“When I left for the market earlier that day, my son was living in Paraguay working for the Peace Corps. By the time I returned home to put the groceries away, he’d become an alcoholic headed for rehab. So what happened…?” (Volkmanns) Today in our country teen drinking has reached the level of enormous proportions, promoting a generation of young people whose lives are starting to rapidly come apart under the damage of alcoholism. During his college years, Toren Volkmann enjoyed partying like there was no tomorrow and like those were the best times of his life.  His mother Chris, unfortunately like many parents, failed to notice son’s rising alcohol problem. When finally Toren graduated, he came to the realization that he has turned into a total alcoholic but he was not alone and he found his way through this difficult and life destroying situation.

Toren Volkmann agrees that the alcohol is a number one drug of choice for the nation’s youth as well as that the binge drinking is the most common and a widespread health problem of the college campuses. The story of Toren is a story of teen’s life that went from great downhill due to his heavy drinking. This young man is a prototype of an average young person in our society.  He comes from a family with three boys that is financially stable and easily comes under the definition of “an ideal family” of today. The family was happy with no big problems and good communication between each other. But as all we know there is no such thing as a perfect family and the skeletons indeed are handing in their closet.

Toren started to try drinking at the high school parties. It was a normal and usual teen curiosity about what alcohol does to your body. He tried couple drugs but unlike alcohol they did not appeal to him. Toren viewed drinking as fun and it started to create a dangerous habit of getting used to it. He was consistently drinking every weekend and got very drunk. After that he started consuming so much alcohol to the point of blacking out. At the party Toren says that he does not want just one beer, he wants all the beer. Toren subconsciously and quickly acquired a terrible drinking problem. Like other people with same emerging symptoms, young man did not see anything bad in what he was doing and saw drinking as a way of self satisfaction and enjoyment to be able to drink more hard alcohol than anyone else.

There exist three main types of drinkers: first is the one who drinks to relax, second is the one who is forced by the peer teen pressure and others are the ones who drink with a sole reason to get drunk. Toren was the third type of drinker who consumed alcohol to get very drunk. His words about wanting all the beer at the party provide a solid ground to say that he is a binge drinker, namely someone who consumes great amounts of alcohol in a short period of time. Toren even boasts that he has never had just a one glass of beer. However, no one in his high school knew about young man’s problem. In fact high school is the first place where young kids try alcohol and start drinking. At his senior year young Toren acquired one of the very dangerous habits of today.

By people around him Toren was viewed as almost a perfect son who graduated school with good grades and had a prominent future in front of him. However, when college came into young man’s life, the problems began to appear. Toren started drinking every night without clear understanding what it does to his body and soul. Being already highly dependent on alcohol, he drinks beers even if he does not really want to get drunk. His life went downhill. Toren started to receive bad grades and totally screwed up his normal schedule. Drinking all weekend, young man would only finish the stage of being hangover by Wednesday. He was losing it. Having just few days of the week left before a new weekend did not give him any motivation to get some college work done. His hangovers became very bad to the point of his realization that he does not remember what has happened last night. This point shows that Toren now has no self respect for himself. Young man makes irrational decisions because he is not able to think straight and because he actually makes his decision while being drunk. With every new day he makes himself look more like a fool.

Bad decisions, low grades, horrible habits as a result of heavy drinking took away Toren’s dream of becoming a member of Peace Corp. Trying to find his life long career  while being in Paraguay, young man was caught on drinking and kicked out. At this time he had to let his family know what was going on in his life. He had to write a difficult letter of explanation to his mother.