Troubled Teens Resources

The fight against teen age drug abuse, specifically against prescription drug abuse, is a bit harder for parents and law enforcement in the state of Florida. Both abusers and dealers have been flooding into the state because it’s one of several states in the country that does not keep a central data base of prescriptions filled.

Recent reports have indicated that illegally obtained prescription pills now out paces illegal drug abuse as the reigning threat our teens at risk face nationwide.

“Drug abusers and drug dealers have discovered a soft spot in the nation’s prescription drug system — the Sunshine State — and they’re exploiting this weakness with increasing regularity.

The number of prescriptions written in Florida for morphine, codeine, meperidine, oxycodone and hydrocodone rose 142 percent between 1997 and 2005…Between 2000 and 2006, an average of 341 people died in the state each year by overdosing on Oxycontin and Percocet.

There’s a reason Florida has become so popular with the prescription drug crowd — and it’s not the sunshine.

The state lacks a central database that would enable authorities to monitor excessive — and suspicious — purchases of prescription drugs, and investigate abuses.
[…]
Drug addicts and dealers often will choose the path of least resistance. When one state cracks now on some aspect of the drug trade, the purveyors of illegal products inevitably seek out new territories.”

(source)

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.”