How To Cope With Teenagers That Use Drugs ?

reasonable and smart;

How to help them?

Some of the most effective methods of preventive educational that

work with difficult children are:

• Stress prevention is not only the neutralization of negative factors

  influencing a teenager (very often it is impossible to neutralize or

  to exclude these factors entirely, as they concern family relationships,

  housing, finances and surroundings). Stress prevention is education,

  training and the development of abilities for making more deliberate

  and more independent decisions about overcoming conflict situations

  and their consequences;

• A complex of exercises aimed at the lowering of suggestibility;
• Psychological correction of problems peculiar to teenagers’

  curiousity and their interest in unhealthy activities (altering their

  states of consciousness) which are carried out with the help of means

  uncovering positive personal potential on the basis of sensomotor activity

  (auto-trainings, meditational trainings and some trans-control psychotechnics).

Don't look for the guilt

Positive and worthy people talking to addiction experts often say the

same thing: "We never thought it would happen in our family."

In reality, most experts working in this arena understand that people’s

ignorance regarding drug and psychotropic agents influencing consciousness

is not their fault, but their disaster.

On the whole, it is useless to blame someone because one of his relatives

has become a drug addict or an alcoholic. It will only worsen the problem.

Responsibility

Drug treatment should be, first and foremost, a way to help the drug

addict communicate with other people without using chemicals. Drug addiction

is a bio-psycho-socio-mental disease. Biologically, this dependence is

untreatable, but it can be treated in sociomental way. For a successful

recovery, we must create an environment that will help the person start

life afresh. Being in this new environment with people who have dealt

with the same problems becomes the most effective means of drug addiction

treatment. A doctor is not an authority for a drug addict. He takes the

opposite side and a drug addict needs people taking his side who have

already been through recovery or at least are relatives of people who

have the same problems. People who have already overcome addiction can

relate to a drug addict better than anyone else. A mistrustful child can

trust this environment because he knows that these people are the same

as he is. They are drug addicts.

Sometimes we hear that it is possible to overcome drug addiction complete.

This is not so. A person can can have a setback, but he won't lose his

total personal potential. He won't blame anyyone but himself. One of the

main components of drug addiction is a paranoid attitude when a person

says, “It is not my fault, but my father's, mother's ..." And

one of the main symptoms of recovery is when a drug addict stops blaming

others. It works best if he is told about it by someone who has already

undergone treatment.

Booklet for parents

If (your child):

1. has ceased confiding in you.
2. avoids being with you and other members of your family.
3. . comes home late and tries to go to his room without talking to anyone.
4. . becomes more aloof and this can’t be attributed to something

   that is going on in your family.

5. doesn't let you meet his friends and tries to avoid talking about

   them.

6. tries to conceal what he’s saying on the telephone.
7. suddenly and secretly leaves home.
8. has lost his friends or sees them rarely.
9. you don't know how he spends his spare time.
10. he no longer studies and can't keep a job.
11. he stays up late at night and wakes up late in the morning. He may

    not sleep the whole night through.

12. he something eats nothing and sometimes he eats too much or just

    sweets and fat.

13. he becomes short-tempered, angry, dull, hasty, suddenly cheerful

    and/or excited.

14. has difficulty concentrating.
15. his pupils are changing: sometimes they are contracted, sometimes

    dilated or different.

16. he is in a bad mood more often without any obvious reasons.
17. He has needle marks.
18. you have found substances with a specific sweetish smell.

If you found ...

... at least one of the above-mentioned signs, pay attention! Maybe