Alcoholics

Kids Books About Addiction
Music and Books For Kids

Beyond "Just Say No": Kids' Books About Alcohol and Drugs

Anyone who has grown up with someone close to them drinking or abusing drugs knows that the problem extends far beyond the actual user.
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Kids Books About Addiction

Anyone who has grown up with someone close to them drinking or abusing drugs knows that the problem extends far beyond the actual user. Alcoholic households are characterized by chaos; tots thrive on consistency and reliability, so the effects can be devastating. Just like talking to tots about sex, talking to young children about drug and alcohol abuse — especially when it's in the home — has the potential to confuse the issue even more. Keep reading for a selection of children's books that will help adults navigate the tricky topic and reassure tots that it's not their fault.

Emmy's Question ($10) Think of Wind ($20) An Elephant in the Living Room ($10) A My Dad Loves Me, My Dad Has a Disease: A Child's View of Living With Addiction ($13) Up and Down the Mountain: Helping Children Cope With Parental Alcoholism ($9) Daddy Doesn't Have to Be a Giant Anymore ($4) My Big Sister Takes Drugs ($7)
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A News Study Shows Alcoholics Misread Facial Cues
Health

A News Study Shows Alcoholics Misread Facial Cues

They don’t call it getting blotto for nothing.
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They don’t call it getting blotto for nothing.

You’ve probably heard the claim that alcohol kills brain cells. A new study makes this a little more concrete: long-time alcoholics’ brains (even those who are now sober) are not good at recognizing facial expressions. Specifically, their brain’s limbic system (which supports emotion, long-term memory and the ability to smell things) does not register facial expressions of joy, sadness or disappointment as intensely for them.

Making sure that the two test groups were matched in IQ, socioeconomic status and education, researchers showed 15 now-sober alcoholics and 15 nonalcoholics pictures of faces asking, “How intelligent do you think this person is?” The pictures represented a face that was positive, negative or neutral. Using an MRI to check out how the respective groups’ limbic systems were operating, they saw strong activity in the nonalcoholics’ brains in response to the emotion-expressing photos, but for the abstaining alcoholics — it was all the same to them.

Without being able to read a person’s expressions, even the recovering alcoholic (to say nothing of a practicing alcoholic), will have more difficulty with interpersonal situations — with coworkers, significant others and family members. They may misread what's happening and overreact or underreact. All this may cause more strife for them, which could lead to more drinking. What researchers aren’t clear about it is which came first — emotional insensitivity and hence alcoholism, or alcohol-induced emotional insensitivity?