[Adolescence and alcohol]

Anna Freud defined adolescence "evolutional disorder", meaning also a compulsory and temporary shift. Corresponding, biologically, to the puberty, it is an age full of expectations and hopes, nevertheless not free from psychological and social risks: because of a changing relation with family, of the searching of new models, of the coming in contact with less protective contexts, of the differentiation of affective expectations. Therefore it can be that the passing from childhood to active subjectivity brings on anxiety, conflicts and deviance; and it can suggest illusory remedies as overindulgence in alcohol, alarming phenomenon denounced by WHO and by many other international and Italian institutions. After these preliminary remarks, the A. reminds as alcohol and its by-products reached Europe, describes its metabolism and its biological effects, the genetic factors which could predispose to the tolerance and/or to the addiction, the environmental and social ones, and the costs, both individual and public. Conclusions want suggest two omens: the reclamation of a new kind of family relation, based on listening and dialogue; and the achievement of a concrete alliance between society and young adult, which could conjugate the expectations of the community with the rights of the new subject for a free and integrated growing up.