Teen Drug Abuse and Alcoholism - a Problem out of Control?

The really worrying thing about teenage drug addiction and teenage alcoholism, is at how young an age the children of today are turning to drugs and alcohol. As a result, it's not at all unusual to find kids of 12-13 in rehab receiving treatment for addiction.

Your teenage years are amongst your most difficult and confusing because you're trying to understand yourself and how you fit into the world. Dealing with hormones, trying to impress the opposite sex , and coping with the general pressures that school life brings, makes things pretty tough.

The teenagers of today are also being exposed to far more, far earlier, because of the media and MTV type culture we now live in. Sex, drugs and alcohol are possibly not regarded as 'out of bounds' subjects as they were 15-20 years ago.

And with the usual experimentation that happens at that age anyway, you now have kids of 10 trying drugs and alcohol. The problem is that at that age, you just don't have the maturity to deal with that and so it will create problems.

One just can't point the escalation of teen alcoholism and teen drug addiction to any single factor, however. There are just too many different reasons to consider.

With peer pressure added to the mix of being exposed to more at a much earlier age (not forgetting the experimentation that tends to go on anyway) - you definitely have a significant reason for the increase in teenage addiction. Peer pressure especially, which results in you doing loads of stupid stuff anyway, plays a huge role in influencing your behaviour at that age.

I possibly think too that the standard of parenting, is possibly not what it used to be and so also plays a significant role. These days both parents tend to work, hours worked are generally longer, you have more single parent families, divorce rates are higher - all this stuff is going to affect teenagers who then use alcohol and drugs to escape their emotional turmoil.

But I think one of the biggest reasons today for the escalating problem of teenage alcoholism, and especially teenage drug addiction, is the availability of alcohol and drugs. If you look especially at the kinds of drugs readily and easily available on the streets today, heroin and amphetamines being two of the worst, it doesn't take long for kids to get addicted. And these are drugs that weren't available as easily 15-20 years ago.

Fighting the battle against teenage drug addiction and alcoholism is getting more difficult by the day. As a parent, providing a supportive and loving home environment is your most important job, and in reality pretty much as you can really do. You then just have to hope and pray it will be enough.

Tags: Disease