Troubled Teens Resources

Teen age drug abuse is a major concern for parents and the latest report shows that they should be. Parents may be the “supplier” for their teen and not even know it.

“Sept. 6, 2007 — Illegal drug use among U.S. teens didn’t drop for the first time since 2002, according to a government report released Thursday.

The report also showed a continuing rise in the use of prescription drugs for recreational purposes, a trend that is alarming drug officials.

The report, released annually by the Bush administration, showed 9.8% of American kids between 12 and 17 years of age used an illegal drug within a month of being surveyed in 2006. The figure is unchanged from the same report the year before, even though illegal drug use overall is down about 15% since 2002, according to the report.

Prescription Abuse
Officials blamed the stagnation on rising abuse rates of painkillers and other prescription drugs. Nearly 50 million Americans older than 12 years of age acknowledged using prescription drugs for a nonmedical use, a large jump from three years earlier.

Most abuse of prescription drugs involves narcotic painkillers like Vicodin and OxyContin. In May, OxyContin manufacturer Purdue Pharma was fined $600 million after pleading guilty to concealing the addictive risks of the drug.

But Bush administration officials said Thursday that most of the abused supply of the drugs comes from leftover pills in unused prescriptions.

Terry Cline, PhD, chief of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration, said the agency is launching a campaign in pharmacies warning patients to discard their unused pills.”

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The juvenile offender in Cicero will be making their acquaintance with the type of discipline that resembles what is meted out in boot camps.

Next time a Cicero youth is caught vandalizing property, carrying illegal drugs or tagging a home with graffiti, police may tell the child to drop and give them 20.

The town approved an ordinance at its Tuesday board meeting that creates a police-administered “boot camp” where non-violent juvenile offenders could be sent for rehabilitation.

“Hopefully boot camp will put a little fear into them as to what is expected of them in society,” said Rolando Hernandez, deputy superintendent of internal affairs with the Cicero Police Department. “It’s a great idea and … will be a good program for the town.”

Teens will be presented with 50 hours of boot camp type drilling and instruction, divided up into several four hour Saturday sessions. Included will be mentoring, anger management classes as well as two hours of intense physical training.

It is hoped such intervention will deter the teens at risk from involvement in teen age drug abuse or other criminal activities in the future, as well as give them a tie to the community by applying some of that intense physical labor towards town clean up and other volunteer work.

“Police and court hearing officers can suggest the boot camp, on a case by case basis, to youth found in violation of administrative ordinances. Schools and parents can also recommend a child’s participation in the program, Hernandez said.”

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Teen age drug abuse has a direct correlation to a teen’s sense of self-worth. You simply do not willingly damage or destroy that which you value. Self-worth has to be derived from reasonable and healthy standards. But the world is upside down and the standards that teens measure themselves by are cruel and exacting.

Fall short of the accepted profile and you are the one eating lunch alone, forever without a boyfriend, stuck with the nerds. The penalties for not measuring up to the cultural portrait of “awesome” are severe. Just ask a fat kid. Teens at risk are even more vulnerable if they carry the emotional baggage from being overweight.

“…Obesity is “one of the most stigmatizing and least socially acceptable conditions in childhood.” … An historic study showed that normal weight children rank obese children as the least desirable friends. Obese individuals were described as lazy, dirty, dumb and deceitful. These descriptions were made by children as young as six years old…”

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Following close on the heels of rejection, ensuing loneliness and increasing vulnerability, are drugs. Drugs take the pain away. Drugs give you a boldness that you’ve never had. Drugs become identity. Especially if you can deal them. Especially if you are the go-to guy for a bag of dope. Overweight troubled teenagers hunger for the attention that the drug world gives them, further binding them to the shackles of their addiction.

Get your teen moving. Unplug your teen. If he is overweight, help him find a solution. Give him three options; train at a gym, train at home, or train via a class. Set the goal. Join him. Just do it.

You can’t blame a parent for becoming utterly confused with the whole list of acronyms available to label their troubled teenagers. There is Oppositional Defiant Disorder, ADD, Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder. There is bi-polar and conduct disorder and teen depression, all of which increase the liklihood of teen age drug abuse. It takes a heap of courage to sign up to be a parent these days.

So how do you tell if your ADHD child has ODD? What’s to tell them apart? Both disorders present behavior that is irritating and disruptive. But there lies the difference. Your ADHD-er has absolutely no intention upsetting the apple cart. The ADHD kid really rather have no attention drawn to their upsetting behavior at all. Studies point out, that with ODD, it is a different story.

• What is the difference between ODD and ADHD?

• ODD is characterized by aggressiveness, but not impulsiveness. In ODD people annoy you purposefully, While it is usually not so purposeful in ADHD. ODD signs and symptoms are much more difficult to live with than ADHD. Children with ODD can sit still.

• What difference does it make if you have ADHD or ADHD plus ODD?

• A lot! Children and adolescents with ADHD alone do things without thinking, but not necessarily oppositional things. An ADHD child may impulsively push someone too hard on a swing and knock the child down on the ground. She would likely be sorry she did this afterward. A child with ODD plus ADHD might push the kid out of the swing and say she didn’t do it.

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The link above will take you to more on ODD.

Jane Close Conoley talks about the toxins in our environment that go a very long way towards contributing to a host of teenage ills, including teen age drug abuse and Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder.However, besides too much junk food, the toxins are mental and behavioral in nature and are within the parents’ power to eradicate - if only they had the will.

Methods to eradicate mental and behavioral pollutants from teens at risk, however, require a parent to make the choice to be present and active in the teen’s life and to also make their authority something to be reckoned with. Take one of the toxins the writer says needs cleaning up - communication.

“Bad communication: Any trip to a store, beach, or playground will provide a listener with many examples of parents saying threatening, demeaning, or ambiguous statements to children. Reciprocally, these same trips often expose children saying sarcastic, challenging, and disrespectful comments to their parents with no consequence. Many parents seem to have lost the will or confidence to say yes or no and mean it. They resort to threats and promises to cajole obedience and they almost never follow through on either.”

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Who could disagree? Parents can’t expect respect if they don’t render it and don’t teach it. When parents moan about the time their teen is online or in front of the 52′ screen, you almost want to shake them and shout “TURN IT OFF”. What happened to a parent assuming their role as commander-in-chief? Since when do you negotiate with a teen over critical issues? When are you going to stop? Read more on combating behavioral toxins at the link above.

Teen help is a long time coming when it is in the hands of the bureaucrats.

“If drug dealers can organize kids to pick up and drop off drugs on their bikes, can bureaucrats not get their act together?”

Such is the frustrated remark of a Canadian columnist lamenting the lack of attention paid to where teenagers are to spend their time in the summer.

“There’s nowhere for these kids to go. Nobody wants them. They’ve been shooed out of the plazas, shooed from the street corners. People cross the street if they see two or three kids on a corner.

“They’re pariahs. We have a NIMBY (Not in my backyard) attitude towards our youth. They can’t even play basketball at midnight because no neighbourhood wants the noise of kids having a good time in the playground.”

The writer rightly points out that when our kids were young we filled their every waking moment with activities, from pre-school, to soccer, to dance class. Then right when they fall into the teens at risk category we give them very little and bemoan their inability to use their time well.

Why bother with it. Because of the little problem with teen age drug abuse which, unfortunately, can become the pastime of choice for a bored teen.

“I grew up in a tough area in Scarborough,” Hicks says, “and there were two choices — either smoke dope and break into houses or get out of here.

“My Dad registered me for every team going and I didn’t have time to do anything else but go to school, do my stuff and sleep. That’s where I learned about leadership. That made the difference for me.”

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What are your teens doing this summer?

Troubled teenagers typically spend an inordinate amount of time plugged into some kind of media. As many public school institutions have dropped gym programs, fewer and fewer teenagers get regular exercise or ever go outdoors except to get into cars and buses and go indoors somewhere else.

One parent was amazed to find children at his kid’s summer camp who had never, ever spent a night camping or in a wilderness situation. Teens at risk who have never had the chance to leave their inner city homes have never seen acres and acres of wide open spaces.

And of course, studies are now making the rounds pinpointing this cave-like behavior as the cause of a number of adolescent ills, from obesity, ADHD to teen age drug abuse.

“Society is sending an unintended message to children - nature is past, electronics are the future and the boogeyman lives in the woods,” Louv wrote in a 2005 article in The Oregonian. “The script is delivered in schools, families, even organizations devoted to the outdoors and codified into the legal and regulatory structures of many of our communities. This message is effectively banning much of the kind of play we enjoyed as children.”

Outdoor classrooms have proved to curb attention deficit disorder, and they also boost test scores, grade-point averages and problem-solving and critical-thinking skills, Louv writes.”

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America is rich with parks; city parks, state parks, wildlife preserves. If you have to rent a car for the week-end, make the effort to acquaint your teenagers with the great outdoors.

Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder is not the monster that the media sometimes portrays it to be. Though listed as a root cause for a number of behavioral problems that could set teens at risk towards a path leading to and including teen age drug abuse, studies and statistics more and more support that, handled correctly, the “disorder” need not derail your teens life.

Parents have to make sure that they educate themselves to all of the data available on both behavioral therapies and drug therapies. Moreover, they should trust their heart and their gut as to what is best for their teen.

“Never give up YOUR responsibility as your child’s parent to any professional (medical, psychological, or educational). If they are experts, get information and opinions based on their experience. Trust their judgment and learn from their wisdom. But YOU are the parent. Once your child or teen has had a good work up, and you have a “righteous” diagnosis you will have a lot of decisions to make regarding treatment. But always remember that YOU are the parent.

It is YOUR job to get all of the information that you can from the experts and make the decisions regarding your child’s treatment. No professional will ever love your child as much as you do. Educate yourself until you are an expert!”

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A suggested resource with which to begin your research is the ADHD Library.

Teen age crisis intervention programs launched against teen age drug abuse cover several categories of drugs. Some programs concentrate on fighting troubled teenagers‘ fascination with hard drugs, such as heroin,coke, and crack. Some programs seek to intervene where heavy pot use is indicated.

Another type of teen age drug abuse has brought about programs that directly address cough and general over-the-counter medicine abuse. We have visited the “Five Moms ” site before, but the issue is important enough to re-visit many times. They have dedicated an admirable amount of time and resources to getting the word out. After all, prescription medicine seems safer to teens. It also is so easy to acquire and arouses little suspicion. It can creep into your teen’s life without a clue being given.

A place to start collecting clues would be the Internet. A jaunt through MySpace will amaze you.

“Many web sites and online communities promote the abuse of dextromethorphan-containing cough medicines. Social networking sites such as MySpace, YouTube, LiveJournal, and Facebook are filled with detailed instructions, user conversations, and videos of kids abusing cough medicine. Users blog and post videos about specific plans to abuse cough medicine, and even describe the effects. Through these outlets and others, kids can compare notes and exchange approaches to abusing these products. There also are a number of sites that provide detailed instructions on how to abuse cough medicine.

In the case of raw dextromethorphan, the frightening reality is that kids have been able to log on to a host of sites, purchase large amounts of the pure ingredient with only a credit card and a shipping address, and receive the drug in its unfinished form at their doorstep—your doorstep. The people who have allowed these sales are a new breed of Internet predator, out to make money, with no consideration of the dangers their sites pose to our kids. There simply is no good reason to allow teens or anyone else to have this raw ingredient.”

Five Moms

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.