Troubled Teens Resources

Huffing used to be what the big bad wolf did to blow the three pigs’ houses down. Now it’s what drug abusing teenagers are doing to blow their life apart. It’s under the radar but apparently escalating and, as with all substance abuse, dangerous to the point of being fatal

Brain, blood, lungs, heart, liver, kidneys are just a few of the organs which undergo damage when troubled teens decide to get high by huffing. It has been indicated that huffing may precede marijuana use and can begin in late childhood or early adolescence. It’s appeal lies in it’s easy availability and instantaneous high. Little known is the fact that it is addictive with few treatment programs available to address a high rate of relapse among recovering users.

“Most parents are in the dark regarding the popularity and dangers of inhalant use. But children are quickly discovering that common household products are inexpensive to obtain, easy to hide and the easiest way to get high. According to national surveys, inhaling dangerous products is becoming one of the most widespread problems in the country. It is as popular as marijuana with young people. More than a million people used inhalants to get high just last year. By the time a student reaches the 8th grade, one in five will have used inhalants.”

Here is a list of substances commonly abused

Volatile Solvents

• Adhesives
  model airplane glue, rubber cement, household glue
• Aerosols
  spray paint, hairspray, air freshener, deodorant, fabric protector, computer keyboard cleaner
• Solvents and gases
  nail polish remover, paint thinner, type correction fluid and thinner, toxic markers, pure toluene, cigar lighter fluid, gasoline, carburetor cleaner, octane booster
• Cleaning agents
  dry cleaning fluid, spot remover, degreaser
• Food products
  vegetable cooking spray, dessert topping spray (whipped cream), whippets
• Gases
  nitrous oxide, butane, propane, helium

Anesthetics

• Anesthetic
  nitrous oxide, ether, chloroform

Nitrites

(Nitrite room odorizers)

• Amyl
  “Poppers,” “Snappers”
• Butyl
  “Rush,” “Locker room,” “Bolt,” “Climax,” also marketed in head shops as “video head cleaner”

From the National Inhalant Prevention Coalition

“Well, I’ll be darn…”
“What?”
“This kid hates the sun.”
“Why are you reading that message board again?”

Jan and I were long time neighbors and parents of teenagers. Jan had recently become concerned that her oldest girl, Leah, was experimenting with drugs. Jan had a history of teenage drug abuse and was constantly monitoring for any signs that her own at-risk teens might be using.

She spent hours on the internet researching teen boarding schools and brat camps and I chastised her for putting out fires that weren’t there.

Jan continued, “But that’s it - you just don’t always know when it’s your teen that’s going a bad way, you have to really stay on them, watch them, look for mood changes.”

Teen Message Boards

She had lately been spending an inordinate amount of time on a teen message board, fascinated as depressed teens and drug abusing teenagers poured their hearts out, or, ranted against life.

“Listen to what this kid says.”

“This is going to sound f***! i know but i hate sunny days. I mean if I’m out with friends or something i love hot sun, same with beong on holiday, but when im in my room alone like this and its lovely outside i get pissed off.
I think its because i realise just how lonely i am and how everyone else is having fun.”
(Source)

“The reason it hits home is I was like that and so was my mother and nephews - we all felt depressed when the sun was out - for me it was like a slap in the face , it meant there was life and i hated life then. Now I hear Leah talking about how the sun bugs her too.”

Family History and Vigilance

Jan’s entire family battled depression and depression was the precipitating agent in her many years as a drug user. She was right to take her and her husband’s mental health history into account.

Jan had a plan and I admired her. It would be easier to just let Leah’s moods and slipping grades be, hope she snapped out of it. Jan ’s plan was to get her ducks in a row now.

She had spent time observing Leah and researching teenage drug abuse, depression and culture. She had a list of troubled teen boarding schools, brat camps and military schools to interview and three different therapists as well.

I hope Jan is proven wrong but if Leah is dabbling with drugs and exhibiting depression, then Jan’s pro-active measures will have saved Leah and the entire family a great deal of pain.

A friend told of the deep grief that her young son endured during a one week period in which he lost both a very close uncle and his first, childhood sweetheart.

The young boy’s sorrow knew no bounds. He barely stopped crying for days. When relatives at the Uncle’s funeral offered to take him away for the week-end to “take his mind off it”, his mother explained that this was a chapter in his life that, though painful to endure, had to be walked through, had be written, and that it would be best if he wrote it with eyes and heart wide open, surrounded by those who could share it with him.

The Power of Narrative

She had in mind the pain she had endured at her father’s death. She hadn’t anyone to talk to or guide her - she had no narrative to help her understand dying. She remembers “shutting down” and claims that such dissociation or detachment became a life long habit that crippled her emotionally for life.

One of the greatest impediments for a parent dealing with a drug abusing or out of control teenager is the inability to clearly communicate. If a child learns early to speak the narrative of their life, they come to learn a sense of time and process - to understand the beginning-middle-end that all of the events in their life is composed of.

The grieving young boy is now a father and husband and his greatest charisma is his ability to fully experience and express his life and his deeply felt interest in the stories of those around him.

It could be said that the ability of a teen to understand the story of their life, the more that they value that story and the more they want to be the “author” of it, the less likely it is that that the at-risk teen will add a chapter on doing drugs.

Communication Guidelines

Psychology Today offers some basic communication guidelines for talking with your kids.

• Start early. Listen to your child when he is very young. If he learns as a child that you will drop everything and listen, he will continue to talk as he grows up.
• Make yourself available—even if it’s inconvenient for you. Children may want to talk at the end of the day when you’re exhausted, but don’t miss the chance to communicate.
• Don’t judge. A child will become defensive when he feels he is being judged. That’s when communication stops.
• Refrain from interrupting your child; let her talk even when you don’t want to hear what she has to say.
• If you ask a question, begin with the words like “tell me” or “how.” This encourages a child to be specific and lessens the chance of her shutting down.
• Don’t get emotional; remain calm. If you have something to say, think beforehand.
• If your child tells you something shocking, don’t show it. Otherwise, she will stop talking for good.
• Engage in activities together. Take a walk, run or go to the gym together. Or try a trip to the museum or cultural center.
• Try a new restaurant and perhaps a new type of food. New experiences will help inspire discussion of all types.
• Eat dinner together. Children who sit down at the family dinner table three to five times a week are less likely to smoke, drink, and take drugs than kids who dine on their own. They also have better grades and fewer emotional problems.

(source)

Parents seeking support for their drug abusing teenagers must not only contend with the pain, cost and sorrow of their out-of control teen’s behavior, they have to grapple with the implications of abetting the state’s ability to interfere within the family. Communities across the nation are challenging the right of a given school to punish a student for personal behavior unassociated with the school.

“No parent or school official in Moorestown, or in any other South Jersey district, would admit supporting teenage substance abuse or other potentially dangerous behavior. Yet, the Moorestown school district’s initiative to regulate the risky behavior of students off campus has some parents asking if administrators are being too intrusive.
[..]
It appears Moorestown school officials, like officials throughout New Jersey, are trying to meet the community’s insistence that they do more to crack down on student substance abuse and violence. Parents, judges and state officials throughout the nation have recognized that schools, who often are given the responsibility of surrogate parents, have a significant opportunity to help mold student behavior. But should schools have a say in how students behave once they leave school for the day, the weekend or over the summer?”
(source)

Parental Responsibility

A less intrusive method of intervention by far is for the parent to assume responsibility for their teen’s behavior themselves. If drug use is suspected, there are drug prevention kits available for parents to administer, though there are cautionary notes sounded as to the effectiveness of kits bought online and a parent will want to investigate all options.

An intermediary measure that still respects a family’s privacy from state intervention is to see if their local police or county officials offer drug testing, something similar to what has been instituted in this Michigan community.

“A new county program gives parents who suspect their teens of abusing drugs free access to drug tests.

“The program is funded through a Charlevoix prosecutor’s office grant, but test results are confidential and are not shared with law enforcement officials, said Scott Kelly, who heads the Bay Area Substance Education Services (BASES) teen center in Charlevoix.

“It’s for the family that wants to do some early intervention,” Kelly said. “I’d say we get four or five phone calls a week from concerned parents. There’s a whole lot of kids that are using and parents who are frustrated and don’t know what to do.”
(Source)

If parents want the sanctity and privacy of the family to remain unbreached by the state, parents will have to assume responsibility for their troubled teens so that institutions outside of the family don’t have to.

You already have a troubled teen that you have successfully placed in a boarding school with an excellent drug therapy program. You are reassured of her progress and grateful that you were able to find a boarding school, or in this case, a brat camp that met your teens emotional needs and academic requirements.
But you are now thinking ahead to when your two toddlers enter into the higher grades and become subject to the influence of drug abusing peers. There wasn’t much in the way of community support available for you when you were seeking placement of your older child and you want to see that change.
There are many programs to explore. One such interesting program is Parent Corps.

“The Parent Corps is a new, national effort dedicated to helping parents prevent their children from using alcohol, tobacco, and illegal drugs. Modeled on the same principles as the Peace Corps, it harnesses the power of parents working together to keep their children drug free. The Parent Corps recruits, trains, certifies, and pays part-time or full-time salaries to Parent Leaders for two years of service. It institutionalizes the parent movement of the late 1970s into the early 1990s. That movement proved it could change social norms and get results, cutting past-month drug use by two-thirds among adolescents and young adults between 1979 and 1992.
[…]
Drug prevention programs have been around for a long time. Some are aimed at parents, most are aimed at children. Nearly all provide short-term courses on the dangers of drugs and ways to avoid use.

The Parent Corps is an ongoing process that offers parents a strong peer support network grounded by a Parent Leader. Like the neighborhood of yesterday, where everyone looked after every child on the street, Parent Leaders alert parents to the marketing machine behind drugs and help them immunize children against it. The vision is to have Parent Leader in every school in the country by 2014.”

What do Parent Leaders do?

• contact all parents in the school
• educate them about how drugs affect children
• teach them about how children are at risk
• persuade them to believe research showing that they are the most powerful influences in their children’s lives
• mobilize them into groups that stop the marketing of drugs to children
• create a support network that fosters the growth of healthy children capable of reaching their full potential

You can find out how to start a Parent Corps for your community here.

The constant stream of pharmaceutical commercials aimed at adults do little to help a parent teach a troubled teen that medication isn’t the first or best answer for solving problems. In a culture and society that emphasizes instant gratification, teaching an at-risk teenager that restraint and discipline are virtues becomes an increasingly uphill battle. A specific problem with prescription pills is the veneer of safety that they offer. A drug abusing teenager is likely to think he is safer taking a pharmaceutical than he is with a street drug.

Just as a parent has to accept the reality of malicious strangers and predatory sex offenders as given threats in their at-risk teen’s everyday life, parents need to be aware of a constant underlying theme in film, in advertising and in music is to “get high” or “feel better”. A combination of peer pressure and society’s unfortunate obsession with the quick fix can cause a teen to conclude that self-medicating is a normal and acceptable way of dealing with upset and pain.

“According to the most comprehensive study on U.S. teenage drug abuse, the intentional abuse of legal medicines continues to be a “pernicious problem”.

“Overall prescription drug abuse has become a more important part of the nation’s drug problem,” said Dr. Lloyd Johnston, who runs the ongoing University of Michigan study.

Last December, the survey found that 9 percent of 16- to 18-year-olds intentionally abused prescription narcotics such as Vicodin in 2006.

“The use of Oxycontin has doubled among 8th graders (12- to 14-year-olds) since 2002,” Johnston said.

Other common household drugs popularly misused included dextromethorphan, found in cough syrups.

The Partnership for a Drug-Free America, a not-for-profit lobby group sponsoring the briefings, said parents are part of the problem.

“The problem in general is the parents’ attitudes (were) as bad as the kids on this subject,” said Steve Pasierb, chief executive of the Partnership.

“The parents think they know all about drugs so they say, ‘At least it’s not heroin’,” he added.

“Kids like it because it’s hot and it’s new, they believe it’s safe and there’s relative ease of access.”

And taking tablets from home medicine cabinets is cheaper than buying drugs from street drug dealers.
[…]
“Kids see prescription drugs differently,” said Dr. Herbert Kleber, a former U.S. drug policy adviser to the White House. “They’re more pure and have a guaranteed potency.”

Kleber said most of the kids get information online on what drugs to take. “There are numerous Web sites they can go to learn the pros and cons,” he said.”
(Source)

A new series by HBO, Addictions, is bound to add more fuel to the debate surrounding the causes
of substance abuse. Is addiction a disease? If so, does that absolve the addict of responsibility?

“Intended to do more than entertain or alarm, then, “Addiction” is meant to sober people up. To that end, its message is this: Drug and alcohol addiction are diseases of the brain, and they can be treated, at least partly, with medicine.

This straightforward message is remarkable for at least two reasons. First, it’s intrinsically controversial, since A.A. for a long time expected its participants to refrain entirely from drug use, even prescription pills. The model of addiction presented here — addiction as a brain disease — is somewhat at odds with the cognitive model used in classic 12-step programs.

Second, it’s remarkable that so many top-notch filmmakers have consented to push someone else’s point so hard. It’s almost ominous. The sameness of the films in “Addiction” might aid its effectiveness as propaganda, but as art it’s monotone; it’s hard to believe it’s the collaborative work of so many otherwise individualistic artists.”
When Cravings Don’t Quit/Virginia Heffernan

Frankly, parents of a drug abusing teenager don’t care to parse the root causes of their child’s misery, they want to get immediate help. Addiction is dependency. Addiction is giving up your power. Disease or not, the fact remains that the troubled teen still needs to  learn how to realize the power of choice and how to effectively choose what is right.

Like so much else concerning teenage drug abuse -the appropriate therapies, the effective schools, the types of discipline - there will be many conflicting schools of thought. Perhaps a friend, an ex-addict as well as a cancer survivor, frames the nature of the debate best of all.

“I remember choosing to buy a bag of dope and I remember choosing to put a needle in my arm and I can remember choosing to quit. Thing is, when they told me I had cancer, well, i don’t remember having much choice about that at all.”

If you wanna hang out youve got to take her out; cocaine.
If you wanna get down, down on the ground; cocaine.
She dont lie, she dont lie, she dont lie; cocaine.

If you got bad news, you wanna kick them blues; cocaine.
When your day is done and you wanna run; cocaine.
She dont lie, she dont lie, she dont lie; cocaine.

If your thing is gone and you wanna ride on; cocaine.
Dont forget this fact, you cant get it back; cocaine.
She dont lie, she dont lie, she dont lie; cocaine.

She dont lie, she dont lie, she dont lie; cocaine.
lyrics by JJ Cale

Ah but she does lie. Eulogized by Eric Clapton in the 70’s, accessorized by small spoons on silver chains, embraced by celebrities, cocaine will, end the end, lie to the drug abusing teen with promises of ease and glamor. It’s a hip drug. It’s an easy drug, and often, it is a fatal drug.

The drug abusing teen can smoke it, snort it or shoot it up. Like all drugs, the first “rush” is overwhelming, blissful. And then it is gone, that level of euphoria never to be achieved again. But your troubled teen will still seek it, become desperate for it, add other drugs to the mix to capture it, just one more time.

Read about the effects of cocaine use and see that, indeed, cocaine is a liar:

• Cocaine causes the blood vessels to thicken and constrict, reducing the flow of oxygen to the heart. At the same time, cocaine causes the heart muscle to work harder, leading to heart attack or stroke, even in healthy people.
• Cocaine raises blood pressure, which can explode weakened blood vessels in the brain.
• A person can overdose on even a small amount of cocaine. Overdose can cause seizures and heart failure. It can cause breathing to become weak or stop altogether. There is no antidote to cocaine overdose.
• Snorting cocaine can cause sinus infections and loss of smell. It can damage tissues in the nose and cause holes in the bony separation between the nostrils inside the nose.
• Smoking cocaine can damage the lungs and cause “crack lung.” Symptoms include severe chest pains, breathing problems and high temperatures. Crack lung can be fatal.
• Injection can cause infections from used needles or impurities in the drug. Sharing needles can also cause hepatitis or HIV infection.
• Cocaine use in pregnancy may increase risk of miscarriage and premature delivery. It also increases the chance that the baby will be born underweight. Because women who use cocaine during pregnancy often also use alcohol, nicotine and other drugs, we do not fully know the extent of the effects of cocaine use on the baby.
• Cocaine use while breastfeeding transmits cocaine to the nursing child. This exposes the baby to all the effects and risks of cocaine use.
• Cocaine use is linked with risk-taking and violent behaviours. It is also linked to poor concentration and judgment, increasing risk of injury and sexually transmitted disease.
• Chronic use can cause severe psychiatric symptoms, including psychosis, anxiety, depression and paranoia.
• Chronic use can also cause weight loss, malnutrition, poor health, sexual problems, infertility and loss of social and financial supports.

(Source)

If you suspect that your troubled teen is experimenting with cocaine, intervention is necessary before the addiction escalates into out of control and often, criminal behavior.

Signs to look for are mood vacillations, reddened nose, bleeding from the nose,decreased appetites, and dilated eyes.

Tear down. Build up. Wax on. Wax off. Process. Because healing is a process it can’t be rushed. There are no effective ‘quick fix’ teenage treatment programs. Your drug abusing teen is broken inside. Re-building them inside, empowering your teenager with the use of their own skills and talents, teaching them the value of their life and the values of the lives of those around them takes time.

Choosing a boarding school that fails to offer programs designed to walk your teenager through all the necessary stages of recovery is the same as building on a faulty foundation. Not only do you want to create a stable foundation but the teenager needs also to be equipped with tools to maintain his new purchase on life. That is the why selecting a boarding school that implements a comprehensive treatment program is critical for your teenagers recovery.

Programs of that caliber can be found at Tipton’s Academy for Boys. One component of Tipton’s multi-pronged approach is the use of Positive Peer Culture

“The Positive Peer Culture discipline has a long and successful history. The Tipton Academy incorporates some of the basic components from this discipline. PPC is neither a loosely organized program nor one that is totally run by the adolescents. There is a keen understanding of the need to have adults oversee the process without derailing it by taking over. When a youth arrives at the Tipton Academy, he will be assigned to a group and its staff mentor. He will remain in this group throughout his stay. Each group will have responsibilities associated with it. Groups will be assigned varying details, community service projects, group aspects of the animal assistance program, sports/academic etc. teams, and group PPC sessions. In the group he will learn teamwork, sound decision making in the absence of specific guidelines, and how, through cooperation, significant accomplishments can be made. Staff are taught to understand the need for youth to learn how to work through their issues to help them prepare for similar situations they will have when returning to their families.”

Powerful music is a catalyst and a trigger. A drug abusing or at-risk teenager’s volatile emotional state lends itself perfectly to the combined power of music and lyrics to persuade; to coax anger, or to suggest joy, to depict a future or keep banging on doom. Music summons a troubled teenager to one place or another.

The Fray’s ‘How to Save a Life” summons the teenager to life.

“The title track, “How To Save A Life,” was inspired by Slade’s experience as a mentor to a crack addicted teen. “I was a sheltered suburban kid when I met this guy. He was a recovering addict, coming out of a really tough teenage life. Thankfully, he was on his way out of that life, so he was able to really look back with some objectivity. The song is more of a memoir about his slow motion descent and all the relationships he lost along the way…. I constantly get emails from people who relate to it.”
(The Fray)

A powerful story most cogently expressed in these particular lyrics”

Let him know that you know best
Cause after all you do know best
Try to slip past his defense
Without granting innocence
Lay down a list of what is wrong
The things you’ve told him all along
And pray to God he hears you
And pray to God he hears you

A parent of an at-risk teen needs to trust the power of their words. The power of simple truth clearly spoken. “Keep saying the things you’ve told him all along”. No matter how angry your teenager may become. It’s like a fog horn, patiently sounding through the fog until the troubled teen turns back towards home.

This song apparently resonates to powerful affect. The impressive “Save a Life Campaign” was inspired - in part - by this song, suggesting that troubled teenagers are hungry for a clear and candid word, that your teenager is listening. Keep talking.

Lyrics for “How to Save a Life ” can be found here and a USA Today piece on Fray.