Drug Addiction Stories & Info

Drug addiction doesn’t always begin with peer pressure or experimentation.  Sometimes it’s prescribed to you.  It’s happened to soldiers in wartime, and to the elderly in nursing homes, and to you children and teens.  In the U.S. and Canada there’s another group that is being medicated faster and more heavily than ever before, and this group is children.  Every year more and more children are given medication by their family physicians; psychiatric drugs that often act like street drugs to alter brain chemistry, and that can lead to the very same abuse and addiction.  Most of these medications can be sold on the street, for example Ritalin is considered ‘kiddy cocaine’.

This drug is often prescribed for behavioral disorders, and many of these children when transitioning into adolescents, turn to street drugs, marijuana in particular, to deal with stress or life problems.  Marijuana, especially, mellows out the angry student and can make him or more attentive.  This usually occurs in the early teen years, and many parents or teachers may not question the change in behavior.  They just welcome it.

Kids who grow up drugged often feel lost when they aren’t medicated and can also build up a tolerance to their medication at a rate their physician may not catch.  When these kids become teens and gain access to pot, alcohol, and other pills they know two things for sure: taking drugs is okay with their authority figures, as long as you know what you’re taking, and they finally feel good again.  In some cases, the kid feels like he has a messed up brain anyway, so why not smoke up, too?

What’s supposed to happen when children and teens are medicated and end up addicted to their pills or street drugs?  Are they supposed to feel bad about it or suffer in silence?  If you or someone you know has had to deal with doctor-imposed drug abuse or drug addiction, don’t feel that you have to rely on those same doctors to help.