Influence of Age on Alcohol Addiction - Essay Example

Number: Influence of Age on Alcohol Addiction Age has something to do with the actual changes and circumstances occurring to an individual. In fact, age has a significant influence on an individual’s alcohol addiction. We therefore need to critically analyse this point. To have a better grasp whether alcohol addiction may be influenced by age, the work at hand supports the claim above by taking the excerpts from “Black Boy” by Richard Wright and “Drinking: A Love Story” by Caroline Knapp. Richard from the novel “Black Boy” and Caroline from the novel “Drinking: A Love Story” have different life’s circumstances, but for sure they all have one thing in common. Everything that happens to their individual life as they grew up is influenced by their age. Richard grew with little understanding of the world around him. “I grew silent and reserved as the nature of the world in which I lived became plain and undeniable; the bleakness of the future affected my will to study.  Granny had already thrown out hints that it was time for me to be on my own” (Wright 181). However, as he aged, consciousness started to grow deep within him, allowing him to create remarkable realization of the reality of life and the one that he is trying to follow. “I was in my fifteenth year; in terms of schooling I was far behind the average youth of the nation, but I did not know that.  In me was shaping a yearning for a kind of consciousness, a mode of being that the way of life about me had said could not be, must not be, and upon which the penalty of death had been placed.  Somewhere in the dead of the southern night my life had switched onto the wrong track and, without my knowing it, the locomotive of my heart was rushing down a dangerously steep slope, heading for a collision, heedless of the warning red lights that blinked all about me, the sirens and the bells and the screams that filled the air” (Wright 187). The above points only show that Richard’s understanding of the world around him comes with age. His realization of the things around him is a depiction of his actual response to his world which is clearly associated with his age as we could clearly see the level of his maturity in here. Thus, we have created the point that our specific response to what is happening around may have potential impact on our actual thoughts or actions, but this clearly comes with age just as the kind of thought like this of Richard when he was already at the right age. “I dreamed of going north and writing books, novels.  The North symbolized to me all that I had not felt and seen; it had no relation whatever to what actually existed.  Yet, by imagining a place where everything was possible, I kept hope alive in me” (186). Similarly, Caroline Knapp would have never realized what an alcoholic is when she had never become one as she aged. According to her, “Craziness, dark secrets, alcoholic furies, that's how you become an alcoholic, right? It's encoded in your DNA, embedded in your history, the product of some wild familial aberration. There was always an undercurrent of moral failing in the stories I heard about alcoholics: they were unstable, unwell, irresponsible, and if they were parents, they tore through the lives of their children like tornadoes, drinking and divorcing, screaming and raging" (Knapp 28-29). The reason why Caroline actually defines this is because she had so much experience from her growing years with alcohol and she could actually associate the actual feeling involved in such a habit. Those things that influence her to gulp an alcoholic beverage, which could be more than what is substantially required, are integral components of her past growing years. In fact, there is an indication that she pre-learned everything from her father, but later was full blown when she already stood at the right age. "My father had a probing manner, an analytic intensity tempered by a vague detachment, and whenever I sensed him turns his attention to me, the feeling on my part was instinctual and claustrophobic” (Knapp 33-34). That is why there might be a big missing part of her even though she has become a successful career woman. A “man problem” in great detail led her to be in denial, embracing the idea of a twenty-year love affair with alcohol. This clearly reveals why she in the first place considered alcohol to suffice her hunger and need. "When someone sets a bottle of wine on the dinner table, do you find yourself glancing at it subversively, possessively, the way you might look at a lover you long for but don't quite trust?" she asks. "When someone pours you a glass from that bottle, do you take careful note of the level of liquid in the glass and measure it secretly against the level of liquid in the other glasses, and hold your breath just for a second until you're assured you have enough? Do you establish an edgy feeling of relationship with that glass, that wine bottle; do you worry over it, care about it, covet it, want all of it for yourself? Can you bear the thought that it might run out, that you'll be left sitting there without it, alone and unprotected?" (SAY Media Inc.; Knapp 162). The main point of the above arguments is that the actual realization and response of an individual to the actual environment comes with age. We clearly show this on the case of Richard and his actual thoughts. However, at a more specific level, we even further notice this on how Caroline ended up with alcohol addiction when she reached a certain level of age, where she could stand responsible for herself and freely create things to respond to her actual life’s circumstances. On the other hand, even though there is a clear evidence to suggest the point that there might be a great influence of age on alcohol addiction, which based on Knapp could be rooted from a past experience, hunger and need, age may also reveal the point that it counter the possibility of extreme alcoholism. If we based it on Richard’s actual character in the story we can depict the kind of choice or decision an individual might employ in order to make a difference or perform a certain action to counteract certain hunger or needs. “It had been only through books- at best, no more than vicarious cultural transfusions—that I had managed to keep myself alive in a negatively vital way.  Whenever my environment had failed to support or nourish me, I had clutched at books; consequently, my belief in books had risen more out of a sense of desperation than from any abiding conviction of their ultimate value.  In a peculiar sense, life had trapped me in a realm of emotional rejection; I had not embraced insurgency through open choice.  Existing emotionally on the sheer, thin margin of southern culture, I had felt that nothing short of life itself hung upon each of my actions and decisions; and I had grown used to change, to movement, to making adjustments” (Wright 282). References Knapp, Caroline. Drinking: A Love Story. New York, NY: Bantam Dell, 2005. 28-162. Print. SAY Media Inc. Drinking: A Love Story. 14 Nov. 2011. Web. 10 July 2013. . Wright, Richard. Black Boy. New York, NY: Harper Collins, 2009. 181-282. Print. Read More