Personal development | ADMIT SERVICES
Addiction and treatment
You discover that your child has been smoking cannabis or drinking lager with friends in the park. What do you do next? By Keith Burns, MD
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Around 50% of 11-16 year olds will try illegal drugs or start drinking alcohol. It is pointless burying your head in the sand and saying it won’t happen to your child. I’m afraid the statistics are stacked against you – and it is getting worse year on year.
First of all, don’t panic. Only a small number of children who experiment with drugs go on to use them regularly and an even smaller number develop a problem or come to harm. Experimentation is part of growing up. The more you say “don’t do this” or “don’t do that”, the more likely it is that your offspring are going to ignore you and do what all their friends are doing. The classic failure of the “Just Say No” campaign illustrates this – teenage drink and drug use soared, particularly among young females. You might read of some very tragic cases of drug deaths in the papers, but very few children, or adults for that matter, die from drugs. Alcohol is a much bigger problem – it kills around 15 times as many people as drugs.
It is also a complete waste of time and effort telling them that drugs and alcohol are harmful – they know that. What would be the point of taking drugs if there were no risks attached? They know more about drugs than you or I will ever know. Communicate, but don’t lecture them. A friend of mine sat her 11-year-old stepson down one evening and tried to lecture him about drugs. Instead he rattled off names like Mitsubishis, Browns and Skunk, and told her the price of three or four different drugs in or near his school playground. And as for telling them that drugs are illegal, most know that too. You might try telling them that certain easily-obtainable drugs like cannabis are likely to give them severe mental problems in their late twenties, but they never think they are going to be that old.
So what can you do?
Well, it is worth noting that if you as parents are misusing drugs or alcohol (more than three bottles of wine or seven glasses of spirits per week for a man, equivalent to 28 units; and even less, 21 units, for a woman: two bottles of wine or five glasses of spirits per week) then your children are five times more likely to misuse alcohol and drugs. It is even worse if you are an alcoholic or drug addict – your children are most likely to follow your habit. So don’t drink or take drugs in front of your children – blindingly obvious, I know, but most teenage addicts tell me that they saw their parents using drugs or drinking excessively at home and some even started them off by handing them drink or drugs while only eight or nine years old – what a great start in life!
In my work with addicts, I find that about 80% of young addicts come from families where one or more of the parents is an addict or alcoholic or is suffering from depression. Depression and addiction are very closely related. Almost all addicts and alcoholics are depressed, but they are often given opiate-based antidepressants to treat the depression instead of being referred for inpatient rehab treatment to sort out the root cause: their addiction. They often become addicted then to the very prescription drugs they are given for their depression.
If you are an addict, alcoholic or depressive then you should gently warn your children from a very young age, perhaps seven or eight, that they are not like their friends and that they should not risk using drugs or alcohol. If you are lucky enough not to fall into this category, then your children are a lot less vulnerable. That doesn’t mean that you should ignore underage drinking or illegal drug taking. You might try what Prince Charles did with his sons. He took them to a clinic to see first hand the consequences of drug and alcohol addiction – it is not a pretty sight. As most clinics will not welcome you as openly as they would Prince Charles, you could always show your children the local bunch of alcoholics in the park or those sheltering in shop fronts on streets in every town. Do this naturally and not as a special night out. I would not try this, though, until they are at least 13 as it could put them off even social drinking!
Beware of poor a dvice
A certain well-known drugs website advises that cannabis is not addictive. Well if you are an addict, cannabis most certainly is. Shopping and gambling are not addictive, but if you are an addict you will shop til you drop or gamble your life savings away. The problem is that you may not know that you are an addict, particularly if you are a child.
As a parent, you are likely to be told to take your child to counselling once a week for an hour – “that will stop him” you are advised. Well I’m afraid it is unlikely to work for most children. Firstly, counselling is loved by addicts; they are the centre of attention, it doesn’t hurt, and they can tell everyone they are doing something about their problem. Imagine an addiction clinic that only saw its patients once a week and, worse still, sent them home in the mean time. I have nothing against counselling – I run a counselling service using 35 counsellors, but only two are addiction counsellors.
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Specialist addiction counsellors are as rare as rocking horse feathers. Start by going to www.bacp.co.uk to find an addiction counsellor near you. A good addiction counsellor will be very useful in assessing and starting the “recovery” process. That process is, however, likely to result in an admission for inpatient treatment at some stage and now you are going to give your child the very best chance of “recovery” – thousands get into “recovery” every year. But abstinence is a very hard concept for young heads and peer pressure is likely to undo the good work done by an ethical rehab clinic.
Don’t give up, though. With good advice on clinics and deep pockets you are going to beat this problem – but better to avoid them starting in the first place. Keith Burns runs a successful independent addiction advice service and advises parents on treatment options. www.admitservices.co.uk. He has worked in one of the UK’s leading rehab clinics and helped to run an adolescent unit in London.
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