Staff

Debra Allen lost her 17-year-old daughter to acute alcohol poisoning over the 2009 Christmas holiday. Shelby Allen was active in her school community, a good student and a good friend, but one night of drinking and irresponsible behavior left her dead.

During a presentation in Syufy Theatre, Allen explained the dangers of alcohol poisoning to. Not only is drinking illegal, it can also be lethal. As Allen related her heart-breaking tale, it was not just a mother’s pain that was portrayed, but the unnecessary nature of her tragedy.

The legal drinking age in the United States is 21, meaning no high school student should partake in drinking alcohol, yet most people still believe that partying and drinking are just another part of the teenage experience. In actuality, this kind of “normal teenage experimentation” can have a deathly price.

Every weekend teens spend the night in the emergency room as a result of a party gone too far. Tweets about blacking out, Facebook check-ins at the hospital and Instagram posts of hospital bracelets further glamorize binge drinking and make light of a serious problem. These stories become the hot topics of gossip and rumors and fuel this skewed teen culture.

Underage drinking is conveyed in almost every teenage movie, television show and even in some music videos. Scenes of red solo cups and kegs are paired with upbeat music and romantic conquests. Middle-schoolers and freshmen see these scenarios and think this is what high school life is suppose to be like.
What teens don’t realize is that girl throwing up in the bushes, that boy passed out on the floor, or that teenager stumbling around the bathroom completely incoherent are all suffering from alcohol poisoning. Every time someone blacks out, they are toeing a treacherous line between life and death.

Allen’s daughter Shelby went to a party with her friends and ended up in a morgue the next morning. Shelby didn’t think her probably “fun night out” would be her last night out, but few teenagers ever think death could be the end of their partying. We see ourselves as being invincible, but we are tragically mistaken.

Even if we do get lucky and live, we still put poison in our bodies without knowing the long term dangers of heavy alcohol consumption. Excessive binge drinking raises the probability of alcohol addiction and suppresses the serotonin — the chemical responsible for “happy feelings” — in the brain, causing deep depression among teenagers and ultimately adults.

For more information on Debra Allen and her foundation, Shelby’s Rules, go to;
http://shelbysrulesfoundation.com.