Are you a parent/teen that is concerned about their teen friend or offspring? Well here are a few things that may give you clues as to why they are doing drugs, and how you can tell if they are doing it.
Teens abuse drugs for casual ways to have fun; teens will ditch their old friends and gain new friends that will support their new drug addiction. Your teen may be very secretive about their new group of friends which is something to be very concerned about. They may also no longer be interested in activities that they once loved to be a part of, develop health problems, start to fail in school, experience memory loss, lose motivation, and alienate their family and friends with their negative behaviors and often unpredictable emotional swings according to teen-drug-abuse.org.
What your teen may be thinking when he/she starts abusing substances, “everyone else does it, so why shouldn’t I to fit in?” or after they try it once, they could want to continue to use it because it may relieve stress formed at school or at home. Teens also find themselves under continual peer pressure to continue to experiment with drugs and “join the party”. Parents do not realize that they play a big role in a child’s addiction; it is likely that the parents are the main source of stress in the child’s life and their child will try to relieve this stress by abusing substances.
A few ways to reduce the chances of your teen abusing substances are to spend quality time with your teen; at this point in a child’s life they are looking for role model. If you don’t spend time with your child there is a higher chance that they will search for role models elsewhere which could always end up with your child looking up to a music artist who talks about drug abuse, and therefor he/she will think it is ok to do those activities. But if you spend time with your child, your child is more likely to look up to you and you’ll know what is going on in their lives.
There are many ways to prevent your teen from abusing substances; you as a parent should do as much as you can to make your child’s life less stressful, but don’t be the kind of parent that lets your child do whatever they want. This is also how a teen’s drug addiction may start. Instead of making your child go to other’s houses to hang out with friends, allow you’re teen to bring their friends over to your house. This gives you a chance to meet their friends, but it also allows you to know what they are doing at all times. I feel so strongly about this topic, because I have known many friends that have had encounters with drug addictions and I feel like it should not happen when it could so easily be stopped.