Adolescence is a time of life when teenagers seek independence and when they want more than ever to be accepted by their peers (Read I Took Drugs to Fit In) . While this is perfectly normal, as parents, we often wonder what types of behaviours we need to question as possible indicators that our child is doing drugs.
10 Warning Signs That Your Adolescent May Be Doing Drugs:
1 – Change in friends and/or social activities
2 – Change in sleep patterns, eating, and possibly hygiene
3 – Change in attitude with family members
4 – Change in respect for rules – for example: breaks curfew or doesn’t respect consequences
5 – Money and/or alcohol and/or prescription medication missing from home
6 – Frequent calls from school/work regarding behaviour or unjustified absences
7 – Difficulties with the law
8 – Continuous lies about who they are with or what they are doing
9 – Eye drops in their room or on their person
10 – Rolling paper or other unexplained drug paraphernalia
Asking about these changes may cause conflict between you and your child. Adolescents usually minimise the significance of these changes in behaviour or do not take them seriously. The first step is to sit down with your child and calmly discuss these changes. If your adolescent starts to shut down or becomes aggressive when you state your concerns, there may be a problem.
There are many supports in the community that you can turn to for help. Speak with your doctor, a social worker, a counsellor at your child’s school, or contact a drug rehabilitation centre such as Portage for advice on how to manage the situation and get help for your child.
Stacy Blois
These are all telling signs for sure, but I see a new pattern emerging that is very scary…in our community…kids that are maintaining their marks at school, continuing to play their competitive sports, and using drugs at their social events as the ‘norm’. My son tells me cocaine is the drug of choice at high school parties in our town and so easy to get.
My son spent a morning at Portage about 2.5 years ago, when I was at my wit’s end with how to get him help.
It was a wake up call for him and he is coming out the other side now, and is currently studying to be a Paramedic.
At the time I reached out to all available avenues for help. I also reached out to the parents of the kids he was hanging with. The parents in my town are too busy saying ‘not my kid’ to see how bad our situation is. We need to wake up and stop assuming that drug use is limited to kids to ‘bad homes’, or those who feel left out or bullied. The next generation has drugs in their social culture as the norm, and we can no longer say ‘it’s just weed’. Not sure how we school our community, the majority if which is suffering from ‘affluenze’ 🙁