Troubled Teens Resources

Teen help usually is sponsored or initiated by schools and government agencies and non-profits, but perhaps the most powerful source of teen help comes from parents themselves. Parents whose family or community has been impacted by teen age drug abuse, drinking and driving and other destructive behaviors.
Five Moms is a group that emerged as a result of the rising abuse of over-the-counter drugs, such as cough medicine.

We are five moms—a pediatric nurse practitioner, an accountant, a D.A.R.E. officer, an educator, and an author—from different backgrounds and from all over the country. We’ve come together with a common concern: teenagers abusing cough medicine to get high. We worry not only about our own kids, but about those of our friends and neighbors, too.

So when the Consumer Healthcare Products Association asked us to spread the word to parents, we stepped forward. The idea is a simple one. We will each tell five more moms about this nationwide problem, and they will tell another five, and another five beyond that. Soon, we hope to reach every parent in America with this message: that we must work together to educate our teens about the dangers of cough medicine abuse.

Visit their site for more information. (H/T: Save Our Youth Taskforce)Here are some of the warning signs that your at-risk teen may be abusing cough medicine:

• Empty cough medicine boxes or bottles in the trash of your teen’s room, or boxes or bottles missing from the medicine cabinet
• Visiting pro-drug web sites that provide information on how to abuse dextromethorphan
• Changes in friends, physical appearance, or sleeping or eating patterns
• Declining grades
• Loss of interest in hobbies or favorite activities
• Hostile and uncooperative attitude
• Unexplained disappearance of household money
• Unusual chemical or medicinal smells on your child or in his or her room