Pharmaceutical drugs are quickly becoming a huge problem among young people. The number one drug of abuse for the youngest age group in our country continues to be inhalants, however. Can you guess what these two substances have in common that makes them so attractive to these curious young minds? They can both cause death or severe and irreparable damage to the body and/or brain from just one use – but that is not the appeal. In fact, that surprises many young people. They also can be tricky to detect on standard urine drug screen tests, but that is not the main reason for their rise in popularity either. The biggest reason that inhalant and pharmaceutical drug abuse and addiction is reaching record numbers among younger and younger people is that they are so easy to get – access to these substances is as easy as opening up the medicine cupboard, or taking a peek in the cleaning supplies area at home.
When I speak of pharmaceutical drugs, I am including those substances that can be purchased with or without a prescription. Look around your home – if you are like the majority of Americans you probably have an ample supply, and you also have no idea how much of each substance you have on hand. How many old prescriptions are in your cabinet? Do you know? And how many pills are left in each of those prescription bottles? Any idea? Would you notice if one or two went missing? Or even if the whole bottle went missing? Same question with the cleaning supplies, paint products, and other chemicals you are keeping around – do you know what you have, and what could be abused by “huffing”? Would you know if any of those chemicals went missing? To you these may just seem like unused or extra items laying around the house, but to someone – your child maybe – they are providing easy access to free drugs.
And this subject of access is not limited to the drugs I have mentioned that are easily acquired around the house. Take a moment to think about how and where you store your alcohol. Is it safe? Locked up? Do you know how much alcohol you have in the house, or could someone sneak off with a bottle or two without you ever noticing. The majority of young people I have worked with – admitted alcoholics and addicts – report their first use of drugs and alcohol was taken from the shelves of their homes without anyone ever noticing it was gone. Easy access leads to experimentation, abuse, and addiction in many, many cases. If you are reading this and thinking “But my child would never do that” think again. At the very least, stack the odds in your favor and limit the temptations for trouble in your own house.
And easy access to drugs does not only happen in homes. Recently I became aware of a problem that has been growing in many communities. Apparently there are a number of mini marts and gas stations that have decided to make profits selling substances that are considered legal but are extremely addictive and dangerous. At one of the treatment facilities I work for, we were introduced to these substances by a few honest people who had been in intensive treatment for a number of months and became upset when they learned that their peers in treatment had been purchasing these substances and taking them. We soon learned that a standard drug test would not detect these substances. After ordering a specialized drug test for detection we found that several members of the group had indeed been using the chemicals. These people were discharged from treatment to jail, or shelters, or back to the toxic environments and active addictions that had brought them in for help in the first place.
And maybe that was inevitable. When treating addiction, unlike many other illnesses, there is and has always been a question of motivation to change and a willingness to break out of old behaviors. It is never as easy as receiving some form of treatment in a passive way and then being cured. In truth, this requirement of active participation in one’s care is a hallmark of most diseases that are “chronic”. Think about diabetes, or heart disease, or cancer. For a patient diagnosed with any of these maladies, there is always going to be a responsibility for active participation in ongoing lifestyle changes and monitoring oneself, and continuing to educate and practice those treatments that are recommended to arrest the progression of the disease. In these ways, addiction is no different.
So the fact that these people in treatment were using ANY substance in an effort to alter their sobriety is an indication that they were unwilling or unable to be active participants in their own recovery. Maybe next time – if there is a next time for them. But the entire episode got me thinking about the easy access they had to these substances and if our young people also knew about these “legal” and undetectable drugs. Guess what? They did. Apparently teenagers are using these drugs with more and more regularity and primarily because they are easy to get. There also seemed to be the false notion that the chemicals are relatively harmless because they are sold out in the open at the neighborhood gas stations and corner markets. Many of the kids I spoke with stated that they thought the chemicals they were buying were less harmful than pills they might take from home or than substances they might inhale from the cleaning supplies, or certainly less toxic than the liquor they could steal from their parent’s cabinet.
I wondered – naively of course – why the stores that had been accused of selling these drugs would do so. I even questioned if they really were. I wanted to believe that these substances had been acquired some other way – an internet glitch, perhaps, that allowed people to order these things from some grimy warehouse in a drug infested part of the world that really needed the revenue for people to feed their families and to stay alive themselves. But this was not the case. I went to the stores that had been mentioned, and sure enough the drugs were there – at the check out counter – in plain sight – right next to the M & M’s, the bubble gum, and the glass pipes “which are also used to smoke various substances”. And a few of these stores were gas stations that I had been frequenting for the last few years – I had just never gone inside. I was literally made sick by the sight of these drugs being made so accessible to our youth.
So what can we do? What is the solution? Don’t these stores have a right to sell whatever products they chose to? This is America, right? And part of living in a democracy is dealing with the fact that some people will sell whatever they can to make a buck. So what are our options? The first one that came to my mind was setting up big signs that say “THIS STORE SELLS DRUGS AND DRUG PARAPHENALIA” outside of the store. Actually, my very first thoughts were more violent in nature and involved bending if not completely destroying several laws having to do with arson – my next thoughts were the ones about the signs, but they, too, seemed ill advised and perhaps counter productive “picture all those curious minded adolescents who did not know about the products now saying in unison – COOL!”
So after considerable cooling down and thinking out what more rational and sane minded people might do, I thought I would write about it. And not just here. But also to local papers, schools, law enforcement officials, and anyone else who might think “Jeez, that doesn’t seem smart or safe – or ethical – or even legal”. So that is what I am doing now. And I hope you will investigate this issue in your own town, and talk about the stores that are selling these substances with your families and friends. And then stop going there. Money always speaks louder than words, and boycotting these drug dealers might just get them to change their inventories.
Now for your home. Throw away old prescriptions and medicine – especially those that have a potential for abuse. If you are not sure, Google the substance, or follow the link in this newsletter to see some of the more common drugs of abuse. If you need to have current drugs and prescriptions on hand, be responsible with them. Do not leave them in a public place where kids have access to them. Find a safer place – protect your children in the same way that you would from other dangers. Now on to the inhalants. Check out your paints and cleaning supplies, and consider putting them in a locked cabinet – many contain poisonous ingredients anyway, so why not be safe than sorry?
Study after study has proven that easier and earlier access to chemicals of ANY kind leads to earlier onset of problems with ALL drugs. It is time to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem…
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