Troubled Teens Resources

“…the people were different but their look was the same - missing teeth, sunken cheeks, white skin, pus-filled sores and sunken eyes.”

Teen crisis intervention has never been more urgent than the current multi-state anti-meth campaign.

The TV ads, billboards and videos highlight the radical devastation that meth administers to it’s addicts. There is no mercy with meth. Though heroin, cocaine, and crack are just as deadly, their decimating effects are not nearly so evident as those left by meth addiction.

“This one didn’t survive,” Holley said about one the addicts, pictured on the big screen.

Another woman’s face illuminated with an air of lifelessness to it, but she was actually alive and in the middle of a meth “crash” - which is a multi-day long period of rest after a long bender.

“This is day two … After I got the tube out her throat,” Holley said.

“Why does it have to be so ugly,” she asked, before explaining that addicts have “chains” around their “veins.”

Different rhymes peppered Holley’s anti-meth points.

“The high is a lie,” she told the students, because meth gives people a feeling of power and control, even though addicts lack those virtues, she said.

The percentage of high school-aged people using methamphetamine has dropped every year for 10 years, Holley told her audience.

But meth customers die, and their pushers move on to look for new clientele - like the students in Monday’s audience, Holley said.

(source)

Should a fourteen year old girl who gave meth to six classmates have a teen crisis intervention or spend some time in juvenile detention? I think this is a question that a large number of people are asking these days, what is the best way to handle a troubled teen.

“If the teenager who brought methamphetamine to a St. Paul middle school were older, she’d probably be going to prison.
Instead, the 14-year-old girl’s guilty plea Wednesday likely will result in drug intervention.
Though police caught the girl who handed out the drugs during lunch at Hazel Park Middle School Academy Tuesday - resulting in her and six other students being sent to area hospitals as a precaution - the investigation wasn’t over Wednesday. Police still want to know where the girl got the crystal meth. They say they found an additional 2 grams of the drug in her home Tuesday night.
Police are looking at the girl’s parents as a possible source, authorities said.On Wednesday, the 14-year-old girl involved pleaded guilty in Ramsey County juvenile court to second-degree sale of a controlled substance. She is being held in the county’s juvenile detention center until her next hearing on Oct. 10, according to the Ramsey County attorney’s office.
For an adult who pleaded guilty to the same charge, there would a presumptive prison sentence, said Dakota County Attorney James Backstrom. In juvenile court, there aren’t sentencing guidelines.
The 14-year-old girl might face detention, but “she’s very young - I would think the intervention would focus on treatment and supervision to ensure there aren’t any future problems,” said Backstrom, whose office isn’t involved in the case.
Before a judge determines the girl’s fate, officials will prepare a report that likely evaluates whether she has a prior criminal history, her school records, her home life, and her mental and chemical health.”

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K.D.

Teens at risk are not likely to imagine themselves paralyzed or disabled from a stroke. Unfortunately, too many able bodied, other wise healthy teens are putting their life on the line just so they can snort one more line of meth.

Teen age drug abuse has so many negative ramifications for the entire life of the teen, while all they think they are doing is “just getting high”, never considering that, even should they get clean, they still will have land mines left in their body from their drug use.

Studies conducted by doctors have indicated that troubled teenagers who make a habit of meth can look forward to a very increased possibility for a stroke.

“With help from his colleagues, neurologist Wengui Yu, now at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, examined two women, ages 29 and 36, both of whom used methamphetamine and then suddenly experienced weakness and difficulty in speaking. Brain scans revealed both women had suffered severe strokes from tears in the inner lining of one of the major arteries in the neck, an injury known as carotid artery dissection.
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This suggests tears in arteries may be an effect linked to a class of drugs rather than to a specific drug.
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“If larger studies confirm these findings and the suspicions of many that this is not a rare process, this could open up an avenue for intervention when it comes to methamphetamine. It could prevent a rise in frequency in the expensive and disabling condition of stroke,” says Cramer. Data from such studies could “help physicians to better diagnose, treat, and prevent stroke in young adults,” says Yu.”

(Source)

Teen crisis intervention in the arena of meth addiction is needed on such a comprehensive scale that it boggles the imagination. Some parts of the country have yet to experience the scourge while in other areas, such as in Montana, the problem is epidemic and teens at risk are falling like flies.

Meth is perhaps one of the most frightening drugs around simply because it is so very easy to become hooked and almost impossible to quit. A teen that dares to play with meth is almost sentencing himself to years of incredible humiliation and pain. This is why parents are galvanizing the introduction of intervention programs in city after city. One such program, Mothers Against Meth-Amphetamine or MAMA, a Christian based group, has created a website with downloadable pamphlets, videos and educational material on meth addiction and how to fight it. As is usual with such grass roots efforts, the program came about as a result of tragedy.

“Jim was Dr. Holley’s youngest brother. He was 22 years old when he became addicted to methamphetamine and he was 24 years old when it killed him. Jim killed himself on the 4th of July, 2000 because of the delusions he suffered as a result of his meth addiction. About 6 months before Jim committed suicide, he came over to his sister Dr. Holley’s house. He wanted to talk. And what he had to say was so important it had to be put on TV. So Dr. Holley’s husband recorded it as an interview on the family video camera. Years later, this footage was incorporated into the High Is a Lie video. Dr. Holley explains how meth causes hallucinations, and then Jim has a hallucination. She explains how this drug is addictive the first time it is used, and Jim says, “I’ll never get back what I lost that night.” The video closes with a visit to Jim’s grave.”

MAMA

Teen crisis intervention in the area of meth addiction has become a war.

“The Mexican Mafia came onto reservations with a Fortune 500 business plan to begin establishing places of distribution or transport into our communities,” Moore said.”

Perhaps troubled teenagers would think twice before purchasing drugs if they had a clue as to who was behind selling them. Teens at risk today take perverse pride in being-anti;anti- big oil, anti- corruption, anti-poverty. Maybe it is time to not only educate kids about the dangers of drugs but to also expose them to the “corrupt big business” that markets them, perpetuating the poverty of addiction. Perhaps teens could get as upset about the corrupt business of drug distribution as they seem to get over big oil.

“Wind River, Wyo., was one of the first reservations to be targeted. Mexican drug cartels brought methamphetamine onto the rural and minimally patrolled reservation in 2000, and many dealers fathered children with Native American women while getting them hooked on the illegal drug. With rampant poverty, many of these women were forced to peddle the drug to support their habit”.

(Source)

If “big oil” trespassed onto Indian land and devastated the population, the kids would be very angry. Perhaps if they could understand that “big drugs” is doing that to an entire country of teenagers they would not want to hand over money to the kid selling on the street corner. The above linked article is one you can print out and leave it where your teen can read it. It might change a few minds.

Teen crisis intervention will be necessary as long as teens are considered marketing targets for both drug dealers and Madison Avenue.

We’ve posted before on the devious ingenuity drug dealers have recently exhibited by marketing their drugs to pre teens and elementary school kids. A post at Shaping Youth rightfully points out the same strategies at play in mainstream advertising, the purposeful targeting of youth.

“What started as Sacramento news and spread from west to midwest…is now being internet e-blasted to parents with truthful school warnings and news videos that drug dealers are targeting teens with strawberry and cola flavored methamphetamine to “hook ‘em early” on illegal drugs. (old news from awhile back gone viral, actually)
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Granted, the fruity cocaine scene hit the Hollywood tabloids prior.. BUT the Madison Avenue meets urban lowlife element adds a nefarious element. When age compression marketing tactics and junk food appeal are used to target kids for addiction, the branding trend toward tweens and teens is one to watch. Sound familiar? It should. Corporate giants spend mega-millions on advertising to seed a similar strategy.

Alcopops. Pink cigarettes. Jolt-n-crash energy drinks. Caffeine shots. Candy-flavored meth? The end goal is the same, whether it’s nicotine, alcohol, caffeine, or methamphetamine…the marketer’s aim is to hook ‘em on a habit while kids’ bodies are most susceptible.”

Both drug dealers and corporate America have only the bottom line in mind. One doesn’t expect drug dealers to care about kids but one would be equally unwise to imagine America’s corporation any longer feel any responsibility, no matter what public front they put on it.

It is rather disconcerting to consider that a particular type of crime lends itself to a particular type of drug addict’s ability to execute it. In the continuing teen crisis intervention efforts by law enforcement officials to curb the raging appetite for meth,they are discovering a possible link between meth users and identity theft.

“Like crack cocaine in the 1980’s, officials say, the rise of methamphetamine has been accompanied by a specific set of crimes and skills that are shared among users and dealers.”

Meth users experience a type of high that allow them to commit identity thefts with much more ease than a junkie or crack head might experience.

“Crack users and heroin users are so disorganized and get in these frantic binges, they’re not going to sit still and do anything in an organized way for very long,” Dr. Rawson said. “Meth users, on the other hand, that’s all they have, is time. The drug stimulates the part of the brain that perseverates on things. So you get people perseverating on things, and if you sit down at a computer terminal you can go for hours and hours.”

Whereas crack and heroin are typically sold in densely populated urban areas, meth labs tend to be found in rural areas. Mail is easily stolen from unlocked mail boxes and fake IDs are routinely needed to rent apartments and studios and isolated houses to set up meth labs.

“In a survey of 500 county sheriffs, 27 percent said methamphetamine had contributed to a rise in identity theft in their areas. Even more — 62 percent and 68 percent, respectively — noted that it contributed to increases in domestic abuse or robberies and burglaries.”

(Source)

Unfortunately, the destruction that is so much a signature of drug abuse extends to the community at large.