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Zane began drinking when he was 12 and didn’t stop until he was 16. “Just about every day, maybe half a bottle of tequila a day,” recalls Zane.
But even after a year of sobriety, Zane says he often forgets names and faces, and things slip his mind easily. “Like just today my grandfather asked me to get something, and I went and put the keys in the car, and I went to go get it, and I forgot what I was going in the kitchen for,” he says.
“We now know and we’ve always believed this, that it will probably cause brain damage more quickly in teenagers and children than it does in adults,” says Robert Margolis, Ph.D., an addiction specialist.
The American Medical Association (AMA) says the evidence is clear. Brain scans show former teen drinkers have dramatically lower brain activity. They have a smaller hippocampus, which is the area of the brain responsible for memory and learning. And they score dramatically lower in memory and vocabulary tests.
“Translated into school grades, their memory would be at least one letter grade worse,” says Dr. Margolis. Experts say parents shouldn’t just talk to their kids about how drugs and alcohol can do long-term damage but also show them AMA supported websites like alcoholpolicysolutions.net.
“It shows brain scans. It gives you charts of how much impact there is on memory and learning. And go over it with your teenager,” says Dr. Margolis. “Anybody can look at that, it doesn’t take a scientist to be able to look at that. It’s very clear.”
Zane adds, “I wish when I was a kid I had had those talks about drugs, and I did know it was bad.”
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