Is Your Teen Using Drugs or Drinking?

Action for Parents

Despite all of your efforts to keep your kids drug-free, one day you might suspect that your son or daughter is using drugs or alcohol. Perhaps you have found an odd-looking pipe in his room, cans and bottles in the car or rolling papers in her laundry. Or you overheard a conversation not meant for you. Whatever the signal, your gut instinct has been activated. How do you know if you need to do anything? What do you do now? Where do you turn for help?

Every day, approximately 4,700 American youth under age 18 try marijuana for the first time. That is about equal to the enrollment of six average-sized U.S. high schools. In 2003, nearly nine out of 10 twelfth graders reported marijuana as being accessible.

By the time they finish the eighth grade, approximately 50 percent of adolescents have had at least one drink, and more than 20 percent report having been “drunk.”

Drug and alcohol use by teens increases the risk of addiction and can change the developing brain for life.

Despite these statistics, one thing remains true:

Parents are the most important influence in a teen’s decisions about drug use. You can and do make a difference. If you suspect or know that your child is using drugs, take action now, because the longer you wait, the harder it will be to deal with your child’s drug use.

Especially for Parents

• www.TheAntiDrug.com is an online service of the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign that offers resources, information and facts for parents.
• www.laantidroga.com is the Spanish online service of the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign and offers resources, information and facts for parents.
• www.drugfreeamerica.org/Parents_Caregivers is an online service of the Partnership for a Drug-Free America that offers tips and information for parents and caregivers.

Alcohol Addiction

Where does one draw the line between being a social drinker and having an alcohol addiction?

For many people, the lines aren’t always so clear, especially when everyone around them seems to be binge drinking, drinking on a daily basis or glamorizing alcohol use.

Social drinking can easily progress into a psychological, or even physical, dependence over time, as it becomes habitually ingrained in our behavioral patterns.

Suddenly, we drink to be more interesting, drink to make others more interesting, drink for courage in social settings, drink to give ourselves a boost of energy, or drink to cover up negative feelings like pain, depression or anxiety.

Prior to an addiction to alcohol, there is generally a prolonged time period when the social drinker finds that he or she is drinking more frequently, experiencing more adverse effects and is slightly losing control.

Alcohol abusers start showing signs like drinking and driving, participating in dangerous activities while under the influence, continuing to drink even when problems with friends or family happen as a result of alcohol consumption and getting into physical fights. Drinking alcohol begins to interfere with not only social relations, but also obligations at work and school, and in some cases, drinking may even land an individual in legal trouble. These are early warning signs that alcohol use is crossing over into alcohol abuse.

The next stage is alcohol addiction, or as it is sometimes called, alcoholism or alcohol dependency.

Now the drinker loses all control and the physiological/psychological effects of alcohol surface. Drinkers find that they’re consuming more than they originally intended to, find that they can’t stop or cut back drinking, and find that they need to drink more to get drunk. They may have trouble sleeping, have shaky hands, sweating, nauseousness, nervousness or the feeling of bugs crawling all over them. They likely drink or take medication to avoid hangovers and continue drinking alcohol to cover up sadness, anger or anxiety. The binge drinking bouts become progressively longer and the individual often loses interest in all other hobbies in favor of drinking.

Full story at Cool Kids Stuff

See also;

• What is alcoholism?
• Alcohol & Medication Interactions
• Alcohol intervention may help.
• Subscribe by e-Mail to Alcohol Self-help News

New Policy for Youth Alcohol in UK

Young people and alcohol - a new approach launched in British Government action plan

A comprehensive plan to stop young people drinking in public; help them make the right decisions about alcohol; and provide clear information to parents and young people about the risks of early drinking was announced today by the UK Government’s Youth Alcohol Action Plan.

The Action Plan sets out what the Government will do to address drinking by young people in three main arenas:

Police and Courts

• Working with police and the courts to stop it, making it clear that unsupervised drinking by young people under-18 in public places is unacceptable;

Families

• Recognising that drinking by young people in the home is clearly the responsibility of parents and families, but providing clearer health information for parents and young people about how consumption of alcohol can affect children and young people. The Action Plan announces that the Chief Medical Officer, Sir Liam Donaldson will produce clear guidelines for families;

Alcohol Industry

• Working with the alcohol industry to continue the good progress made to reduce the sale of alcohol to under-18’s but also in marketing and promoting alcohol in a more responsible way.

While the proportion of young people who drink regularly has fallen, the consumption of alcohol by those who do drink has risen sharply. And the ways in which young people are drinking have changed. The Youth Alcohol Action Plan promises a powerful package of action to tackle this.

Full story at Young people and alcohol

See also;

• Alcohol misuse: tackling the UK epidemic
• Address the drinking problem directly
• Styles of Enabling Behavior
• Subscribe by e-Mail to Alcohol Self-help News

Advertising, Alcohol and Adolescents

‘Where alcohol is associated with relaxation, fun, humour, friendship and being ‘cool’, it is likely to have some influence’- study

The advertising of alcohol, the marketing of alcoholic products, peer pressure and parental influence all play a part in the level of alcohol consumption among young people.

These are the findings of a team of University of Leicester experts who have been investigating the effect of alcohol advertising on young people, which also indicate that advertising seems to be most effective in the case of alcopops and cider.

The study was funded by the Alcohol Education and Research Council.

Many teenagers experiment with alcohol. By the time they reach their mid teens, around one in two consume alcohol at least occasionally while increasing numbers drink to the point of drunkenness.

Professor Barrie Gunter carried out a study of alcohol advertising and young people’s drinking habits.

Their findings suggest that, while there is mixed evidence as to whether there is a direct link between volume of advertising and volume of alcohol consumption, there are links that can be made between advertising and teenage drinking.

Young people who start drinking alcohol are affected by a range of influences. These include whether their parents drink and pressures from their own peer group. Where social influences conflict, young people will tend to follow the influence most important to them. So, during the teenage years, if parents disapprove of drinking and friends encourage it, the likelihood is that young people will follow the example of their peer groups, not their parents.

Alcohol advertising helps young people become familiar with brands of alcohol, but it is less clear whether it induces them to start drinking in the first place.

On television, as with print journalism, where alcohol is associated with relaxation, fun, humour, friendship and being ‘cool’, it is likely to have some influence, while the use of celebrities, colour, popular music or sexual themes appeared to have a more limited effect.

Retail outlets such as supermarkets and news agents present alcohol promotions in an environment and at a level which will be accessible to young people. However, there was no proof that exposure to such alcohol advertising was as great an influence as the influence of parents and peer groups.

Curiously, young people who go to the cinema most frequently, and are therefore most exposed to the advertising of alcohol on film, were less likely to get drunk, possibly indicating that the type of person who goes to the movies is less likely to drink to excess.

Greater exposure to television advertising, however, did seem to relate directly to the increased chance of getting drunk, particularly in the case of cider and alcopops. There was no significant link between television advertising and most advertised brands of beer, wine or spirits.

Professor Gunter and his research team found that both television and print advertisements generally appeared to be compliant with the 2005 revised advertising codes of practice. Overall, the study found 40 violations, 25 of which occurred in 2003-04 and 15 in 2005-06.

The most common violations linked the advertised alcohol brand with the success of a social event such as a wedding or – more ambiguously - with some activity that could be dangerous if carried out under the influence of alcohol, such as swimming, diving and the use of dangerous machinery.

Full story at; University of Leicester

Child Abuse Causes Loss of Quality of Life

Child maltreatment victims lose two years of quality of life

Child maltreatment is associated with reductions in quality of life even decades later, according to a new University of Georgia study that finds that—on average—victims lose at least two years of quality of life.

Associate professor Phaedra Corso and her colleagues analyzed surveys of more than 6,000 people to assess the deficits in quality of life that victims suffer. Their results appear in the June issue of the American Journal of Public Health.

“We found that there are significant differences in health-related quality of life between people who were maltreated as children and those who were not,” Corso said, “and that holds across all age groups.”

Childhood maltreatment—which includes physical, sexual and emotional abuse and neglect—has been linked to an increased risk for ailments ranging from heart disease, obesity and diabetes to depression and anxiety. Corso said there are two reasons why.

First, childhood maltreatment increases the likelihood of unhealthy behaviors such as smoking, substance abuse and sexual promiscuity.

Secondly that repeated exposure to the stress caused by maltreatment alters brain circuits and hormonal systems, which puts victims at greater risk of chronic health problems.

The researchers found that 46 percent of people reported some form of maltreatment during childhood. Of those;

• 26 percent reported physical abuse;
• 21 percent reported sexual abuse;
• 10 percent reported emotional abuse;
• 14 percent reported emotional neglect; and
• 9 percent reported physical neglect.

To assess reductions in quality of life, the team matched responses to a survey that assessed physical functioning, pain, cognitive functioning and social support with data from surveys that explicitly asked people how many years of life they would trade to be free of a given health condition. Throughout a lifetime, their responses translates to a loss of two years of quality-adjusted life expectancy.

“Every year gets diminished in some respect,” Corso said, “because the person who was maltreated has a lower quality of life than the person who wasn’t.”

“The long-term consequences of child maltreatment are very real and concerning. All children should have safe, stable and nurturing environments in which to grow and develop,” said Ileana Arias, director of CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control. “For children and adults to live to their full potential, we must support programs that stop child maltreatment before it ever begins and work to help those who have already experienced it.”

The researchers caution that the two-year reduction in quality of life undoubtedly underestimates the true impact of childhood maltreatment.

Children experience severe reductions in quality of life as maltreatment is occurring, and surveys of adults don’t account for those reductions.

“A lot of the time people don’t consider violence as a public health issue,” Corso said, “but there’s a body of evidence that exists now that shows long-term health impacts of childhood maltreatment.”

Full story at; Child Maltreatment

See also;

• A Problem Shared is a Problem Halved
• Adolescent Children of Alcoholics
• Adult Children of Alcoholics
• Alcoholic Family Roles
• Subscribe by e-Mail to Alcohol Self-help News