Parenting advice – What’s important when it comes to teens, alcohol, and drugs

July 8th, 2011

Parents often ask us what they can do to prevent their children or teens from becoming alcoholics, drug addicts, criminals, and the likes. I’ve been all of these and more, and so I’d like to share my insight with you now that I’ve made it over to the other side:

You can’t prevent anything – but you can educate, inform, prepare, and support.

My family breaths success; it also breeds its. My father was a star athlete who turned into a star doctor and a star family man. He also never drank alcohol and couldn’t care less about drugs. My mother was a beauty queen who always helped me get the best grades in school, even if it meant that she ended up doing my art projects for me and keeping me up all night so I’d finish my work. I’m not sure if it was my perception or my parents’ actual wish, but I always felt like unless I saved the world, I would end up a nobody. Drinking enough alcohol to black-out and consuming every drug on earth was never supposed to be on my menu.

A recent article I read in a monthly psychology magazine (see my post on it here) talked about this sense of perfectionism in our culture and its effect on teen depression, anxiety, and alcohol and drug abuse. Did you know that these are highest among more affluent teens?

Advice #1 – Shooting for good performance is important, but focusing on it as a sole measure of success can lead to trouble.

I got gifts for grades, and the best gifts came only with the best grades. Anything short of perfect was pretty much frowned upon and considered “less than my best.” It became impossible for me to actually enjoy anything but the school subjects I excelled in (math, physics, chemistry). It wasn’t until I graduated from college and did some of my own exploration that I learned to appreciate art, English, and history as worthwhile pursuits. It’s a well-know fact in developmental psychology that you don’t reward behaviors that are supposed to be appreciated in their own right. If you do reward them do so with small gifts, nothing large. Big gifts take away the perception that the activity itself brought about enjoyment.

Advice #2 – Parenting requires consistency and openness, but leave the preaching for church.

This constant need for perfectionism also lead to the repression of many issues in my family.

My parents fought often when I was a kid, screaming loud enough for me to take my sister away often and go play. We never talked about the fights so I never managed to learn about conflict, relationships, or resolution. We never talked about my stealing either, whether I was stealing from my family (mainly my father’s porn) or from the neighborhood toy store. The one time I got caught, my father sternly told me to return my new toy and to never be caught stealing again. I began stealing away from my neighborhood; it would be years before he’d hear about me stealing again. It probably would have been better to sit down and talk about what just happened.

Later on, when my mother would find my weed in my room, she would hide it so that my dad won’t find it because he would get mad. We call that enabling. When I was caught stealing at my work, my father didn’t want to tell my mom, so as not to upset her, so he never brought it up again. We call that denial. Neither of these work since they don’t teach a child anything except how to hide things properly and that even responsible adults lie.

But research shows us that preaching is not a good parenting technique so stay open and talk about struggles without being hypocritical and trying to teach lessons that are obviously forced. Kids and teens pick up on that very quickly but they’re ready to learn from their parents.

Advice #3 – Don’t let your sense of pride, or your ego, prevent you from dealing with real issues with your children. Parenting requires you to be the adult in the relationship with your children even when things don’t go your way.

By the time my parents were forced to confront reality, things in my life had spiraled way out of control. They received a call from my LA lawyer telling them that their son had been arrested for some pretty serious drug dealing. My bail was set at $750,000 and I was facing 18 years in prison. That’s pretty difficult to ignore.

Ironically, my arrest, court case, and the year I spent in jail brought my family closer together than we had even been during my teen years or my later drug addiction phase. Having to actually confront many of our issues allowed us to bring some actual intimacy into the family I had run away from so many years before. The important thing was that my parents didn’t pull out the “we told you so” card but rather helped me confront my demons and treat them. It was the best parenting I’d received in my life and it worked.

My parents did the best they could. I know that. Still, I can’t help to wonder if worrying a little less about how things “should be” and a bit more about the reality of parenting their deviant son may have prevented the latter part of this story. Then again, there’s no guarantee of that either. That’s the most important parenting advice I can give when it comes to teens and drugs…

Posted in:  Education, For others, Tips Tags: addiction, addiction help, Alcohol, best, best grades, caught stealing, drug abuse, Drugs, family, help, important, parenting, parenting advice, stealing, teen addiction, teen drug use, teens and drugs

Alcohol, sleep, and school work: College drinking and GPA

July 2nd, 2011

Co-authored by: Jamie Felzer

We all know that college students often party and sleep more than they actually study.  But do heavy alcohol use and poor sleep patterns cause poor grades?

A recently published study found that just altering bed times by 2 hours can throw off your sleepiness during the day.  Most students in the study did show a 2-4 hour difference in daily bed times between weekdays and the weekend, and most went to bed after midnight.

The average number of drinks for participants came in around 6 drinks a night (equal for men and women).

The big question is: can these heavy drinkers in college still perform well academically? (See here for influential factors in college drinking)

No matter what the cause, insufficient sleep causes poor academic consequences.  Interestingly, those students who reported much more sleep also had lower GPAs (oversleep was mostly assumed, by the researchers, to be caused by drinking and staying up too late, though it could have been due to other issues such as depression).

Overall, those that drank more often went to sleep later and also had bigger gaps between weekday and weekend bedtimes, all of which correlated very highly with a lower GPA.

Citation:

Singleton, Wolfson (2009). Alcohol Consumption, Sleep And Academic Performance Among College Students. Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs. 70, 355-363)

Posted in:  Alcohol, Education, For addicts, Tips Tags: academics, Alcohol, bed, bed time, bedtime, college, college drinking, college students, drinking, GPA, school work, sleep, sleeping, students

College drinking and frats – A match made in alcohol heaven?

June 29th, 2011

contributing author: Gacia Tachejian

If you asked college students in America what goes on at a Fraternity or Sorority party they would tell you that drinking alcohol is a major component. The movie Animal House made heavy college drinking a well known fact decades ago, and research backs it up.

Studies have consistently shown that the highest rates of heavy alcohol use and alcohol disorders occur in the college-age population. But who’s to blame? Although heavy alcohol use has been documented within Greek organizations, the question of whether the Greek environment fosters substance use or whether heavy substance users chose to be in Greek environments has not been researched until now.

In order to find out whether the Frats/Sororities were the main influence for heavy alcohol use or if individuals joining the Greek organizations were simply heavier alcohol abusers researchers recently collected data from 3,720 pre-college students who were then followed for the 4 years of college they enrolled in (talk about a lot of work).

Of the almost 4000 participants there were students who joined the Greek environment and those who didn’t. Also, there were students who were late joiners and students who joined but withdrew before they graduated. After looking at all the different categories, one thing was apparent:

Students, who at any given period were part of a fraternity or a sorority, drank more alcohol and had more negative, alcohol-related consequences while being a member of a Greek organization. Also, once they deactivated, those participants drank less and had less drinking-related consequences.

The real issue as to why this is so important has to do with the consequences of alcohol use. Problems like drinking and driving (and possible DUI arrests), alcohol abuse, alcohol poisoning, and violence are a serious problem among college students. Apparently, Greek Environments make these consequences more likely.

It’s important to note: If the only finding her was that participants in the Greek system drank more alcohol or were more likely to drink alcohol at all that would be one thing (this findings was also true here by the way), but the fact that they were also more likely to have negative consequences associated with their drinking suggests that interventions might be useful within this college-environment.

Something to think about next time you’re bored on a Thursday night…

Citation:

Park, Aesoon, Sher, J., Kenneth, S., & Krull, L., Jennifer (2008) Risky Drinking in College Changes as Fraternity/Sorority Affiliation Changes: A Person – Environment Perspective. Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, Vol. 22, No. 2, 219-229.

Posted in:  Alcohol, Education Tags: Alcohol, alcohol abuse, alcohol use, animal house, beer, college, college drinking, college students, consequences, drank alcohol, drinking, drinking and driving, DUI, environment, frat, fraternity sorority, greek, greek environment, greek environments, greek organizations, heavy, heavy alcohol, heavy alcohol use, related consequences, sororities, sorority, students, use

How much alcohol is too much drinking? Knowing your BAC can be key!

June 27th, 2011

There has been some research suggesting that training people to better estimate their Blood Alcohol Content (BAC), can help reduce accidents and improve risk-taking while drinking among college students (see here and here respectively).

I’m including a recent piece from one of our readers, telling us about her first over-21 drinking experience in Las-Vegas. I think this story exemplifies that young adults may often consume more alcohol than they are aware of while underestimating its effects Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in:  Addiction Stories, Alcohol, Drugs, Education, For others, Tips Tags: 21, Alcohol, BAC, drink, drinking, drinks, drunk, las vegas, risk, too much, total drinks night, training, vegas

Global Commission on Drug Policy: Legalization, decriminalization, and the war on drugs

June 7th, 2011

A commission made up of some big names, though not really any names of addiction or drug researchers I noticed, just released a report that’s making a lot of noise throughout every news channel including NPR (see here, and here for stories) and others (see CNN). They want the debate about the current state of drug regulation expanded, and since I’ve written on the issue before, I figured it’s time for another stab at this. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in:  Education, Opinions Tags: abstinence, Alcohol, cigarettes, CNN, commission, commission on drug policy, criminal, criminalization drugs, decriminalization, drug, drug use, Drugs, harm reduction, hope, legalization, NPR, offenders, prison, replacement medication, report, Richard Branson, should we legalize drugs?, smoking, stigmatization, stimga, syringe, treatment, War on Drugs

About Addiction:Elder Abuse, Excercise, and Smoking

April 28th, 2011

Yes, you got it. This is the place to get some of the most recent, and most interesting information about addiction from experts who study addiction as a specialty. Our “About Addiction” posts cover some of the latest information from the WWW that addresses addiction specifically or issues related to addiction. Enjoy!

Drugs: Smoking, Placebo Effect, and Elder Abuse

PsyPost-Smoking cigarettes at an early age may make people more prone to using illicit drugs such as cannabis when they are older. Risk factors that are associated with smoking include externalizing problems such as impulsiveness. By the time teens are seventeen years old 15% of girls and 12% of boys have used cannabis in the past.

Psychology Today- It seems like most people have heard of the placebo effect. Previously individuals thought that a person had to be told that they were taking effective medications in order for the placebo to work but this is not the case according to a study at Harvard that we covered for the Psychology Today version of A3. Individuals were being treated for irritable bowel syndrome and were put into two groups. One group got no treatment while another group got a sugar pill which was labeled “placebo pills”.  Those taking the placebo pills reported feeling better than those who received no treatment.

Science Daily- Elderly individuals who are victims of elder abuse are more likely to abuse drugs and alcohol. This drug and alcohol abuse was particularly common in females and people who have some sort of mental illness. Alcohol and drug abuse are linked to physical abuse of elderly individuals.

ABCNews- A study was conducted which found that the earlier teens start drinking the more likely they are to deal with substance abuse disorder. This was particularly prevalent with heavy teen drinking (between 18-21 drinks a week, so pretty heavy drinking!). For more information check out the video and see an interview with our very own Dr. Adi Jaffe!

Addiction Treatment- Being an Educated Parent and Exercise

Breaking the cycles-Teaching children often seems to be the number one thing that parents want to do for their children. Another thing they can do is to be educated about their children. Parent denial is a common threat that teens face when they are doing things such as smoking a joint or popping pills. Parents don’t want to think that their child is the “bad” kid and often tend to think about their friends as bad influences. For tips and information about addiction check out this article!

Addiction Inbox- A study has found a connection between exercise and getting high. The study suggests the runners high and the high people get from cannabis are striking similar. Additionally, exercise has been found to curb cravings for addictive drugs.  Does this mean that exercise will be the new “it” treatment for trying to combat drug addiction? Only time can tell, but as we’ve talked about on A3 before it probably can’t hurt.

TheWest- There is new funding for an addict Naltrexone implant program. This program will fund naltrexone impants for drug addicts. As we’ve mentioned here on A3, this new form of injectable-depot naltrexone (called Vivitrol) allows naltrexone to stay in a patients system for 30 days at a time. The naltrexone (an opiate antagonist) then stops opiate molecules from having an effect and addicts have no reaction (or a much reduced reaction) to heroin and other opiates. Due to its effect on the body’s opioid system, Vivitrol has even been shown to be effective for reducing alcohol relapse. Sounds good to us!

Posted in:  Education Tags: abuse, addiction, Alcohol, alcohol drug, drug, Drugs, elderly individuals, group got, naltrexone, people, placebo effect, study, study conducted

Opioid prescription overdose and abuse – Staying safe while reducing pain

April 11th, 2011

A new article just published in JAMA (see here) reports a strong relationship between high-dose opiate prescribing and accidental overdose deaths. The authors focused on a sample of Veterans and found that those prescribed more than 50mg of morphine per day, or the equivalent of other opiate drugs, we much more likely to die of such overdose than patients being prescribed lower doses. Fortunately, only about 20% of the patient-months (a measure of how many people were prescribed a specific dose for how long) were prescribed these high doses but the rate of overdose for this group was 3 to 20 times higher! Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in:  Education Tags: accidental death, Alcohol, benzo, benzodiazepines, Drugs, JAMA, marijuana, medication, Medications, nicotine, opiate, opiate presciption, overdose, overdoses, pain, patients, prescribed, prescription, veterans