How do we go about talking to teenagers about drugs and alcohol?

I have been getting more and more calls from parents who have children in the 15-18 year old bracket, concerned about their teens either experimenting or having a problem with some sort of substance. The topic was resurfaced when a parent I know asked me a similar question: How do we go about talking to teens about drug experimentation? How do we handle it?

One of the things I see as most important in dealing with this is to lead by example. If a teenager sees a parent using and abusing drugs or alcohol, they automatically view it as alright. When your parent is doing something, it comes across as an acceptable thing. Part of what needs to be explained is that many people/parents do and can socially have a drink or two. Adults can have a drink occasionally and it does not affect their life, but in the same right, there are people who cannot.

I have always taught my own kids in this way. I use my own sister as the perfect example. She is a hardworking professional, mother of two successful children who occasionally has a glass of wine with dinner. The point is, she knows when and where the proper time and place to do so is. This is what most teenagers don’t know.

The key is keeping the lines of communication open. It is what I have always done with my children, really educating them on what the use of drugs and alcohol can do to an individual. I believe that parents should always let their kids know that they can tell them about their thoughts and questions in this area, what they are thinking about it. What I can’t stress enough is how important it is to educate young folks on the pitfalls of drugs and alcohol, to share your own experiences.

For many years, I have gone to speak in elementary, middle, and high schools, with kids of all ages about the medical, psychological, and personal problems that drugs and alcohol can cause. My own daughter had come home once in her junior year after hearing a professional speak at her high school. She was so struck by the way they went about teaching them, the way they displayed to the students the damage this can do, how wrong things can go from what they think is pure fun.

We need to start educating them on the severity, on how fatal innocent experimentation can be. And, we as parents need to start this process as young as early middle school. If we establish that open communication early on, then it will always be there. That makes all the difference.

Let’s continue to communicate and educate, getting through to teenagers before they are surrounded by the peer pressures that inevitably come. And, by the time there is that high school party, they will know what the right thing is to do.

Please comment with any specific additional questions I might be able to answer for you, because it is such an important topic for us to address.

Chronic Pain

Last week while doing a group at Sunrise Detox in New Jersey, I found that eight of the fourteen patients were there because of an addiction to pain medication. Many of those people stated that prior to their injuries or surgeries, they had never had any drug problem. In addition to that, a few even stated that they had drank socially throughout their lives. And, of course, the number one question that I was asked by the group was ‘How will I live without my pain medication, and am I really an addict?’

After the group, it made me question the same thing: Are these people addicts, or are these people just victims of working with some uninformed medical professionals when it comes to narcotic medication. One of the patients was put on methadone after having major knee surgery. I am not a doctor, but to me, that is a recipe for disaster.

I wondered as to why it is that some medical professionals insist on giving patients such large doses of narcotic medications. I find that in the year 2010, after working with some holistic based treatment centers, there are other options out there for one’s pain i.e. acupuncture, yoga, physical therapy. I have even heard from some professionals that EMDR has helped in some cases.

I feel that we owe it to the individual to allow them to explore the options more, deal with their chronic pain without medication before we give them any sort of narcotics.

Over the past six months, we at Sunrise have seen more chronic pain patients addicted to narcotics than ever before. I personally believe that some people are predisposed to addiction, which is all the more reason to be careful not to give out opiate based medications for pain.

I now refer back to my original question: Are these patients addicts, or have they just had medical care by professionals not fully trained in addiction?

COLLEGE PARTYING- the problem

I want to open by saying I know that I have not written in the past few weeks, a combination of spending time with my family over the holidays and trying to stay warm in New Jersey. I will be back to blogging regularly and posting for you all to read. I am proud to say that at the time I am writing this, we have ten patients in our freshly opened New Jersey facility.

The reason I came about my topic for this week is that on my flight back from New Jersey the other day, I read a disturbing article in USA Today. The article dealt with the issue of college drug use and binge drinking being on the rise. Some interesting studies were provided by the National Center on Addiction Substance Abuse. Some of the facts that alarmed me were that 23% of students meet the medical definition for alcohol or drug abuse dependence, which seemed to me astonishingly high. Another was that 43% of all students report drinking in a high risk manner at some points in their college career.

I have a daughter who is a college student and have talked with her and her friends about the topic before. These are people who do not drink or take drugs, but all of them have mentioned dealing with a problem with another student who was abusing drugs or alcohol, or being at a party that got so out of hand that the police were called.

What I have learned about this from hearing what my own kid has to say about it is that it’s gotten worse as the years have passed, and the attitude towards drinking and drugs is a frightening thing. It is the mentality of being invincible, that she explained many of them have. That is what causes the trouble, the thought that no matter how far they go they will be fine, that it is just fun or “not a big deal.” Many of them just think that nothing bad will happen, that they could never become an alcoholic, that it just couldn’t happen to them. What I know to be true though, is that we don’t choose to become addicted.

I guess my opinion is that the key to helping people at this age prevent being in these scary and potentially dangerous situations is simple, talk to them. By having folks like myself on staff to be able to educate these people on the pitfalls of drugging and drinking. I honestly must say though, that more than anything I believe that the parental/family role in all of this is huge. Tell them about your experiences, the things that have happen to you.

It is not that I am saying we will ever stop this problem completely, but I am saying that I believe that it can be made better.

Genetics & Addiction

How come I became a heroin addict? How come I did, and neither one of my two sisters who grew up in the same household, raised by the same parents did?

It is a discussion we often have in treatment and I have heard some professionals who believe that it is genetics. On the other hand as well though, there are others that disagree. Personally, I feel that there is something to the gene pool.

I have met a lot of people who, as I complete their assessment and ask if there is any history of alcoholism or addiction in the family, say “Yes,” either a mother, father, aunt, uncle, brother, or sister. I feel that certain people are predisposed because of genetics to become an addict or an alcoholic.

I look back on my beginnings and I think about the people that I started dabbling into drugs and alcohol with, and I always ask myself, “How come I continued on to become a full-blown addict and they continued on with their lives?” Some of them never even used drugs past eighteen; some of them to this day can have that social glass of wine or even smoke a joint. That being said, I truly do believe that there is something to be said about genetics, meaning that there are certain people like myself that once they try mood altering chemicals, they have the x-factor which causes them to become addicts.

I quite often wonder that if I am right about addiction and genetics, will my children be affected by it. They have grandparents that were alcoholics and parents that were addicts, and I believe the only way to battle genetics is to try to keep my kids from experimenting as I did. If what I believe is right about this, then one of them has that x-factor gene and could be the addictive personality.

The ultimate question in this ongoing debated subject is: Is addiction genetics or is it based on the individual?

Suboxone: Good? Or Bad?

I was at a conference last week and a very well respected psychiatrist was speaking on Pharmacology. In his presentation he spoke about putting people on Suboxone maintenance. My first thought was “Really? You believe in that?” Obviously I did not express my thoughts out loud, but I thought to myself that this physician might be part of the problem that we have in the recovery community these days.

Here is my thought on Suboxone. We at Sunrise Detox, use it as a detox medication, and when people leave Sunrise Detox, there are no prescriptions given. They are drug-free, which in my eyes is what sobriety is.

So I pose this question to everybody out there. Here is the scenario:

Thirty-five year old heroin addict, skipping out on his job, stealing from his children, running around on his wife, and when he goes to one of these clinics, the doctor puts him on a Suboxone maintenance program. And now, our thirty-five year old heroin addict is not stealing from his kids’ piggy bank, is showing up to work on time and being a reliable husband.

Here is the question I pose; is he in recovery?

My personal opinion is no. I say no because he is still dependent on a narcotic medication. I guess I feel so strongly about this because at times I feel that Suboxone could be going down the road of Methadone. And , as someone who was on the Methadone program for two years, it did not help my recovery at all. In fact, it enhanced my addiction--it gave me a legal way to get high.

The question that I really want to leave you all with is- “Is Suboxone the next Methadone?”

This is a topic I feel very strongly about and it is one that I have discussed with many professionals and people in recovery. I would really love feedback on this topic, and plan to revisit it again.

Is Suboxone part of the recovery, or are we just changing seats on the Titanic?

What is Spirituality?

When people hear me say spirituality, the statement I most often hear back is, “I’m not religious.” Contrary to that thought though, spirituality does not mean religion, as I often try to explain to people. I tell people that religion is great in conjunction with spirituality in the 12 step process. My belief is that for long term recovery, you need to attain some spirituality in your life.

People are scared by the word spirituality. They think that we are going to have them praying to a statue or make them go to church every other day. That is not what this is about though.

The other issue people have with spirituality is that most addicts are “show me” people. This is not something that I can show them though, not something I can lay out in front of them. They have to just have a little blind faith. One thing I always tell people is that there are a lot of things out there that we cannot see, but that we know are there.

For instance, you really can’t see wind, but you can see the result of the winds as the trees blow. You cannot see electricity, but you can see the results through having light.

What I like to tell people as I was told before, is that you have to take a look at the things that have happen in your addiction, and realize that there had to be some greater power outside of yourself controlling your destiny. For me personally, there were some blaring examples early in my recovery. One was the fact that I had overdosed three times and still are standing here to say it, whereas my best friend overdosed and is no longer with us. In addition to that, there were numerous car accidents, and I walked away from it all.

Looking at those scenarios gave me a belief in something, in a higher power which helped me to grasp the concept of spirituality.

Most of us in recovery get healthy physically first, then we clear up psychologically. But after that, the spirituality piece is how we grow in our recovery. What I have been shooting for is what everyone should be shooting for, and that is constant spiritual growth.

I equate spirituality with serenity. For me, that is what I was looking for and that is what I believe people should be looking for, piece of mind, gained by being a spiritual person.

Again, it is not religion. I have always felt that organized religion is for those who are afraid of going to hell. Spirituality is for those who have been to hell.

I am in no way opposed to organized religion. If you are though, you can still have recovery with spirituality in your life.

The ABC's of Recovery

I find that many people who are going through recovery, and even people who work in the recovery field, make this a very complicated process. In the early stages of recovery, it is important to keep it as simple as possible and to work on the basics. I would like to share with you folks what a mentor of mine taught me many years ago, when I was complicating early recovery.

We will start with A, which is for acceptance, and I have learned that before you can move forward with any of the steps of recovery, the basics of the first of those steps always leads back to that one word, acceptance. People need to fully accept their addiction before they can move forward. What I mean by that is they need to make a full commitment in understanding that there is no part-time use, no changing drug of choice, just completely accept in their heart that they cannot use mood altering chemicals.

I believe that once you have done that, you are capable of moving on to the next phase, which is belief. It was hard for me personally to believe that my life was ever going to get better, and get rid of that that feeling of hopelessness. As I was told though, even a homeless street heroin addict like myself had something to be grateful for, that being the fact that I was alive, and had a chance to make a life for myself... if I was willing to make changes, which is the C of our ABC’s.

Change is probably the hardest thing for any addict because we are creatures of habit, and change means work, which is something I know I did not want to do. Some of the most difficult things to change are our relationships, and friendships. Most of us were in unhealthy companionships during our addiction. In addition, many of us spent time with people who we thought were our friends, and when we got involved in recovery came to realize that those friendships were based solely on addiction. When you take drugs out of the equation, a lot of times you see that there was not much you had in common with that person.

The beautiful thing about recovery is that we don’t have to hang around with people just because they have drugs or can get us drugs. It is just something we all must open our eyes to. Once I was willing to make the changes in my life that were necessary, it gave me the freedom to live a happy life, to experience life.

I recommend to anybody what was recommended to me. Follow these three little words, but follow them in the order I have stated them to you.

Most of us in recovery are always looking for a shortcut, but once an addict understands that there are no shortcuts in recovery, the process will then begin.