Troubled Teens Resources

It is amazing that childhood remedies - simple medicines designed to alleviate the discomforts of the common cold, are now a target in the campaign against teen age drug abuse. But when troubled teens are determined to get high, they will find any possible method available to do so.

DXM is the primary ingredient in cough medicines that teens seek as an intoxicant. It can be found in your medicine shelf and at your local drug store. But as parents wise up and start putting these simple medicines under lock and key, as are drug stores, teens are simply turning to the internet.

“There are a number of disreputable websites that provide “how-to” guides to get high off of DXM. These sites include information recommending how much DXM to use, suggest other drugs to combine with DXM, provide instructions on how to extract DXM from cough medicines, promote drug abuse in general, and even offer for purchase a raw, unfinished form of DXM for snorting.”

Recent legislation passed in the house,the Dextromethorphan Distribution Act of 2007, is designed to thwart the sale of bulk DMX.

“In 2005, two teenagers in my district died after overdosing on unfinished DXM they bought on the Internet,” said Congressman Rick Larsen. “The loss of these children is a tragedy that will be forever felt by their families and communities. We cannot continue to allow this dangerous drug to be only a click of the mouse away from our homes and our children. I urge the Senate to act quickly and approve this common sense measure to protect our kids.”
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Teens at risk seldom see themselves that way. The typical arrogance and sense of omnipotence that is characteristic of teens can easily lead them into making some down right idiotic decisions. Such as knowingly taking drugs that they are, indeed, convinced are harmful, but they choose to risk their health and lives anyway.

Especially noted for casual abuse are cough medicines. According to this young man’s account, they are the most easily obtained, and the easiest to conceal.

“The drug used to be completely legal for a 15-year-old to buy in the store. If not to buy, it was easy enough to steal… It was easy to tell my mother that I had a cough or that I felt like I was coming down with something, and she never asked about the empty bottles. The effects of the drug are mostly sensory: tunnel vision, hyper-sensitivity to touch and movement, etc. It takes the right circumstances and doses to produce hallucinations. In other words, it takes very little to act straight in front of authority types and there is little physical evidence of intoxication: No smell, you don’t slur your words. Your face gets red and your eyes dilate, but other than that…”

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Though it may weary a parent to continue to be made aware of all the subterfuge that they must see through when dealing with teen age drug abuse, teen help aids and information for this specific drug abuse are becoming increasingly available. We posted earlier on the efforts being expended by “Five Moms”, a group of mothers who organized to combat cough medicine abuse and were the source of inspiration for the young man above to write about his own experiences of as a teen.