Drastic Decisions Caused by Drugs and Drinking

For a lot of teenagers, drinking and drugs are used as an outlet for them to forget about their problems for a while. While reading “An Ounce of Cure” by Alice Munro and “Greasy Lake” by T. Coraghessan Boyle, readers will come to that realization. Both stories involve teenagers drinking alcohol or using drugs to forget about their problems, which allows them to learn life lessons that change them for the better in the process.

In “An Ounce of Cure”, the main character, Alice, falls in love with a boy named Martin Collingwood, who ends up leaving her for another girl. Alice becomes very depressed and resorts to taking pills and drinking alcohol. First, while she is at home, she goes to the bathroom, opens the cabinet, and “had an impulse to swallow all the Aspirins in the bathroom cabinet” (Munro p 3). Luckily, she stopped after she had taken six.

Later on in the story, while she is babysitting for the Berryman’s, she goes to the kitchen looking for something to drink. She scanned the fridge quickly, eyeing the three bottles of whiskey. Deciding to “pour a little whiskey from each of the bottles” was the decision she made (Munro p 5). After that, she decided to pour another full glass. Doing this was a terrible decision on her part, since she ended up vomiting and calling her friend, Joyce, who was at Kay’s house. When everyone found out that she was drunk, Joyce, Kay, and the other three boys that were there rushed over to the house. All of them were busy taking care of Alice, until the Berryman’s suddenly came back home. When Mr. Berryman saw that she was drunk, he drove her home. He gave her the choice to tell her parents or he was going to tell them for her. She ended up telling her mom, who was amazed at the sight of her be...

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...ing alcohol can cause such a commotion by starting fights that were never meant to happen. Since the alcohol caused these fights, they figured out ahead of time that by not doing the tablets with those girls and driving away instead, they prevented more commotion from occuring.

As you can see, alcohol and drugs can cause teenagers to go to such drastic measures such as attempting suicide or the act of almost raping others without thinking. The characters in “An Ounce of Cure” and “Greasy Lake” had to learn from their actions the hard way, but there is no doubt that they will think about what has happened in the past before taking a sip of alcohol or drug of any sort. Yes, these characters got to forget about their problems for a little while, but the consequences of their actions definitely had an impact on their lives, changing them for the better in the process.