Teenage Drug Abuse: Doing Something About It

Teenage drug abuse: doing something about it.

Smoking weed, just like drinking alcohol is often done as part of a lifestyle thing. Friends get together to enjoy themselves and they share a common reality, part of which might be the use of alcohol or drugs. We can all get into habits or routines. And they can be hard to break, particularly when they are bound up with friendship and socialising. A habit developed at a younger age however, can be a hard habit to break.

Making the right choices about who they hang out with, is very important for the development of young people. For them to see who is going to have a negative influence on their life, young people need to have some sense of where they are going. Even the best of friends can turn out to be pretty unpredictable when under the influence of alcohol and drugs and the clearer a young person is on his direction, the less he can be led astray. Teen drug abuse can occur when the interest and guidance of parents go missing.

After one of my talks, I have had young guys wait for their year group to leave before approaching me for advice. One such student in South West London told me his story of how in year 7 and 8 he was really into his football, but then drifted into a different crowd who were smoking weed and so he eventually dropped the football. Here was someone who had recognised the knowledge in the talk as truth and wanted to change his ways. Here was a young guy who had made a decision. He agreed he wanted to get back into his football again and that this was the crowd he should hang out with. He also agreed that he needed to look after himself better, eat better, work out more. He also said that he still had the goal to make it as a professional footballer. I could see that this young guy had got some focus back in his life and that he really meant what he was saying. We parted company with me giving him the simple advice that if problems should come up, whether feelings of frustration or failure or whether antagonistic comments from his “old”mates, he should just choose a trusted person to share this with.

Parents can avoid teen drug abuse by being the stable datum in the confusion.
“The Drug Attraction” is an ebook on drug abuse prevention. Simple to understand, it doesn’t pretend to be academic but is designed to be useable. The more parents know about the subject of drugs and alcohol, the more they can be responsible for their kids and the more they can help them stay in control of their lives <!–EndFragment–>