Is Your Teen Doing Drugs?
For most parents, finding out their teen is using drugs is one of the most scariest things. It’s so scary to face that most parents try to avoid the situation entirely. But lets face it; your teen will be offered the choice of doing some type of drug at one point or another. When dealing with your teenager and drugs, here are some steps you can take to better handle the situation:
1. Find Out Why
If your teen is using drugs, the first thing you need to do is find out why they have or want to do them in a calm and loving way so that you don’t push your teen away and close the line of communication. Is it because of peer pressure? Is it because they are just curious about drugs? Or, is your teen depressed and trying to escape or suppressed their emotions? Each reason requires a different approach but the standard parent “freak out” approach to teens and drugs is the worst one.
2. Stay calm
Most parent’s react in a negative manner by yelling or getting angry when they find out their teen is using drugs so this panic mode makes your teen want to shut down and not communicate with you. By staying neutral and calm about drugs (while still being centered, assertive, and setting boundaries), it diffuses the stressfulness of the situation and provides you an open space to discuss it rationally without pushing them away. The key here is that
A. You don’t want to lose the ability to communicate with your teen and
B. You don’t want your teen to feel shame or bad about this
3. Educate yourself
Take the time to learn about all the drugs out there. This way when the subject comes up you can actually speak to them from a place of knowledge rather then just saying, “No don’t do it because I say so!” This approach does not work because you are not offering any real reasons or accurate information about the subject. By being educated about drugs, when you then speak to your teen they will see that you are speaking from truth rather then fear.
4. Educate and empower your teen about drugs
Some reading this might be shocked at what I am saying here, but the truth of the matter is that if your teen wants to do drugs, they can. You can’t stop them. You can definitely have an opinion and a preference in the matter, but they will do it if they want. So the best thing to do is educate them because there is a difference between recreational drugs (marijuana, ecstasy, and mushrooms), hard drugs (cocaine, meth, and heroin), and prescription drugs (vicatin, valium, oxycontin, etc…). While it is not a healthy choice for your teen to do any drug, if I found out my child was doing recreational drugs, I would not be as worried as hard drugs or prescription drugs. I would be concerned and make sure they understood all the side effects and ramifications (physically and legally). But I would not be overly concerned. Now, if they were doing hard drugs or prescription drugs, then I would know right away that they are looking to escape something and have a deep-rooted sadness, anxiety, or stress they are suppressing. If your teen is doing hard or prescription drugs, then you need to address the root cause of him or her wanting to do them and transform this issue. Grounding them or sending them to boarding school or camp will not solve the problem. All that does is create distance between you and your teen and brush the core issue under the rug for a later time to deal with.
And if you need some help with your teen and the subject of drugs, well we here at Teen Support Institute have tried almost every drug out there and been through every circumstance possible when it comes to drugs. Teenage drug use is one of our specialties and we would be more then happy to support you!