Imagine your teen son or daughter is having a problem with prescriptions. Their grades have dropped and they have cut off communication with family and friends. They are in a state of panic about getting more drugs and you are not sure what to do. Think you're in the minority? Think again.
More and more high school counselors and teachers, as well as emergency room doctors, are seeing an increasing amount of teenagers addicted to prescription medications. These teens are not just becoming addicted to the opiates or painkiller drugs, but also benzodiazepines such as Xanax, Ativan and Klonopin. As this trend continues to grow, more and more teens are at risk of the serious mental and physical side effects of these drugs, including overdose and addiction.
Benzodiazepines Or "Benzos"
These drugs were created as muscle relaxants and to mitigate the symptoms of social anxiety. They are highly addictive and actually lose much of their effectiveness after two to four weeks of use, but at that point a person will have become dependent on them and needs to take more and more to experience the same calming qualities. There have also been cases where a person becomes more aggressive on benzos, but this is uncommon.
Benzo abuse is actually a big problem all across the world. The United Kingdom, for example, requires benzos to be behind tow locked doors with every dosage signed out and accounted for. When it is time to dispose of any number of benzos and other controlled substances, a law enforcement agent has to be on hand to oversee the disposal. These are very serious drugs.
Opiate Painkiller Drugs
These drugs ease pain. That is their main use. They also cause a person to become "worry-free" and happy. Some would call it euphoria. They are highly addictive and dangerously easy to overdose on. They are prescribed all too often for non-emergency related pain such as headaches or backaches. Many doctors feel that opiates should only be prescribed in terminal or possibly terminal patients in an effort to reduce stress or increase likelihood of recovery.
However, all a person has to do to get opiates, one of the most addictive substances on Earth, is complain of chronic lower back pain or headaches to a General Practitioner. This doctor will usually prescribe Oxycontin or something similar and send the uneducated person his or her way to the pharmacy and possibly addiction. There are many who believe that opiates are too strong for most applications, but they are prescribed every day to almost anyone who wants them.
Ease Of Access Primary Reason For Use
The drugs have to come from somewhere if a teen is getting their hands on them. The most common place, probably, is mom or dad's medicine cabinet. Or even grandma and grandpa's medicine cabinet. Most parents wouldn't keep close tabs on their medications if they didn't have any known reason to. If you don't keep track of the pills in your medicine bottle, one or two going missing can just be chalked up to forgetfulness.
There is also the matter of drug dealers. A person might doctor shop, get a bunch of prescriptions from a bunch of different doctors filled at different pharmacies, collect a whole bunch of drugs and sell them on the street at a profit. They probably wouldn't mind selling these drugs to teens who can in turn bring the drugs to school and sell them or just hand them out.
All drugs have side effects which are uncomfortable. These vary from physical side effects like nausea and diarrhea to mood swings and personality shifts. This is the human body's way of telling a person that these drugs are not supposed to be in their system. Drugs have some use in the treatment of disease and injury and should only be administered by competent doctors. Any use beyond that necessary to save life or limb, drugs have questionable usefulness.
For more information on adolescent prescription use contact Narconon centers now.