Say No To Pot » teen drug use

Before I quit – Part 2

admin — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 22:56:35 +0000

High School ended and my friends went off to college. It was strange, because they had been talking about college our entire senior year. I never even seemed to think too much about what I was going to do. However; I did take the SAT and received a score high enough to attend a local community college. At the time, I do not feel that I was an alcoholic or addict yet. I was really still in the early stages. I went to college and finished my freshman year as scheduled. I was really proud of myself for this accomplishment. However; I started hanging out with a new friend “Rick”, who I knew from High School. Rick was a good friend but also liked to drink and do drugs. Mainly, his drug of choice was cocaine. Rick was able to get us a small quantity of cocaine to take on a trip with us to Cancun Mexico. By this time, I smoked a little bit of Marijuana off and on, but was not completely hooked. Again, I do not feel that I was an addict yet.
I have to admit that cocaine was a really interesting drug. To me, I found it highly addictive (I could feel the itch for more after doing it) but not worth the money. I should also mention that I was constantly going to the gym to try to improve my physical appear for women. Being a skinny kid, I was not interested in anything that caused me to lose weight because again I wanted to be “Buff”. With all of that being said, I will still never forget the first time I really got high off of cocaine. I was in Cancun Mexico and did a few lines before going down to the bar. At the bar, I sat down and drank 5 or 6 draft beers and walked away sober. That’s when I realized why it was called the party drug. You could get completely blitzed and do a few lines and were immediately sober again. But, I would never become addicted to cocaine as you will later see because of my desire not to lose weight.
Time went by and I started working at pizza delivery business. I started when I was 21 years old and was still a student at my local college. So, delivering pizzas was a part time job for me. Around this time I started smoking pot regularly. I would say by the time I was 22, that I smoked it every night. By the time I was 23 I was stoned all of the time. If I wasn’t stoned then I wanted to be. My first finance broke off our relationship at age 23. This was a blessing for me to say the least. However; I could not stop smoking pot no matter what happened in my life. Around this time I went to the doctor for some reason and he prescribed me an anti-depressant. He felt that I was depressed. Indeed he was correct and it made a huge difference in the way I felt about myself. Even though I was smoking pot all of the time, I felt so much better once I was given something to help with my depression.
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Jail Time

admin — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 01:58:48 +0000

Unfortunately, people make too many assumptions on how I feel about the legalization of marijuana. Marijuana does not need to be legalized because it tells our youth that it’s okay to do one more drug. So instead of saying it’s okay to drink, we are also saying it’s okay to drink and smoke pot. Why would we want to add-on another drug? We can’t make alcohol illegal; it’s just way too late for that now. If it wasn’t and we could switch the two drugs then I would actually support that idea. Let’s face it, the addicts are the ones that get behind the wheels of a car and run over a family. The two drugs together are much more deadly than each one separately. But, if we want less deaths, and less problems with addiction we can not say “Hey kids, while you’re drinking go ahead and fire up a joint too.”

Being an addict, I’ll be the first one to say that we’ve screwed it up for all of the “normal people” in the world. We are the ones that run over people, hurt others and generally do bad things because we drink and use too many drugs. But, that’s the way of the world. Sometimes the bad apples ruin it for everyone else. I guess you could say the same for the health care industry. If it wasn’t for those people who got sick all of the time then it would be cheaper for the rest of us.

I am also firmly against putting “most” people in jail for selling drugs. The judges need to send people to rehab and not prison. Just because I don’t think we need to add another drug to the “OK LIST”, doesn’t mean I feel people should be put in prison for selling drugs. Each case needs to be evaluated separately and fairly.

Teens Using Drugs And the Effect on Families

admin — Thu, 28 May 2009 00:46:37 +0000

In a recent study on high school seniors, a high number (40 percent) of the teens had tried marijuana, a large number within the last month, and a smaller percentage even admitted to using marijuana on a daily basis. The “news” isn’t all bad, because teen substance abuse rates for some drugs have gone down in the past ten years, some as far down as 20 percent. The reality still is middle schools and high schools are the front lines of defeating the teen substance abuse problem we face.

Remember that you as a parent should talk to your teen about drugs. It sounds so simple, but many parents loathe lecturing their teens on the basics of life. Or they think that it’s a complete waste of time. Substance abuse is far too serious of an issue to simply push under the rug and forget. It does depend on the teen, how old they are, if they’ve used already, and even if you used once. Talking to teens is something that truly takes a masters course to do, but the odds are better when you are completely honest with them, explain what can happen to drug addicts, and give them healthy alternatives to having fun without drugs.

Often people within your family who experience someone going through drug addiction will react in many negative ways. A recent study by HelpGuides.com, using research, noted that family members often experience feelings of abandonment, anxiety, fear, anger, concern, embarrassment, or even guilt. These feelings are quite natural, and you may feel so angry that you want to completely cut off the teen. Abandoning them as they’ve abandoned you isn’t the answer. While it may seem odd for a parent to disown a teen for abusing drugs, we all do odd things when we feel betrayed and angered. You can’t entirely cut ties; you need to be firm but not throw them out of the house or into jail.

Parents Using Drugs: No Super Heroes

admin — Wed, 27 May 2009 22:35:37 +0000

The “super heroes” line of the title comes from the basic fact that parenting children or teens is often about showing yourself as a good role model, doing the right things. However; there is also the innate fact that so many parents do abuse drugs. Some fathers will try to be “super heroes,” being the perfect fathers to their children while the wife is abusing some drug. Or a mother may be the “super hero,” trying to make right the relationship between a substance abusing father. Lastly, single parent households, whether it’s the father or mother raising the child or teen, offer a whole list of problems when that sole parent is actively using.

The Children:

One major study from cited by HelpGuides.com offered many different cases for children reacting to parental drug abuse. For example, sometimes children act far ahead of their age in trying to help the addicted parent: they become almost “surrogate spouses” for the father or mother. This is incredibly dangerous in the growth of the child. Often there is no hope for the child, who keeps it entirely secret and asks no one else for help, save the other parent. This becomes dangerous and mentally problematic. In later years, the child is more prone to abusing drugs themselves, even dropping out of school. Children need to be able to act their age, learning as they go with help from parents. Children acting themselves as “super heroes,” trying to help their own parents, should be seen as a major warning sign for child development.

The Teens:

Teens with drug addicted parents come in many forms, but are often prone to mental problems during this stage. Depression may hit them sooner, and reacting to it they may try drugs like marijuana or do underage drinking. Like children, teens will often go through stages of denial and anxiety over their father or mother abusing drugs. The real answer here is to catch the problem early, while at this stage the relationships between the teen and parent may become dangerous. Teens are still not adults, and still shouldn’t be forced to handle such problems and expect to come out of sound in mind.

Your Potential

admin — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 06:35:02 +0000

Drug addiction and alcoholism is a disease. This disease is something that is genetically inherited from our ancestors. No one chooses to become an alcoholic or an addict. Alcoholics and addicts (like me) are generally really nice people. What sets us apart from “normal people” is when we use alcohol or other drugs we develop the phenomenon of craving. There is a point at which someone who has the genetic make-up can successfully stop using drugs/alcohol and not develop the disease. Unfortunately, most of us don’t stop before reaching “the point of no return”. Once this has happened, the individual can no longer successfully use drugs or alcohol.

I had a great time using drugs and alcohol when I first started using them. But eventually I no longer got very much enjoyment from them and felt I had to use them to feel “normal”. As you can tell from the name of this website and the other statements I’ve made, my drug of choice was marijuana. Most alcoholics and addicts have a drug of choice; this is the “standby” or one they cannot go without. Most of the people I meet in AA stated that their drug of choice was alcohol. There were several times when me and my friends tried to get cocaine or other drugs and were unsuccessful. But, marijuana was always there and it was our drug of choice.

By age 25, marijuana was no longer working like it used to. Really all I wanted was to be comfortable in my own skin. My psychiatrist stated (years after I got sober) he thought I eventually would have switched over to pain pills. I guess he took note of all of the statements I made regarding how this type of drug made me feel. Pain pills were definitely one of my favorites because of the energy and overall good feeling they gave me. I used to tell my friends that I could be at work “Smiling” as I was taking out the trash.

If you’re an addict like me and you’re pretty young, the odds of me convincing you that you have a problem are pretty slim. It’s very difficult to convince us addicts that we have a problem when the drugs are still working for us. After you finish reading this article I would like for you to take a few minutes and really think. Look back on your life. When you were 10 years old did you think this was how your life was going to turn out? Are you living up to your full potential or is something holding you back? This was the case with me. In my early teens I was on the computer all the time and at age 16 I had a bulletin board system running at my parents’ house. Once I started using drugs and alcohol heavily, I lost all interest in the thing I loved the most (the computer). I was definitely not living up to my potential and I definitely didn’t think by the time I was 25 that I would be smoking pot all day long and using other drugs just so I could get through the day. Take some time to think. Think back to when you were 10 years old.