Substance Abuse in Teens

Teenage drug use is a continuing epidemic now plaguing the United States. Drug addiction is occurring more frequently in teenagers the rates are also going up. According to an article from Medicinal News Today “fifteen per cent of teenagers had positive results on a substance abuse screening test when they came in for routine outpatient medical care”medical news today (Nordqvist 2007) so when children see their doctors they care coming up positive for using drugs. The article stated that adolescent addiction can “generally predict future addictive disorders” (Nordqvist 2007).

I got this image from http://flickr.com/

Substance abuse is one of the leading causes of death among the United States teenagers following unintentional injuries, homicides and suicides. This is because teenagers are very rebellious and think they know everything when they actually don’t and they try to experiment with too many things which lead to an overdose. Drug abuse can also be linked to a “conduct disorder, unplanned sexual activity and depression” (Nordqvist 2007) and a variety of side effects. It can ruin families and friends trust and mess up your goals.

I used drugs in high school and I choose never to go class because my goals were about getting high and rebelling. Sometimes I think if I maybe didn’t fuck up my last two years in high school maybe I would have went away to college and graduated on time and had a real job by now. I see people my age already done with school and they are working in their career and it sucks because I chose a different path when I was a teenager. I did a lot of things that I look back on now and say what the hell was I thinking I would never do something like that now. I really wasn’t thinking about what I was doing because my mind was so messed up and I didn’t care about myself. Now I am on the right track and I am going to school full time, working full time and living with my boyfriend. I don’t use drugs anymore I think their stupid and a waste of money, now I’d rather save my money for other things than use it for drugs. I am kind of grateful that I had an experience like that when I was a teenager rather than later on in life because I got help early and got back on track.

It is really important to notice if your children or anyone you know is using and it is effecting their life because I teenagers don’t know the consequences of their actions and how it can affect them later on in life. If teenagers are getting addicted to drugs now we need to do something to help them before it is too late. The article stated that “early identification and intervention of adolescent substance use present the greatest opportunity for reducing the burden of addictive disorder later on in life” (Nordqvist 2007).

I got this image from flickr.com