Opiates Addiction

What Parents Should Know About Opiate Use 

Opiate addiction among teenagers occurs in one of two forms: the use of heroin off the street and the abuse of prescription painkillers found in your medicine cabinet. It's a trend among American high school-aged kids that has progressed at an alarming rate over the past few years. In fact, studies show that about 2500 teenagers between the ages of 12 and 17 abuses an opiate painkiller for the first time each day. Prescription opiates are more often abused among teenagers than any other drug except marijuana, and they're the drug of choice among the youngest group studied, 12 and 13 year olds. More than 2.1 million kids reported abusing prescription painkillers that were not prescribed to them in 2006.

Opiates Painkillers: The Basics 
Opioid-based drugs or opiates are derived from morphine or are synthetically created to mimic its properties. Heroin has no medicinal purposes and opiate painkillers are available only by prescription. If you or anyone in your home are prescribed opiate medication, then your teenager has access to these drugs. Because they are so commonly prescribed, they are most likely available to friends of your child as well.

Prescribed to ease chronic or acute pain, opiates are highly effective, but it is easy to build a tolerance to them, requiring more and more of the drug to achieve the original high it provides. Most teenagers swallow the pills but they can also be abused by first crushing them before swallowing or snorting the drug, a practice which intensifies their effect. When under the influence, your teen may seem overly relaxed and even sleepy or "out of it." When addicted, they may become extremely irritable and anxious when they are without their pills and unusually aggressive.

Common Opiate Painkillers 
There are a number of commonly prescribed opiate medications that you can look out for. If you find pills among your teen's possessions and are unsure of their origin, you should know the names of certain opioid-based drugs that are dangerous and addictive. The following is a partial list of mostly generic versions that may have different brand names:

• Codeine
• Fentanyl
• Morphine
• Methadone
• Hydrocodone
• Oxycodone

The Dangers of Opiate Use and Abuse
Aside from the obvious dangers of opiate addiction and overdose, there are a number of negative physical effects related to opiate use and abuse among teens. The ability to learn is inhibited by the use of painkillers, for example, as are control of motor skills and good judgment. Opiates cause respiratory depression and it is easy to take too many, experience respiratory failure and slip into a coma that can ultimately turn fatal. Mixing opiate drugs with alcohol or other depressants increases the chance of both addiction and death.

Teen Opiate abuse: What can parents do?
It’s every parent’s nightmare facing Opiate abuse. As children enter their teenage years they begin to separate from their parents, explore the adult world and fashion an image of their place in it.

Parents need to begin their offensive preparations long before the teenage years. See the problem of Teen Opiate abuse before it comes into your neighborhood. Be proactive and establish your own game plan for educating your child on the topic, handling the problem if it arises and limiting the damage.

Parents do not want to believe that your child is going to abuse drugs or is having a problem with Teen Opiate abuse. That’s so Opiate that happens to somebody else. This is not true. Drugs are everywhere, so parents need to be savvy and look for the warning signs. Don’t assume that the problem is going to pass you by because you’re the “right kind of parents.” Human nature hasn’t changed over centuries and if parents are honest, they will recall their own view of the world when they were teens.

Spotting Addiction
Just because your teen doesn’t have an opiate addiction now doesn’t mean your teen won’t develop an addiction later. It’s a fact that many teens will experiment with drugs. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 20 percent of teens in the United States took prescription medications in 2009 without a prescription, and two percent of teens took heroin. Kids are experimenting, and parents need to be aware.

Parents who know the signs of addiction can help ensure that their teens get the help they need as soon as the problem develops. Signs of opiate use include:

• Slurred or slow speech
• Tiny pupils
• Drooping eyelids
• Flushing of the face or neck
• Slow gait
• Extreme drowsiness

If you’ve noticed these symptoms in your teen, it’s important to have a frank and honest discussion about drug use. These discussions can be difficult to begin, but they are incredibly important for the teen’s overall health. In this talk, parents should strive to be specific, pointing out the signs of drug use that they have noticed and explaining why these symptoms are cause for concern. In addition, parents should remind the teen that addiction is curable, and that the parents are willing to help the teen get better. In addition, parents should remember that teens often begin taking opiates they find in the medicine cabinet. If you’ve recently taken an opiate medication to control your own pain and you have leftover tablets in the medicine cabinet, you’re providing your teen with an open temptation to abuse the drugs. In some communities, you can take unused drugs back to the pharmacy for safe disposal. Other communities provide medication drop boxes at police departments. As a last resort, keep the drugs in a locked cabinet in your home and keep the key with you at all times. This is a prudent step to take whether or not your teen is experiencing opiate addiction right now.

School: Is your child keeping up with his/her school work? Have they lost interest in going to school and look for excuses to stay home? Call the school and keep track of your child’s attendance in class. I coach football and basketball for middle school and high school. I get attendance records and if a teen has missed class, they don’t play in the games.

But do you know your child skipped second period math class?

Are there days when you think your child has gone to school, but the attendance records do not match up?

Children who are in trouble with drugs will often begin failing classes, not turning in homework assignments or in general just fall behind. “I can’t believe Johnny is failing math, it was always his favorite subject.” A new pattern has emerged and it isn’t pretty. Schools have open campuses, allowing kids to come and go. They can easily slip into the community and get into trouble.

Health: As a person slips into teen abuse a variety of physical signs point to substance abuse. Are they listless all of the time? Kids don’t want to get up in the morning anyway, but they don’t always refuse to get moving. Weight loss and weight gain are signs. Are there changes in eating habits? The eyes are an indicator. Has the life gone out of their eyes, or is there a major change?

Appearance: This can be a difficult area to discern, as fashions change and often times what adults feel is acceptable dress may not have anything to do with current trends. Watch for changes in dress. Does a child lose interest in how they look? Kids want to fit in and there is peer pressure influence on the way they dress. Girls, especially, are bombarded with images on appearance. Has there been an attitude shift? Have grooming habits changed?

Attitude and Behavior: As children enter their teen years it is natural for them to want to break away from the family. When kids go to extremes to make sure you don’t know who they’re with or what they are doing, the red flag should go up. When they become secretive and guarded, when their privacy at home prevents your open access to them, look for so Opiate beyond mere adolescent rebellion. Money can be a sign. If their only interaction with the parents is to ask for money, and when asked why they need money they refuse to answer, or become indignant, that is an indicator of possible substance abuse. Worse yet, they may steal items from home to buy drugs.

Communication is Essential 
Communicating with teens can be a challenge, especially because they are beginning to spread their wings and desire independence from mom and dad. Stay calm.

The most common mistake parents can make is trying to force ideas and values on the defiant teenaged mind.

I was that way. There's a leadership responsibility that always needs to be in evidence, and parents need to be parents. Trying to be “best buddies” is not a good strategy. However, parents need to meet their children where they are at. That means trying to understand the situation from your child’s perspective.

Teenagers will probably come up with some very wrong reasoning; seriously flawed ideas and their whole world view will likely be counter to that of their parents. But they have a NEED to be heard and respected.

It’s one thing to accept an opinion counter to your own, and it’s quite another to approve of it. Try working with your teen’s ideas and concepts, and have an open and non-threatening discussion about them. You can establish rules of engagement with your teen and agree that both of you are allowed to express ideas and opinions without fear of retribution.

The key is to remember that the parent needs to be the one in control. As a chaplain, I do a lot of counseling work and my approach is entirely patient-centered. They establish the themes of the conversation, but even though I am not deciding the topic, or necessarily directing the conversation, I am still in control.

Remember that your teenager, like a patient in a hospital, is probably going to be very myopic. He/she will see things only from their perspective.

Take a step back and see the entire situation. Go with their feelings, their concerns and walk down their path. Share the experience.

Parents are the front line of the fight against Teen Opiate abuse. Don’t push that responsibility off to the schools. Rather, partner with the school counselors, teachers and administrators, never forgetting that you are the one responsible for your teen. If teen Opiate abuse enters your home, seek professional help and form another partnership in the effort.

Be in control. Be honest. Be alert. Be proactive.

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