International Drug Abuse Day

How alarming would it sound when your young teen says weed is normal and it’s a way  of life….the nightmare still doesn’t ends  for most of our parents in NCR it rings a bell only when they face medico legal complications, some medical emergency or severe behavioural issues of their adolescents. This further gets complicated when this notorious cannabis leads to uncontrolled surge of dopamine in the brain and causes very ambiguous mood disturbances with obsessions.

The start young:

So what I want to bring into your notice after seeing so many cases in my clinical practise is that there is a sudden increase in these teenagers with cannabis or weed or marijuana harmful use. It now really doesn’t matter what socio economic strata they come from, in fact I have seen most of these youth is from high socio economic strata, best of the schools and extremely well educated parents.

The exposure to weed is as early as by the age of 13, they would have tried, known about it , even before say by age of 11 , seeing older children having it, it has become a status symbol too, for many it’s a way of coping with stress and failures. This becomes even worse when initially undetected during school, these teenagers go to different cities and countries for the higher studies and then the whole system starts collapsing, getting into trouble with administration, low grades, low attendance, behavioural and medico legal issues….physically drained out, poor appetite and the list can go on.

 Sensitize yourself and your kids:

Through this write up all I want is to motivate each one of you …the parents, the teachers, the precious teens – don’t take it lightly, please sensitize your kid and yourself to handle this.

Start discussions from the preventive perspective from early on, tell them:

• Regular monitoring will be done whether they do this or they don’t.
• In slightest doubt reach out to a Clinical Psychologist or a Psychiatrist.
• Be all eyes and ears for any sudden change in behaviour, increased irritability, sleep disturbances, redness in eyes, poor performance, stressors .

To be honest this is difficult to be done single handedly, it has to be a team effort from teachers to parents to mental health professionals. So the most important part is to identify first and keep each other’s informed, don’t isolate yourself and don’t let the stigma over power you, reach out for intervention, because it can be treated and cured.

So don’t loose your teen to drugs lets help them reclaim their lives.