Troubled Teens Resources

Teen crisis intervention education in the area of prescription drugs emphasizes one point constantly; just because you got the drug from a doctor, doesn’t mean that taking that drug will always be a safe experience. Just because it is prescribed, doesn’t make it less addictive.

“No matter what he put in his body or how he acquired it, Alexander McCain would never have seen himself as an addict.

After all, he wasn’t snorting cocaine or injecting heroin. He was taking things anyone can get from the doctor.

“It’s so much easier to party by popping an OxyContin in your mouth instead of shooting up with heroin,” said Alexander’s brother, Steven Dick. “It makes it seem like you’re not doing drugs. Alexander would never consider himself a druggy, even though he was doing drugs all the time.”
(source)

And his autopsy would prove it. He died from a combination of alcohol and his favorite “safe” prescription. But teens are not the only ones who misunderstand addiction.

One teen complained to me that she couldn’t abide her mother’s hypocrisy. Her mother is on anti-depressants, valuium and sleeping pills. Because all of this was prescribed, she differentiated her drug use from that of her daughter’s drug using friends. She’d be wrong and her daughter would be right to call her on it.

But her daughter will run into the biggest obstacle to recovery that addicts have - denial. Denial is extremely powerful. It has to be powerful for Alexander to have become addicted to the same drugs that killed his brother two years earlier.

Teen crisis intervention programs are often the result of media hype. That can be a two edged sword. Parents need to be aware of the dangers confronting their troubled teenagers, but by the same token, if the media goes too far in demonizing a drug, the ultimate effect may be a dilution of the anti-drug message. As this writer puts it, not every drug can hold the title as the worst.

“This is the problem with having a demon drug of the moment: all of them can’t possibly be “the worst” and “most addictive” and “most dangerous,” but if you look at the news coverage of each new scare, that’s exactly what the coverage claims. When crack came out, it was “more addictive than heroin,” (the previous worst drug ever), now meth allegedly makes crack look like “child’s play.”

One possible result of media overkill is that now cocaine may have come out looking like a benign substitute for meth and heroin. After all, it is associated with the fast life culture promoted by Hollywood. Kate Moss, the high fashion model that all predicted would lose her career due to her much publicized cocaine use, is experiencing an even more successful run.

“There seems to be less of a stigma about” cocaine, said Dr. Herbert Kleber… “People don’t feel nearly as much the need to hide it,” he said. “They feel that they can use it in a more open fashion.”

(Source)

Perhaps what should be demonized is simply addiction itself. Be it to a drug, or food, or sex, perhaps the lesson teens need to hear is to never to abdicate their power to anything outside themselves. That can be encouraged by teaching the importance of individuality and the power of choice.

Teens at risk can manifest symptoms of behavioral problems in peculiar and very destructive ways. An acquaintance recently enrolled her daughter in a troubled teen boarding school. She had been having problems for almost two years prior to coming to the conclusion that Jenny would not get the support she needed from the public school system. When I asked her what the last straw was she had a one word answer.

“Cutting. I’d read about it and thought it too weird to contemplate- never thought for a second that Jen would do something that harmful, but, well, I walked into her room when she was getting dresses and saw all of these fresh scabs and scars and when I confronted her she broke down into a sobbing mess. That’s when I knew her depression was beyond what I could handle. I needed help.”

Believe or not, such a painful practice can become addictive. Here is how one teen on a bulletin board described it.

“Before you make that first cut remember: You will enjoy this. You will find the blood and pain release addictive. Even though you think you can make a couple tiny cuts that’s aren’t deep and that will heal easily, they will get deeper. They will scar. They will take sometimes months to heal and years for the scars to fade. If you think you can limit the cutting to one part of your body, think again; it will spread when you run out of skin.”

(Source)

To educate yourself about cutting, or self-harm, Psyke.org has information, testimony and a collection of very unpleasant pictures.

Sometimes it is good for a parent of a troubled teen to hear another parent describe their experiences. The internet sometimes allows parents to share without ever meeting via blogs and online journals.

Ironically, one of the concerns parents struggle with is their teen’s excessive use of the internet, seemingly a factor in this troubled teen’s life.

Internet Addiction

“I’ve written about my daughter’s success more than once in recent times but have been sadly silent about my son, who will be 18 on Thursday. This is odd, as he has been on my mind a great deal. Perhaps the reason I have not blogged on it is that there is little to boast about and things have been said and done that are deeply saddening.

He spent the last school year, pretending to work and spending god knows how many hours on the internet. His reward was a month-long holiday trekking in Africa. He was supposed to get a job and pay for half, but didn’t (many excuses).

We hoped that seeing the world and then the shock of terrible exam results would help him grow up, and we persuaded the school to let him re-take the year. Yet whilst there has been some improvement in work, it may not be enough and the deception has continued such that we cannot really tell whether anything he says is true or not.
[..]
After much thought we have decided to now cut off the internet altogether. He will object, no doubt, and maybe seek revenge.”
(Source)

Addictive Patterns

The writer goes on to remark that their son’s behavior improved after a time away from the internet and that maybe some kind of addiction pattern was indicated.

If your troubled teen uses any one entertainment, sport or activity to the detriment of all else, it can be cause for concern, The parent here is wise to note a “pattern”, as he was wise to pull the internet.

Learning to live life in balance seems to take an entire life to learn. If these parents can teach their at-risk teen to seek balance, help the teenager learn new patterns, a path that can potentially lead to teenage drug abuse can be short circuited.