| Teens and prescription abuse
RNS, Teen Rx abuse, July ‘04
http://www.med.umich.edu/opm/newspage/2004/hmrx.htm
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A prescription for danger:
Teens using medicines to get high, U-M expert warns
From Vicodin, Valium, OxyContin and Ritalin to plain cough syrup, parents need to watch for signs of use and abuse
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The medicine cabinet may seem like a strange place to look for a way to get high. But a growing number of teenagers are doing just that, raiding their parents' pill bottles or buying prescription drugs illegally through Internet pharmacies and dealers. Here is Andi McDonnell with more.
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From potent painkillers to humble cough syrups, the same medicines that can help patients can also be misused to produce a high feeling. And they can hurt teens or hook them into addiction just as easily as other illicit drugs.
Parents need to wake up to this growing trend, and watch out for signs that their son or daughter might be using medicines to get high, warns a University of Michigan Health System expert who has treated teens for prescription drug abuse problems.
Dr. Maher Karam-Hage, (M.D.), medical director of the Chelsea Arbor Treatment Center , which U-M operates in conjunction with Chelsea Community Hospital explains
“Prescription drug use is becoming more of a problem among teens, especially there's a trend and it has been increasing in the last three to four years. These drugs can be highly addictive if they're used on an ongoing basis. The person can become physically and psychologically as well as behaviorally addicted to them.”
Parents might not realize it, but far more teens use prescription or over-the-counter drugs to get high than use “harder” drugs like heroin, cocaine or Ecstasy.
Recent anonymous survey results show that one in every 10 high school seniors had used the painkiller Vicodin in the last year without a doctor's orders. Roughly the same number had used the stimulant Ritalin in the last year, about 6 percent had used tranquilizers, and 4.5 percent had used the super-potent painkiller OxyContin.
So what's a parent to do?
Know what's in your medicine cabinet, and how much is left. Keep drugs that can be abused out of the medicine cabinet. For a short-term prescription, or a temporary cough medicine, throw it out if there's some left after symptoms are gone.
Karam-Hage suggests
“What a parent would need to look for in any situation where they're suspecting or wanting to know if their child might be using a drug in general is, and also for prescription drugs, is whenever there is a decline in their grades in school. That's a question to ask always; what is going on? The other thing is also to see if there's a change in their own behavior, their own relationship with the parents. They're becoming all of a sudden, isolated or not talkative or choosing different friends all of a sudden, associating with other friends and this is where they get their access sometimes, from different groups at school. So these are little examples, little things that the parents could watch and know that it's coming up to be a problem.”
If you discover or even suspect that your teen is abusing prescription medications, talk to his or her doctor or seek other professional help. Treatment programs can help, but breaking an addiction or dependence on a prescription drug is often difficult and requires expert guidance.
Andi McDonnell, U-M Health System News |
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