovering their self identity, clarifying their sexual roles, assenting independence, learning to cope with authority figures and searching for goals that would give their lives meaning. Drugs are readily available, adolescents are curious and venerable, and there is peer pressure to experiment, and there is a temptation to escape from conflicts. The use of drugs by teenagers is the result of a combination of factors such as peer pressure, curiosity, and availability. Drugs addiction among adolescents in turn leads to depression and suicide.

One of the most important reasons of teenage drug usage is peer pressure. Peer pressure represents social influences that effect adolescents; it can have a positive or a negative effect, depending on the person's social group. We are greatly influenced by the people around us. In today's schools, drugs are very common; peer pressure usually is the reason for their usage. If the people in your social group use drugs there will be pressure a direct or indirect pressure from them. A person may be offered to try drugs, which is direct pressure. Indirect pressure is when
someone sees everyone around him using drugs and he might think that there...