AHS Views

Every day I see articles telling parents to discuss drugs with their children if they want them to stay drug-free. Statistics show that kids whose parents talk to them about drugs are 50% less like to take them. But often parents don’t know what to say and, because of that, don’t talk to them about the subject at all.

Really, all that’s really necessary is to educate your kids. Do a little research and find out about drugs yourself - that’s the first step. Do an Internet search for information on methamphetamine, heroin, cocaine, MDMA, and marijuana to start with, and then find out about prescription drugs. There are many prescription drugs to watch out for - any tranquilizers, sedatives, sleeping pills, antidepressants, painkillers, ADD and ADHD drugs like Ritalin and Adderall (they’re similar to methamphetamine and cocaine) are very common.

Find out how they work and their side effects. You can also read stories and articles about drug addicts, or former drug addicts, and find out how drugs have affected their lives.

Once you know a little about it yourself, talk to your kids.

If you start when they’re really young - they may be offered drugs in the schoolyard or by a friend by the time they’re 8 or 10 - they’ll know that drugs are very dangerous and they’ll refuse to take them. Or, at least, there’s a 50% chance they’ll refuse. Not a guarantee - but better than the chances if they don’t know what they’re getting into.

Start by bringing it up in conversations when the opportunity presents itself - during a TV show, a commercial about drugs, when seeing someone on the street who is homeless and might be on drugs, and so on. Or take the time to teach them about their body and how it works, and fit it in there. 

If your kids are a little older, it would be a good idea to have a sitdown for the express purpose of teaching them about drugs.

Some parents think their kids will never get on drugs so they don’t take the time to do this education. But kids from all walks of life, even great kids who seem close to perfect, try them all the time. No one is immune.

Many parents don’t find out their kids are taking drugs until they’re already at the point of needing addiction help. Opening up the subject through education early on will help prevent that and, if they do experiment, they’re also more likely to be willing to talk about it so you can nip it in the bud.

A new program in Cheyenne, Wyoming, is attempting to educate people on the dangers of substance abuse before it becomes a problem. One of their methods is to survey people who come into hospital emergency rooms for heart palpitations and other conditions that are symptoms of drug abuse. They’re focus is to let people know about the dangers of drugs, and offer them addiction help if they ask for it.

I guess there’s a possibility that they’ll nip a few potential addictions in the bud. Someome who’s been taking drugs for a while might not bother going to a hospital for something like heart palpitations because they would already have experienced it in the past, know that it comes with the territory, and think the palpitations will pass.

Unfortunately for some, those heart palpitations won’t pass at all - the person could even wind up dead.

On the other hand, those who are new to drugs may not expect anything like that, get scared, and go to the hospital.  If they’re told that they can expect heart palpitations, and many, many other side effects, including drug addiction, which would undoubtedly lead to many other, even more serious problems, maybe they’ll think twice about doing it again.

Not too many parents actually educate their kids about drugs - although they might tell them not to take them - so a lot of people enter adulthood without understanding their consequences.

If you have a young adult family member who has not yet been told about heart palpitations, ER visits, and all the other disasters that can happen on drugs, make sure you educate them now. It would be a shame to have their first real education take place in an emergency room.

If there’s already a problem, get help through Addiction Help Services.

Matt Stevens, a British soccer player who was due to play in the 2011 World Cup games in New Zealand, was suspended for taking drugs. He’ll get the addicton help he needs, but since his suspension could be for as long as two years, there’s not much hope he’ll be able to play by that time.

The coach believes it’s due to becoming a celebrity. It’s true that being a celebrity opens doors that may otherwise have been closed, and there may be more temptations - more invitations to take drugs, spending more time in drug-oriented environments - you don’t have to be lined up to play in the World Cup to be offered drugs or to be a celebrity.

Playing football in college, for example, opens you up to the same temptations, and the same celebrity, even though it’s on a smaller scale. If you’re on a popular team, you’re going to be adored by fans and they’ll try to get hooked up with you one way or another - sometimes it’s with an offer of drugs.

In either case - and parents whose kids are going off to (or are in) college and will be (or are) ‘on the team’ should pay special attention to this - the person has to be prepared.

If your son, or daughter, is already taking drugs prior to going to college they should get prepated by getting addiction help services before they go. They already have problems that are driving them to drugs and those problems are likely to get worse in college where the environment is even more challenging.

Treatment for drug addiction or abuse gets down to the bottom of why the person is taking drugs in the first place and addresses those issues so they are no longer a problem. So, when they are offered drugs in college, they’re more likely to be able to say no.

Parents hope that going to college will straighten their kids out. But exactly the opposite is often true. Any problems they have now will be magnified. Get addiction help before they go - don’t wait until the problem is worse.

For kids living at home and those who are out on their own and visiting the family for Christmas, the holiday season can be a bit of a nightmare if their parents and friends do a lot of drinking. In fact, that’s one of the reasons kids don’t come home more often. They know that drinking alcohol changes the personality and, once their parents start drinking, that’s exactly what will happen. The holiday becomes sad or confrontational instead of the happy family occasion it should be. 

The same is true for parents. They know their kids drink a lot or take drugs and, as much as they love them, conversations often wind up with the parent trying to get the kid to stop drinking or getting high and the kid being defensive about it, getting angry, etc., and sometimes leaving before they had intended. Or maybe they just have to leave because they need more drugs and can’t use them at their parents house.

I went through many years of both ends of that spectrum. For years I spent Christmas with a house full of heavy drinkers - an environment I wanted out of so badly I left home at 15. And, later, when I started taking drugs, it was just as unpleasant for them as their drinking was for me.

This year, make a difference. Get your parents, or your kids, the addiction help they need. You may not have been successful at doing that in the past - you may have tried everything you can think of - but at Addiction Help Services, we can help you. Give us a call and find out how. Come next year, your parents or kids could have completely changed, they’ll be themselves again.  Wouldn’t that be nice?

One of the biggest barriers to overcoming alcohol and drug addiction and abuse is that most people don’t realize, or admit, they have a problem and, therefore, don’t try to get addiction help. In fact, the most recent research by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) showed that that’s the case with over 90% of Americans. 

Early in my life I grew up with hard drinkers. They hit the bars every night after work and, already drunk, brought their friends home with them to continue drinking around 8 or 9 o’clock. On the weekends they started drinking by about noon, and kept it up all weekend - with a break on Sunday morning to go to church.

A few years later we moved to an upper middle class neighborhood. People came right home from work, but mixed martinis. They’d have a couple before dinner, another type of drink with dinner, and a few afterwards. When the weekend came, they really piled it on - especially if friends were over, which was often the case - but they did it around their swimming pools. More genteel, more educated, and more sophisticated, they rarely seemed drunk - not like the first group.

Both groups were alcoholics, they all needed addiction help, but none of them would admit it. Although it was very clear to an outsider - someone who didn’t drink, or drank very little.

Both groups died earlier than they should have, developed heart and liver problems, diabetes, and so on. All of their kids were messed up one way or another - the parents thought what they did was fine so there was no problem with their kids doing the same. If they were underage, they drank at home. And it was totally acceptable. When the kids passed out, the parents thought it was funny.

If you are close to someone you think has a drinking or drug problem, and are believing what they tell you - i.e. that the problem is you, not them - check out the tests in Do You Have An Alcohol or Drug Problem? That will answer your questions. And if you find that person does have a problem, get them the addiction help services they need. If they won’t admit it, try using an interventionist. Unlike the TV shows, about 70% of the people an interventionist deals with doesn’t admit they have a problem. Check it out.

“People using these (prescription drugs) recreationally have no idea what they’re getting into,” emergency room physician Dr. Lawrence Wilson commented after yet another Texas prescription drug death. One more reason to ensure that anyone taking prescription drugs gets the addiction help they need before they, too, end up in the hospital or the morgue.

The patient in question, a young adult, had come into the ER with a prescription drug overdose and, as far as the doctor could tell, she left in stable condition and things seemed under control. But it appears she died from a combination of prescription drugs. What the doctor obviously was not aware of was that this person needed addiction help. Not even the overdose was enough motivation for her to stop.

That’s because she was addicted - she needed professional addiction help services.

Bill Irving, a local alcohol and drug abuse counselor, says prescription drug abuse is “so accepted right now it scares me to death.”

Where are people getting these drugs? Many are getting them right out of the medicine cabinet but according to Dante Sorianello, a Texas DEA agent, adults and teens often get prescription pads and write their own prescriptions. Or they pretend they’re in pain then go to several doctors with the same symptoms to get more than one prescription. Or they get them on the Internet - with 70% of Internet pharmacies you don’t even need a prescription to get the drugs and it doesn’t matter how old you are.

They use the drugs themselves and give or sell them to others.

But it’s all much harder to control than street drugs because it’s buried within the medical system - officials are used to looking on the street.

There are plenty of addiction help services available in Texas and across the U.S.  Check with a specialist to find out which one is best for your situation.

There are many people who don’t particularly worry about marijuana despite the fact that it has side effects that really change a person’s life - like being disassociated from reality - and despite the fact that it often leads to taking other drugs. However, the results of a new marijuana study released by the White House should serve as a wake-up call to make sure people using marijuana get the addiction help they need.

The study showed that the potency of marijuana is at its highest point in 30 years - much stronger than it was in the ’70s, and twice as strong as it was in 1983.

The director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy commented that one of the reasons baby-boomers may not worry about their kids using marijuana is that they expect it to be the same as it was in the ’70s. Not true. The report stated that young people who have used marijuana in the last year are twice as likely to be depressed as those who didn’t and that the risk of developing ‘mental problems’ is increased by 40%.

There’s also a higher risk of physical disease.

Good reasons to make sure anyone you know using marijuana gets the addiction help they need.

The director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse said she is worried that marijuana will become even stronger and cause addiction. That statement makes me wonder if she knows what addiction really is. While it’s true that, for the most part, quitting marijuana doesn’t cause extremely severe withdrawal symptoms like other drugs, that’s not all there is to addiction. Try to get someone who uses marijuana regularly to stop and you’ll see how difficult it actually is. There’s a reason why they want to feel that way - and those reasons are the ‘addiction’ elements that need to be handled so the person to stop.

Getting addiction help services for marijuana is more important now that ever. Taking marijuana use lightly could be a very big mistake.

So many college kids are drinking and using drugs that parents have to be careful when they send their kids off to any institute of higher learning. Highedcenter.org published a list of questions parents should ask school officials about their drug and alcohol policies.  Parents who want their kids to get the most out of their education and avoid having to look for addiction help for them later would be wise to ask these questions and check out the school thoroughly.

Most kids will have a preference for a certain college and they may resist going to a different one. But if they’re really educated on the dangers of drugs and alcohol - including just being around others who drink or take drugs, even if your kid doesn’t do it themselves, which could lead to the need for addiction help - you may get more cooperation.

For example: Over 60% of kids who are around other kids who drink or take drugs have had their sleep or study interrupred; nearly 54% have had to take care of a drunken student; nearly 14% suffer damage to their property; and one in ten have been pushed, hit or assaulted.

The statistics on that site state that 1.3% will be raped, but other sources say the incidence of rape is much higher: According to abacus.bates.edu, for example, one out of four women will be sexually assaulted on a college campus, and one in 8 will be raped. Most of the rapes involve drugs or alcohol.

Extensive drug and alcohol abuse that requires addiction help services is common in college, but that’s not the only consequence. Perhaps if your kids understand this, they, too, will choose a different school.

Kay Sanford of the North Carolina Depatment of Health said “methadone may be the most underrated problem in drug abuse in the country today.” And the need for addiction help services for methadone abuse is more prevalent then ever.

OxyContin is so dangerous that many doctors have started prescribing methadone as an alternative painkiller. But kids are getting it from their parents’ medicine cabinets, and its finding it’s way to the street.

Methadone used to be given to heroin addicts who couldn’t stop using heroin. Now it’s being given to people who can’t stop OxyContin. It’s unfortunate that these people aren’t getting the addiction help they need to get off drugs instead of being given methadone as a substitute.

Like all prescriptions drugs, Methadone is dangerous. If not taken correctly, it can kill you. Caleb Bevil from Raleigh, North Carolina, died from a methadone overdose last Saturday at only 12 years old. My heart goes out to his family. It’s a real tragedy for both them and the community.

In Cleveland County, North Carolina, Lt. Joel Shores lists methadone, along with Xanax and hydrocodone, as one of the many prescription drugs he’s seeing on the streets.

In New Hampshire, methadone abuse is being described as a “troubling trend”.

Deaths attributed to methadone and other prescription drugs have quadrupled since 2002. If you need addiction help for methadone, or any prescription drug, please find out how to get it.

The YMCA in Coppell, Texas is planning to offer drug education for recreational drug users and support for families whose lives have been adversely affected by drugs and alcohol. Ralph Strangis, a former drug addict and alcoholic who is now an upstanding member of the community, will be speaking at the first event. According to Strangis, members of the local community tend to not talk about drug and alcohol problems. He’s hoping this program will enable them to do so. It also may help ensure people who need addiction help get it.

Not talking about alcohol and drug problems is not unusual. But for the 15 million or so people with alcohol problems in the U.S. who need treatment but don’t get it, talking about it - whether you’re the person with the problem or you are a friend or relative - could be the first step to getting the addiction help needed.

Unfortunately, too many people ignore problems with drugs or alcohol. Sometimes people see drugs, or alcohol, as just a phase that will blow over. Sometimes they think there’s nothing wrong with a little drugs or a few drinks. And sometimes the friends and family members don’t think they’d ever be able to convince the person to get help.

However, there is help available through an interventionist. If you need one, you should call Addiction Help Services - they’ll give you all the help you need.

Ignoring alcohol or drug problems is never a good solution. Eventually, it will ruin someone’s life. And some may even lose their lives altogether or be instrumental in someone else losing theirs. What’s better? Continuing to live with the problem or doing something about? Hopefully, other communities will follow in Coppell’s footsteps and make sure community members get the addiction help services they need.

Plano is not theonly