(Submitted by Narconon Drug Rehab Center)

Being a parent is hard work.

Between juggling careers, paying bills, and planning for the future comes helping with school work, afterschool activities, worrying about tests, worrying your child’s friends, and in general, worrying about being a good parent.

Raising children can be a daunting task. It is tough even in the best of times, yet this difficulty is magnified many times if the child is abusing drugs.

Have you ever tried to reason with someone who was drunk or high? Try reasoning with a teen who has been using drugs.

While most drug use has declined among teens over the last decade (marijuana is the exception), thanks in part to drug awareness and drug education, one sector that is growing is prescription drug abuse.

Almost 48 million Americans have used a prescription drug non-medically at least once in their lifetimes.

The Atlanta Recovery Center Drug Rehab warns that the nonmedical use or abuse of prescription drugs is a serious and growing public health problem in this country.

The elderly are among those most vulnerable to prescription drug abuse or misuse because they are prescribed more medications than their younger counterparts. Most people take prescription medications responsibly; however, an estimated 48 million people (ages 12 and older) have used prescription drugs for nonmedical reasons in their lifetimes.

This represents approximately 20 percent of the U.S. population.

What does this have to do with my teen/pre-teen?

The 2004 National Institute on Drug Abuse’s (NIDA’s) Monitoring the Future survey of 8th, 10th, and 12th-graders found that 9.3 percent of 12th-graders reported using Vicodin without a prescription in the past year, and 5.0 percent reported using OxyContin- making these medications among the most commonly abused prescription drugs by adolescents.

The abuse of certain prescription drugs- opioids, central nervous system (CNS) depressants, and stimulants- can alter the brain’s activity and lead to addiction.

While we do not yet understand all of the reasons for the increasing abuse of prescription drugs, we do know that accessibility is likely a contributing factor, as well as a perception that while street drugs may be “unsafe,” prescription drugs are “safe.”

Prescription drugs are easily accessible in one’s own medicine cabinet, the medicine cabinets of friends or family members, and even on-line.  If you have a credit card (where are your credit cards?) and a mailing address, buying prescription drugs online is as easy as sending an e-mail. Without the inconvenience of a prescription. Of course this is illegal, but how far ahead do some teens think about consequences?

Most abusers find these in medicine cabinets- in many ways aided by well-intended yet clueless doctors who will write prescriptions for strong pain medications (OxyContin, Percocet) for relatively minor problems. The perception that these drugs are “safe” is reinforced by the ease of getting a prescription. Doctor wouldn’t recommend these if they were unsafe, would they? Yet two or three weeks of taking a prescription painkiller will invariably result in addiction, withdrawals, cravings and all.

The ease of getting these prescription drugs is verified by those going to treatment for drug addiction; college students are one example of getting Adderall easily through prescriptions.

A quick raid of your medicine cabinet, or the grandparent’s medicine cabinet, would probably reveal one or more of the following drugs used by teens to get high:

• Painkillers: OxyContin, Percocet, Vicodin, medicines with codeine, Percodan, Fentanyl, to name a few.
• Benzodiazepines: Xanax, Valium, Ativan, Librium, Klonopine
• Stimulants: Ritalin, Adderall, Concerta, Dexedrine

Tips for parents:

• Make sure that at some point you warn and educate your children about drug abuse, including prescription drug abuse.
• Keep track of your personal medications and properly dispose of those not needed.
• Monitor your credit card use as well as your child’s internet use.
• Be aware of the signs of drug abuse and be ready to confront and take action if you see these signs
• Set boundaries: setting curfews, expressing displeasure at drug use has been shown to deter drug abuse in children.

Medicines are lifesavers, often easing pain and suffering if prescribed and used correctly.

Misused, these can lead to adverse reactions, drug addiction, and death.