October 15, 2020 • 57 mins
Join Ali Wentworth and clinical social worker Jeanette Friedman as they discuss teens and addiction. The women dive into the effects of drugs, including alcohol, vaping and weed. They also explore how to tell if teenagers are on drugs, how they can get addicted, and how parents can educate their teens about the dangers of substance abuse.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Go ask Ali, a production of Shonda Land
Audio and partnership with I Heart Radio. Hi am Alli
Wentworth and you're listening to Go ask Ali. Where this
season we're asking the question how do you grow a
teenager in a pandemic? We're talking all about teenagers and
(00:24):
addiction in this week's episode. I personally don't have a
lot of experience with substance abuse in my family or
my close circle. But when I was a teenager, I
experimented a little bit, And now years later, I have
two teenage daughters of my own, and honestly nervous, I
think other parents can relate when I say we don't
want our kids getting addicted to prescription drugs, to alcohol,
(00:47):
to vaping. I mean, first of all, dueling and vaping
didn't exist when I was a kid um and certainly now,
as teens stay indoors due to COVID nineteen and keep
us out of the rooms, I have to wonder, how
will we know if our teens are on drugs? Should
we snoop through their stuff? How can we help them
continue to be responsible even when we aren't around Today
(01:08):
We're going to figure out how our kids are getting
addicted and what we can do to stop it. My
guest today is Janette Friedman. She's a clinical social worker,
a family consultant, and a mental health and substance use
disorder specialist. Before I speak to Jeanette, I once again
have my daughter, Elliott Stephanopolis, who is my go to
for all things teenager. She is a eighteen year old
(01:31):
and wise beyond her years. And Elliott, I wanted to
ask you how rampant and you can be honest with me,
how rampant is jeeling and baping in the teen world,
because you know, when I was a teenager, the majority
of my friends smoke cigarettes to be cool. I mom,
me um, I would say, like every other person I
(01:54):
know owns a jewel or like some kind of babe.
Every other person you know, like if you put me
in a room of five people, like three out of
five will own some sort of nicotine electronic device. And
I mean people do smoke cigarettes now because jewels and
like the disposable electronic cigarettes are are harder to get,
(02:17):
so people just smoke regular cigarettes. And it's also like
and did people you just stop me? No to God,
we are really demonstrating the parenteenager dynamic right now. My
question to you is, um, did most of the people
that are vaping and jeweling did they start because these
(02:37):
companies introduce these jewels that are cookies and cream flavor,
It has anything to do with the flavors, you don't?
You think it's the high. I think it's like people
are really stressed, and like you've talked about this with cigarettes,
like having something in your hand. It's like for social
anxiety or stress, it's something to do. So I don't
(02:59):
really think it has anything you do with the flavor.
I think it's more like who I'm a teenager and
I'm an experiment. And also with the stress social anxiety aspect,
having any kind of reliever, I guess was nice. So
teenagers don't like to go to parties and just play
with their stress ball, you know. But it's also like
flavors don't matter. No one's like comparing flavors, want to switch.
(03:20):
They'll just do any nicotine they have. Now I'm about
to divulge something on this podcast, and you're gonna tell me, no, no, no,
You're gonna tell me. First of all, if it's helped,
I had you and your sister signed a contract every
if you Glorious and my social circle, you guys signed
(03:41):
a contract and basically, if you guys do not do
drugs until you're twenty one, then you will be rewarded
with maybe a trip or you know, a secondhand Honda
accord or something but something, and you haven't so far.
I'm clarifying that the contract is no no hard drugs,
(04:04):
but no weed, not pot, no weed, no cocaine, no mushrooms,
no LST, none of that stuff, right, And is that
is that an incentive not to do drugs having this
contract with me and your dad? I mean yeah, I
think like both my sister and I have like pretty
(04:24):
bad social anxiety. So I think it's one way to
avoid the pressures to be like listen, listen buddy, like
I'm gonna get money. Um, So it's like a good out.
Even though there's I haven't really experienced a lot of
peer pressure. I just also know myself like I'm very high,
strong and tend to freak out and I feel like
(04:45):
smoking weed or doing any hard drugs, but just emphasize
that rather than diminish it. So yes it will. And
I also hated my body is very sensitive because like
I've already been on drugs prescription wise, and I've reacted
really bad to it. Like I've taken adder all in,
riddle in and all that stuff, and it made me
feel sick. You also had major, major back surgery, a
(05:07):
spinal fusion, and you had to take opiates and everything
for that, and that also made you sick. So you've
had bad experiences with drugs that you actually needed to
take for And I've said that to people and they're like, oh, like,
what do you How do you know if you don't
like it? I'm like, because I've taken it when I'm
in like severe severe pain or like my brain literally
cannot focus and it does more harm than good. Why
would I do when I'm non in pain. I know
(05:29):
I'm still going to feel the bad effect, because yes,
it did help with the pain, but yes I also
had extreme side effects. Elliott. Yeah, thank you, Bye, thank you.
I love you. And I will now turn my attention
to Jeanette Friedman. She is a wealth of knowledge about
everything surrounding teens and addiction. Let's get to it. I
(05:56):
have so many questions for you, Jeanette. I got a
lot of material real so, oh god. I love when
I hear that. Um, So let's let me just start
by asking a basic question, because I want to sort
of talk about what substance abuse is, how it affects
the brain, and then we're going to kind of branch
out to why teens do drugs, what kind of drugs, signs,
(06:17):
how do we find treatment? So, first of all, how
do you define substance addiction as it relates to a disorder.
So one good way that I think, I think to
define it is to think of it something that is
going to interfere with adolescent development, because virtually all addiction
(06:40):
begins in an adolescence. And then if you go if
you die a little deeper and you look at what
happens in an adolescence, a lot of that is connected
to early childhood. So really the people who need to
be hearing this are the parents of young children, except
that when you've got young children, you're not thinking of that.
You've got other things on your mind. But in fact,
(07:01):
when you go back and you do like a forensic
evaluation on how does something really start, What what happened
to make this all um developed in the way it did,
you're looking at things like temperament, you're looking at the
risk factors, which UH are not about substances at all
in the beginning, They're about temperament. As I said there
(07:23):
about personality development, how much of it is genetic, So
genetics there is UH. There is definitely a percentage between
twenty and of genetic link that will be that will
affect a child. We try to go back about three
generations and look at whether it's parents, grandparents, great grandparents, um.
(07:44):
In terms of a biological connection. But you know, a
genetic availability, it doesn't cause it. It makes it easier
to develop. And one of the biggest reasons that it
makes it easier to develop is that a kid who
comes from a family where there's been addiction of any
so art is going to like a substance more. They
just naturally will respond more. Their brain is going to
(08:06):
respond more in a pleasurable way than someone who doesn't
have it in their family. So it's something that kids
will say, why me, because somebody else uses substances more
than me, even and they don't seem to have a problem.
Once you are introduced to a substance that you like,
that you respond to, it's pretty hard to forget what
(08:26):
that feeling was and is this. Is it the same
with alcohol and drugs. It's the same, yes, because alcohol
is a drug and it's an addictive drug. It's just legal. Um.
But but what we do find is that certain personalities
are more attracted to certain drugs than others. Those certain
personalities are more interested in hallucinogens. Let's say, marijuana smokers
(08:49):
often are much more interested in an experience that is
related to fantasy, whereas people who tend to be more
anxious and irritable are more drawn to alcohol. That said,
once you develop a ritualized use of any of those
substances and you don't have them available anymore, it becomes
easy to move over to a different substance. You can
(09:11):
switch seats, even though your favorite let's call it your
drug of choice, is one or the other. But generally
there is a kind of personality that responds more to
one than the other. And what about environmental stuff, you know,
because you always read about um. You know, children that
have gone through big emotional transitions in their life, like
(09:33):
divorce or a death, um, certainly trauma. UM. How much
do they factor into whether or not that child grows
into an addictor right? So it factors in a lot
in that. If you look at the major risk factors,
they are mental health issues like depression, anxiety, personality factors,
genetic factors, and then trauma and trauma comes in what
(09:56):
we call little tea and big t. In other words,
there are the small all kind of microaggression that everybody
suffers starting at an early age that will affect some
kids more than others. And then there are major traumas,
major things like a natural disaster, like the death of
an important person in the family that will really up
end somebody's sense of equilibrium. So certainly, you know, what
(10:18):
we know about trauma now is that what it does
to the brain can be so debilitating for a young
child because they just not equipped, They don't have that
kind of resiliency. So we often overlook what happens with
a child, a young child and trauma because they appear
to adjust. You know, you'll have someone who talks about
a five year old after a divorce and they'll say,
(10:41):
you know, my five year old is just amazingly mature
about this and really doesn't have a problem with it
at all. Well, that's because at five, you're really interested
in pleasing your parents and having no conflict at all,
So you don't even access the depth of of your
loss until you're a little older. And so trauma, for
sure is it is a problem. So let me let
(11:04):
me break down the brain a little bit. When there
is trauma, let's say, or environmental factors, um that happened
to you in your youth, when you get older and
you're a teenager, in your frontal lobe hasn't completely developed,
and you take risks and everything we know about teenagers,
are you trying to numb the pain? Is it is
(11:25):
the substance a numbing mechanism or an escape mechanism? What
is it's all? It's it's all of those. It's it's
all of those whatever works for you. So this is
partly why it is really so important for parents to
try to not have their child exposed to addictive substances
at an early age, because, as I said, once you
(11:48):
introduce that into a very fragile brain, which is what
all kids have, uh, it is very hard to turn
away from that when you want it to be numbed,
when you want to escape, If you have a memory
of what that felt like, you're going to be drawn
to going back to that. If if you have access
to it, so you know, once you discover it, once
(12:09):
it's introduced to you, it becomes it's hard to discover,
it's hard to undiscover it. So then it becomes a
question of access and keeping kids away from it. But really,
all as I said before, if we we have studies
that have shown that if you could prevent kids from
using any addictive substance until they're around three, you are
(12:30):
eradicated addiction. It doesn't exist because rain, which is dramatic,
because the brain is so much stronger and resilient when
you are in your early twenties than it is when
you're twelve or thirteen. So parents, well meaning parents who
are thinking, I just need to teach my child how
to drink alcohol during a dinner, for example, so that
(12:52):
when they get to college they won't make a fool
of themselves, Well, it doesn't work like that. If you
have a brain that's really responsive to a substance, whether
you start when you're thirteen or you're or later, there's
there's likely to be a problem, you know. So it's
not that we can teach kids how to use responsibly.
There's kind of no such thing. So let me ask
(13:13):
you this because another thing I hear a lot as
a parent is, particularly with teenagers, that the idea of
trying drugs or drinking binge drinking. Everyone says, well, it's
a rite of passage um, which has always been kind
of a strange um phrase to me. But people say, oh,
(13:35):
it's part of being a teenager. Or you know what,
I bought the kids lots of alcohol. They're you know,
they're having a party and that's just what teenagers do. Um. Yeah,
I know you have a lot to say. I could
tell my face, well, you know, it's so interesting that
whole that idea, which I know is very popular, I
think is starting to change as people get more educated
(13:59):
around what causes addiction to begin with, and that access
is important. And if you have parents providing alcohol to
underage kids, the kids automatically get the message that the
parents are really okay with that. They're not okay with
being drunk, they're not okay with drunk driving, but if
you want to drink at home with us, there's an
illusion of safety when the parents are included. So the
(14:24):
parents have the feeling that they are protecting their child
by keeping them at home, letting them get high at home,
they're thinking is better than if they're out there. In
terms of addictive process in the brain, the brain doesn't
care whether you're at home, in your bedroom or out
on the street or in college. It's that's a whole
other experience. So the ways that parents who don't understand
(14:47):
addictive process, the ways that they try to protect their kids,
the well meaning ways often sort of feed into a
mixed message about what what they're really trying to say.
Parents want their kids safe, and they often don't understand
that you can't give addictive substances to a young brain
without some sort of a cost involved. And the second
(15:09):
piece of that is that a lot of parents get
overly involved with their kids to begin with, and they
are assuming that they know how to train a child
to to be responsible with their their use. For example,
they think they actually know how that child's brain works,
and usually that's not the case. And then there's a
whole psychological emotional level on involvement with a child's life
(15:32):
and feeling close to a child. So you'll have people
talk about getting high with their child as a bonding experience, right, Well,
if it's a bonding experience, it's a problem. You see
it a lot in film, the cool mom who comes
in with margharita's for all the teenage girls, and you know,
we sort of laugh at that, but there's there is
something tragic about it, um, but also tragic about needing
(15:56):
to drink a margharita with your daughter's friends. Well, yes,
that's the other piece of it, is that what does
that mean about? So yeah, I'm I'm still infantilizing my kids.
So there I have an eighteen year old that I
want to make cookies with and she wants, you know,
she wants me to get out of her room. But
you know, it's funny that our culture we assist, you know,
(16:16):
we insist on seat belts and helmets when we bike,
and you know, sunscreen and all the precautions one takes
to keep your kids safe and healthy. And yet for
some reason, the the alcohol and substance of you that
seems to be something that people don't prepare their children
(16:36):
for as much as everything else, which is somewhat disturbing
and uh shocking to me. You know, I think if
you've had it in your family, or you've you've been
aware of it with let's say, one of your child's
friends or a friend of yours and their family. If
you know of it more firsthand, you have a very
different approach, because that's the kind of parent who says,
(17:00):
there's no way I'm going to allow my family to
go down that path because I've seen where it goes
and I don't want to even take the risk. If
it seems to have not touched you, then you are
more the way you described. You know, there's a more
there's a more relaxed attitude and the feeling that, well,
it couldn't happen to us, because we're not that kind
of family. You know, we're not that kind of parent.
(17:21):
It wouldn't happen to my child, because my child would
never do X y Z. So, you know, addiction and
accidents related to two substances, they are really accidents. They're
not you know, no one waves up in the morning
and says, how can I really ruin my future? It's
so subtle how this develops, and and people really have
(17:43):
trouble seeing what they don't want to see. We're going
to take a short break and we'll be right back.
Welcome back with more, go ask Galley. I would think
that teenagers are very susceptible because they're dealing with, you know,
(18:08):
mood swings and hormones and um, you know, trying to
fit in and social anxiety. I mean I can understand
how a drug could be so seductive, particularly at this
time in life. Yes, yes, so you know, there used
to be a joke about people in twelve step programs
that um people would say, well, I you know, I
have anxiety disorder. If you went to an A meeting,
(18:30):
probably nine of the people in an A meeting could
qualify as having a diagnosis of a generalized anxiety disorder.
Because anxiety feeds a need for calm and a need
for peace and alcohol. As I said, once you discover it,
nothing is going to work as quickly as alcohol. You know,
not talking to a therapist or reading a book or
(18:51):
taking a bath or going for a walk, nothing is
going to work as quickly as a mood altering drugs.
So it becomes so easy to get in all and
it is really accidental. It is. People are innocent victims
until it takes hold, and then there's a whole other,
you know, psychological emotional component in terms of shame and
(19:14):
feeling like they did something wrong because they got dependent
on this substance, but it happened so subtly they didn't know,
and the families often don't know that's happening, and so
and they can move from one to another, obviously, can
they can go from something softer into something harder. And
I think about like in California, where you know, marijuana
(19:37):
is legal, there is one less barricade for teenagers in
that sense too. And I've I've known friends that have
had kids that have started with marijuana and then got
more addicted to harder substances. You know, this is one
of those things nobody wants to believe. If you have
a child who is just getting high on weed, you
(19:57):
don't want to believe that there is a greater risk
for it becoming more serious with harder drugs. But let
me just say that if you have an emotionally psychiatrically
fragile kid, that kid is not going to do well
with weed. Weed is enough. We does enough to cause
a psychotic break, to cause kids to commit crimes, to
(20:20):
do things they would never ever ever do if they
were not psychotic. And that's there's a link there. It's
not to say that we'd causes the psychotic break. It's
to say that the kid who is fragile to begin with,
once they start regularly using a substance, even weed, because
people seem to think it's so benign, that's enough. They
(20:43):
don't need they don't need heroin, they don't need cocaine,
they don't need to homsin agen. That's enough. So, you know,
from my point of view, we talked about really about
ten percent of the population gets addicted. Of that ten percent,
only about ten percent get some treatment. But even if
it's only ten percent of the population that gets addicted,
(21:04):
if it's in your family, it's not it's and so
then then it doesn't matter. You know, the statistics don't matter,
the anecdotes don't matter. You haven't in your family. So
everyone is affected. You know, siblings are affected by all
the energy that gets taken up by that one kid.
You know, finances are affected. It's horrifically expensive to get
(21:28):
really good treatment over the long haul, and most of
the time treatment is a long process. It's not thirty days. Yeah.
Another myths that people think, oh, well, well right. You know,
in my work, I always think if people understood how
painful and heartbreaking it can get, they would work much
(21:49):
harder on the front end to do some of these
things that we're talking about, you know, to just protect
their kids for a time. And as I said, you know,
once they're twenty four there they can relax. Everybody can
relax much more because they're not going to damage their
brains like they do when they're younger. Now, this is
a very hard message. If somebody is regularly using we
(22:10):
they don't want to hear this. Yeah, they're not interested.
But it's also so interesting in what you're saying about
having to kind of you know, front load all that
focus because you know, I think a lot of parents
are guilty of you know, not my kid, not my kid,
and then their kid becomes addicted and then they go,
oh god, now we have to do something. Um because
(22:31):
like you said when we started, when you have younger kids,
the last thing you're thinking about is that you know,
you're thinking about, you know, potty training and all kinds
of other things you're thinking to have preschool. And also
parents blame themselves so much, you so you don't want
to think that you could actually have that problem because
you're gonna feel like you did it. You're gonna feel
like it's your fault of course, Um, that's a whole
(22:53):
other terrible thing that parents have to go through. Yeah,
well I have a friend going through it now, so
tell me about um. When we talk about drugs, we
have alcohol in one column. When we talk about drugs,
it seems to me there's the marijuana and cocaine and
you know, crack. I don't. I don't even know if
(23:14):
people still do crack, but you know, they're all those
kind of strong things. But we also have a big
opiate addiction. And also one of the things I hear
more and more is people are kids, teenagers taking prescription
medication from their parents bathrooms. So I know somebody who
a kid went into cardiac arrest because they had snorted adderall,
(23:36):
which is an a d h D drug. So in
terms of kind of what the landscape looks like, now,
what are you what are sort of big red flags
for you? Well, there's a lot of views of pharmaceuticals
kids are getting from one another, They get them from
their parents, they get them on the street, that kids
are smart drugs In other words, adderall riddling to help
(23:59):
kids study. And certainly we know that you can get
much more alert, you can you know, do a lot
more if you're running around on an anphetamine like adderall,
but the kids who have been officially diagnosed with something
like a d h D, for example, it does not
rev them up that that you know, taking it appropriately
(24:21):
will prevent substance problems later for most of those kids
because they're appropriately medicated. But for kids who are using
it kind of illegitimately or because they want to take
a test, or all the different ways that people can um,
they're getting it from a lot of different sources. They're
using it selectively. They're thinking, I'll just use it for
this test, or I'll just use it for this all night,
(24:44):
or I have to pull to get this paper done.
You develop a taste for it because you feel so
energetic and there is a euphoria attached, and so that
is that part of their recreational Like if somebody's at
a party snorting adderall, what is that? All out? Amphetamines?
If you take them, especially with alcohol, you get sort
(25:04):
of double triple the effect. So adderall will increase the
effects of alcohol um and vice versa, so you end
up with a big buzz. So this is what happens
with for example, zan X mixing xanax or any of
the benzodiazepines. With alcohol, you get high, you don't just
calm down, which is what you might use zan x for.
(25:25):
Legitimately you you actually have a much bigger effect. By
the way, this is one of the respectors with adolescence
is they don't use like adults used. They use for
a mood change, and they're interested in a mood change
as quickly as possible. They're not interested in titrating slowly
getting somewhere. They want to get there now. And so
(25:47):
this is where you get the notion of several shots.
You know, go to a bar and have several shots.
They're not having one shot, they're having six or seven
because they really just want the mood change. So it
is very different end from a mature adult who decides
to have, you know, wine with their fish. It's not
or you can go or exan X on an airplane
(26:08):
or azan X on an airplane. Right, it's a very
different thing. I know a lot of parents don't understand
that about their kids. They really think they're using it
like they would use it, and the effect is very different. So,
you know, it's a difficult thing to educate about because
people don't want to they don't want to hear that
are there. And there must be differences between a child
(26:30):
who is smoking pot and taking mushrooms to a child
that is abusing prescription man made, chemically induced pharmaceutical drugs
a difference in terms of well, in terms of what
they're doing to their body and their brain. For some
reason in my mind, and this is just based on
things I've read, that the the chemical the the opiates,
(26:53):
the klonopins, the oxycon all those drugs that are completely
synthetic are a lot more dangerous to a teenage brain.
Then let's say, uh, plant based drugs. No, I wouldn't
agree with that. I mean, obviously, if you're talking about
an opiate, that has a very intense effect and so
(27:16):
that's going to affect a teenage But again, don't forget
we're talking about a teenage brain. So whether you're talking
synthetics or whether you're talking plant based, the brain is affected.
I think the difference. You know, most kids who have
never used any drugs at all don't start with an opiate.
They're not popping a couple of anything. Really, They're usually
(27:37):
starting on something much milder or what they think of
as milder. Uh so in terms of the difference, Uh, certainly,
you know you're hurting your brain no matter what you're
using if it has an addictive property to it, which
all of those drugs do. Whether it's money or drugs
or a pure group that has access. Access and supervision
(27:59):
are two of the big, big hall marks to helping
kids with substance problems. Once they have disposable money and
you're not tracking it, you don't know what they're spending
it on, they have access to kind of whatever they want.
Two antidepressants um not the same, not to stay the same,
but do they help it in terms of addiction. Well, so,
(28:20):
here's the interesting thing is if you have a child
who seems depressed and they're also, let's say, using a
lot of marijuana, or they're using it several times a week,
it's very hard to know how much of that presentation
of no motivation, flatness, looking depressed, not being able to
get out of bed, argumentative, irritable, moody. It's very hard
(28:43):
to know how much of that is related to the
drug and how much of it is actually real organic depression.
And so it's it's just tough to diagnose. So if
you end up with taking an antidepressant and you're also
medicating yourself with we again, we don't really know whether
the antidepressant is working. To get it. To to really
(29:04):
do an accurate study on that, you'd have to have
them off of the weed. And by the time your
child is presenting as depressed, if they're a regular weed smoker,
they don't want to stop the weed because that has
become a ritualized, favorite, go to thing that they do
that brings them relief all sorts, that's connected to their
peer group. So it's not so easy to have somebody
(29:28):
stop using something like weed because you want to get
a trial of antidepressants going and see if that would help.
So then you have a whole social construct involved in
the mix that again makes it harder to make a change.
Let's look at how you can tell if your team
is on drugs, because, uh, there are some of the
(29:51):
signs that you just mentioned, Um, they are skipping school,
they're sleeping late, they're not well groom their argumentative Like
you said, what are what are some other signs that
may not be as obvious, so you it can be
hard to know. There are a lot of parents who
will say they have no idea what their child looks
(30:13):
like when they're high. And then you have some parents
who say, oh yeah, I know, I know when it's happening.
So the signs of things like as you as you
pointed out things like lethargy, you know, no motivation, seeming depressed,
dropping activities that they used to love, losing a kind
of joy and a kind of enthusiasm for a lot
of different things. Sports go by the wayside often, like
(30:36):
really good athletes who start to get involved in a
substance will lose interest um their Their peer group often changes,
so they will drop the kids from what they used
to be friends with, or they will see them less
and they'll go more towards this other group. Parents often
don't know this other group because they might come from
a different school. In high school, it can be hard
(30:58):
to trace because kids are high school are drawing from
a lot of different places. You don't always know their parents.
So that change in pure group can can be an
indication money. You know, money that's missing, money that's getting spent,
but you can't really account for it. Speaking of you,
did I know you did a podcast? On social media
(31:19):
as well as the body image one and you know
this falls right into the same They all can really
coincide all these different issues because there are a lot
of there's a lot of social media now that is
very drug related, and there are a lot of ways
to get money for kids to get money, but they
that their parents don't know about that is connected to
social media or connected to an app for example selling something.
(31:44):
So so you mean selling something like my Kashmir sweater,
used Kashmre sweater, like a picture or like a picture
of you. Uh, you know, there's a lot there's a
lot of that going on right now that didn't exist
a few years ago, and so parents are discovering that
their child has all this money all of a sudden
(32:04):
that they they can't understand, and it's because they're involved
in some sort uh, you know, clandestine social media. So
are you talking pornography? It can go there, you know,
there's certainly there's certainly that, uh, and then several steps
before that, so where you can really get a very
naive young adolescent who just wants some attention, who doesn't
(32:28):
really understand much else that's going on about that. Yeah,
it's funny that you say that, because I had a
bunch of teenage girls were over at our house the
other day and one of them said, um, oh my god,
somebody d m me on social media and said they
would give me um if I sent them photos of
(32:49):
my feet. And everybody was kind of laughing, and I thought,
that's doesn't sound very good, you know, but they to
them it was like, how easy is that? I sent
him some photos of my feet and I get money?
So well, so that's where that's sort of where it starts. Okay,
it starts with the feet, Okay, yeah, I get works
the way up and then it works is so that is, Yes,
(33:11):
that's a that's become a popular the site that again
parents have no clue A lot of this is going on.
You know, when I talk about access in supervision, that's
the piece about supervision is especially during the pandemic, where
everybody is on top of everybody else and everybody needs
some privacy and should have some. But there's also the
(33:32):
naivete of a young adolescent who is, you know, with
their computer in their room. You don't know what is,
you don't know who is the creditor in there, and
you're trying to keep them safe, and yet you want
them to be able to make their own decisions. It's
just very tough on parents. Yeah, all right, so let
me let's go through a scenario. Let's pretend I have
(33:54):
a teenage boy, which I don't. Um, but that way,
neither of my teenage girls goes are you talking about me?
I have a teenage boy named Timmy, and Timmy is
sort of skipping school. Now we are in a pandemic,
and so he spends a lot of time in its room. Um,
I start to suspect that he's taking stuff. He's just
he's not the Timmy he used to be. Um, do
(34:16):
I snoop? Do I rifle through his stuff? Do I
look for evidence of drugs? Is that the first step?
So you know, it's a tough it's such a tough question.
Parents are generally horrified at the suggestion that you might
have to look in somebody's room because they are so
um focused on the idea of trust. You have to
(34:39):
think about who's losing who's trust in a case like that.
In other words, you wouldn't probably feel the need to
look unless there was some secrecy that was making you nervous,
And so that really becomes that's sort of on the
child is why is why is he being so secretive?
What's he hiding? If he denies it repeatedly and he
(35:00):
yet he seems withdrawn, he seems different. Some parents that
you know, depending on the degree of fear they have,
will start to look. You know, I'm not I'm not.
I'm not saying one should look or one shouldn't look.
I'm saying or you have It's a double edged sword
because on one hand, it is you can trust your
gut that you basically probably know your kid, and you know.
(35:22):
You know whether they're anxious, you know whether they're insecure,
you know whether they have troublemaking friends. You know that
there tend to be argumentative or defensive, and that they
can't take feedback, or that they're just uncomfortable in their skin.
That you know, you don't necessarily know whether they're using anything,
but you know enough about their risk factors to be worried.
And then they're secretive and you start suspecting things. It
(35:45):
usually doesn't come out of nowhere. I mean, most parents
are not that paranoid about They are accused of it.
They're always accused of being paranoid, but they're not wanting
to find this. It's more the opposite. It's more that
it's around them and they they have trouble seeing it
because they don't want to see it. So I think,
based on your fear, you follow your your instinct to
(36:09):
do what you need to protect your child. They are
not going to like it, you know. It's another problem
in terms of trust. What I see is people do
it when they get very desperate and they're, you know,
just very afraid that they're missing something, and then once
they do discover it, they feel stupid that they should
have looked earlier, that they so, And then nobody ever
(36:31):
says I'm glad I didn't know all that. They always
say I wish I'd known earlier, because intervening earlier is
so much easier then later. And with substance use, the
more you do it, the more deeply involved you get,
and the more deeply your brain is affected. A good
way to think about Selsin's us is that it's a
thinking problem much more than an actual drinking problem drug problem.
(36:54):
It changes the way you think, and it changes the
way you use your defenses, the way you deal with people.
So that in itself, if you have a child who's
becoming really defensive and argumentative, and seems to always be negative,
excessively negative. There's something going on with his thinking, right,
(37:14):
and that's enough to help you maybe get him some help,
not even specifically drug related, but just more mental health,
emotional health, too much stress, what's going on. And I
find that that's a really good gait for parents to use.
Is is speaking from the idea that you're not dealing
with something. There's something too stressful in your life. You
seem really upset, you seem sad, you're not yourself. So
(37:37):
it's a mental health issue. We look at it. It's
a mental health issue. It's always a mental health issue.
There's no such thing as an isolated drug problem. Now
a quick word from our sponsors, welcome back to go
ask aali. Let's get back to the discussion. Have you
(38:02):
found that in the pandemic because of the uncertainty of
the world, there's an increase in drug take, an increase
in addiction. Well, certainly it's easier to find because everybody's
living together. It's a little easier to uncover. It's not
so easy to hide. H I think that the stress
(38:22):
of families, when kids are subjected to the stress of
their parents and see how their parents handle things, in
addition to their own stress and how they're managing It's
a lot, yeah, I would assume, to with with the
parents being stressed and families being fractured because they've lost
jobs or somebody's died in the family. I mean, you know,
(38:44):
COVID's really you know, Yeah, it's an overwhelming situation for
normal minds to manage, much less somebody who's more vulnerable.
I would assume adult adults are probably taking more duds
and drinking more us. Oh. Yes, And what do you
say to um parents, uh who see other children that
(39:08):
they suspect to have a drug problem. Do you tell
those parents? If I see a friend of my daughters
maybe who I think is as an addiction problem, is
it my place to say something? I mean, I'm terrified
of doing that, but well, you know, if you go
back to the idea of it takes a village, which
I do believe it does, we all need to watch
out for everyone's children, one another's children. I would want
(39:30):
that for mine, and you'd probably want somebody to go
to you and say something, even if you don't like
the message. You'd rather know sooner. It's a terrible feeling
to know that the whole town knows about your child,
the whole school knows, and you don't know. So I
think depending on you know, what you're on, the peer
(39:50):
group that you're in. You know, a lot of parents
get together at the beginning of the school year of
parents of teens, and they will talk about these things,
and they'll say, Okay, do we want to kind make
a pact that if we hear something, if we notice
something about one of our kids, are we all okay
with us talking about it and and bringing it to
the forefront um as a way to kind of jointly
(40:14):
own this problem and really take care of one another
instead of being so isolated and feeling as though there's
there's a lot of shame in there that you're trying
to protect. So I think that's a really good way.
Does it actually, yeah, Oh it works, It does. It works.
It works because I will have kids say to me,
you know, everything was fine until my parents started talking
(40:34):
to everybody, all the other parents, and now I can't
get away with anything. And they say it with a
combination of irritation and also pride that they're yeah, yeah, yeah.
Because the other thing to keep in mind is a
lot of kids getting situations but they don't really want
to be in and they don't know how to get
out of. We don't teach good refusal skills with our kids.
(40:56):
We don't teach them how to say no in a
way that is tactful enough that they don't break off
a relationship. That's hard for adults as well as for kids. Yeah,
I actually think there should be strategies for parents. I mean,
I know that we've sat down with our kids and
we've said, look, you don't particularly like to drink. You
don't like the taste of alcohol, so hold you know,
(41:18):
a red plastic cup of ginger ale. Nobody needs to
know what you're drinking. Um or you know, we've gone
through all the scenarios. If you're at a party and
your best friends really drunk and her parents are strict
and you don't know what to do, call us, call us,
call us. But you know that was sort of um.
That was not the case of my childhood. So it's
not like somebody instructed me that it felt like an
(41:40):
intuitive thing to say to my daughters. Just call me.
We can handle anything. We can deal with anything. I
just don't want you to be in danger in any way.
So the so the other thing you will see with
a healthier family is an ability to talk about these things.
An ability for kids to come on from a party
and say it was this, it was that, and you know,
I was a little worried about so and so, but
(42:03):
here's what happened. That's a real opportunity for the parent
to respond in the right way, so they encourage the
conversation instead of shutting it down. So if they're shocked,
if they're saying, that's such a that kid, you can't
ever see that kid again. You know, this is terrible.
They're bad, I e were good. Any of that sort
of judgment is a disaster. But but you can really
(42:27):
engage your kids in a conversation where there's no judgment,
but you're just interested. You're interested and you're curious about
them and how people cope with things. Another really good
thing to do is sort of role play with them
that you're the best friend and you're the wasted one,
or you're the same one and the other one is
(42:47):
it and help them practice scenarios. What would they do
at a time like that, You know, how do they
have a particular code word if they're calling you, that
means this is trouble, Come get me out of here.
All of those kinds of preparations make people feel safer,
and practicing um is a is a great thing to do.
(43:09):
It's just that I find it in a lot of families.
They're afraid to do that. They're afraid that they're going
to encourage something that their their kids are going to
take something away that they didn't mean. But becoming comfortable
with open conversation is is a kind of protector because
anyway you want them to go to you, you don't
want them to be stuck in a situation. You know,
(43:29):
I should say everybody should instruct their kids that if
they're with a friend who passes out from an alcohol
or drugs, they have to go straight to nine one
emergency room. They can't presume that it's just they just
need to let them sleep it off, or that it's
not a big deal. I'll put them in and over right. Yeah.
So there's one other thing besides social media that I
(43:52):
didn't grow up with that I do not understand, but
I'm scared of it is vaping and jeweling. My kids
had to teach me the difference between vaping and jeweling.
But also, you know, everything we've read is they are
also gateways to drug They are another way to get
your system addicted. How do we stop that? That seems
(44:14):
to be something everyone's doing in every bathroom and every
school all the time. You can't smell it. It's a
huge it's a huge problem because the industries that are creating,
that have manufactured these products know that they have a
huge population, a huge um sale on their hands because
(44:35):
they're really targeting kids. You know, they will say that
they're targeting adults, they're targeting kids, and so when they
taste like cookies and cream, it's not for adults, right,
So you know, again, I think it's the same message
as before with nicotine. Um, a lot of families I
know are just as upset about nicotine as they are
(44:55):
about marijuana or anything else because they see it as
so addicting. And it's true. And studies will show that
the earlier a kid is smoking cigarettes, for example, or
getting a nicotine fixed, the earlier the bigger risk factor
for later drug use. So it's it's a big problem.
And I can remember a few years ago having parents
(45:17):
early on in the vaping subject who were adamant that
wanted their child to not vape, and you know, the
child was serious because all of his friends were doing it,
and they just kind of struck to their guns about
this because they felt so strongly they had addiction in
the family. They were really determined and paid off in
the end. But it was very tough because a lot
(45:37):
of his friends were doing it, and so he was
feeling like an outsider um that his parents weren't allowing it.
These are the things in our culture that are very
difficult to really sort of separate out. Who's who can
really be a mature adult and see something as a
third eye versus someone who gets overly invested in their
(45:59):
kids success and is afraid to see what's there so
then they can't help them. It's funny because I was
I went away to boarding school at thirteen and survival
and boarding school was smoking cigarettes that sort of separated
the men from the boys. So I started smoking for
survival so I could be in the butt room with
(46:19):
the cool girls. And that started at thirteen fourteen, and
I didn't quit until I got married in my early
thirties and got pregnant, otherwise I couldn't. I mean I
smoked a pack of camel lights a day. And what's
interesting is that my kids think it's the most disgusting
thing they've ever They cannot believe that I smoked cigarettes
(46:41):
and how gross was I And they can't wrap their
head around it. I mean, they really they turned into
my parents and they're very judgmental, and which is which
is interesting to me. But yet nobody was watching me
at thirteen. No one cared, you know, and it was
and what about and what about the vaping that they see?
They saw the cigarette smoking. It's really disgusting, but not vaping. No,
(47:03):
they think vaping and jeweling is disgusting too, thank god,
but they certain, but they've but they've told me that,
you know, everybody does it. And the great thing, or
not the great thing, but the positive thing for people
that are vaping and dueling is you can't detect it. Now.
When I smoked cigarettes, and even when I first married
my husband, you know, I could take three showers and
(47:24):
brush my teeth and eat a green apple and he
could immediately smell that I had a cigarette. But you
can hide the other stuff so much better. And that's
why the rate of addiction goes up so so quickly
with them because they can because in the old days
you did it, you had to hide it because it
did smell, and so you could only do it at
certain times and you had to be very careful how
(47:44):
you used it, so that automatically limits your use. Now
there's no limit to the use. You can use it
all day long and no one really knows. So that
means that the addiction rate goes way, way, way up,
So it doesn't take long to become really addicted to nicotine.
Le say, by the way, jewel and and uh, you
know pods you can there's marijuana in there as well.
(48:07):
You can switch things out. So whether they're getting nicotine
or whether they're getting weed, there's there's something that they're
getting and it's being ingested in the law. So I
don't know. I'm sure you've seen all the recent studies
on trying to alert people to the dangers of they
being with COVID Y and the high risk factory. Yes, yeah,
and you know young people again, they they're not their
(48:29):
brains are not developed enough to even believe that that
could happen. So I think as apparent you just have
to say, you know, in terms of dueling and vaping. No,
absolutely not. You have to say no, and I think
you have to explain why, and you have to ask
that they trust you that you know a little bit
(48:49):
more because of your advanced age or all of your experience,
that you're hoping that they can trust that you're out
for their best interests, because the message would be mixed
if you said, well, you can do it a little bit,
but just don't do it too much. That's where parents
get in trouble. They try to be reasonable, and what
the kid is hearing is it's okay. You know, if
(49:11):
they're saying I can have one vodka UM on a
Saturday night, basically what they're saying is it's okay to
have vodka. That is how it's an adolescent translates that message.
So the parent means just a little and don't get
out of control. The kid doesn't hear that because their
brain they're they're thinking, is not evolved to that point yet.
(49:31):
So a lot of this is about how do you
translate between the generations. You know, are you sure you're
delivering a message that they can actually hear versus what
you think you you're doing just scare to scare tactics
work with parents. No, No, scare tactics don't. Showing showing
them a picture of lungs after vaping is not going
(49:52):
to have a big effect on them. Well, in effect,
it certainly may. It certainly had an effect on me,
but I don't think it has that much of an effect.
All the studies have shown that scared straight and those
techniques aren't really that effective. But the great thing about
adolescence is if they're very sensitive to hypocrisy, so they
can spot something disingenuous very quickly, and once they spot
(50:16):
it in their parents, especially, then they're out for blood.
Then they will debate you to the end because they
have found your weak spot. Again, it's part of their
own moral development is being able to fire it out.
What's hypocritical, you know why, unfairness, you know justice. It's
why debate teams are so popular in high school because
really the brain of that adolescent stage is primed to
(50:40):
argue and to research your point of view and to
fight for what you want. So it's it all kind
of works together. But when it comes to drug use, um,
it's it's it's humorous in a way, how much, how
very passionate they can be with their research, which of
course is self selected because they went to certain sites
(51:01):
to get their research, they need go to the other sites. Um.
But that's all right. It's still part of their their
own intellectual development. Which I think is a really great
thing about talking about something with kids at that age
is they have they have a way to see right
through to something that's fake, so scared straight. Even though
(51:22):
it's of course true that people can have horrific experiences
because of it, they see as a manipulation and you know,
they're not wrong, right. So I in terms of taking
Timmy through all this, and we've we've uh, he has
a problem. I've gone into his room, I found the drugs.
There are innumerable treatment centers, there's all kinds of hotlines,
(51:46):
um for people who need help. But I want to
just end this podcast by emphasizing a few of the
things that you said which I think are really important,
which is to h to educate our kids even before
the age where they would probably start experimenting with drugs. Yes,
but I think it's more important to educate the parents,
(52:08):
you know, I think I think the parents. If the
parents feel confident in a point of view, then it's
much easier for the kids to follow. If the parents
are ambivalent, they're not sure. They had a wild childhood
and they turned out fine. Be in your particular case,
it's almost a problem because you look at you and
yet you can say you had this this experience when
(52:29):
you were younger. So it would be easy for kids
like yours to say, well, you're fine, but their fin
it's their father. Their father was perfection, never did anything,
so I always we emphasize him. So but you can
see how it's important for the parents to know what
they're doing, to have a policy of their own. It's
not easy to do, but that is I think the
(52:51):
key is with the parents. It's and also to be
very clear and concise about what their thoughts about. Like
we talked before about you know, not a drink here,
maybe drink there, or you know not to wish to
be clear right because you know, kids will get help
when the parents are ready for them to get help.
If the parents aren't ready, it's not happening. So I
do think the power, the center of power is with
(53:13):
the parents. Even though they might feel disempowered, they might
feel as though no one's listening to them. They have
so much more influence on their kids than they might think,
and then when they are in those adolescent years, to
communicate with them, to to be able to talk with them.
And if you're really worried, you know, if you think
there's a problem, to be able to say, you know,
(53:35):
I'm too worried as your mother or your dad, I'm uncomfortable.
You might be comfortable, Johnny, but I'm uncomfortable with this,
and I think we need to go see somebody and
just get a get an assessment and see what somebody else,
what a professional thinks. Um, not a problem. Let's just
do that and then we'll take it from there. So
you really try to not raise a flag of panic.
(53:58):
You try to not you definitely don't start accusing somebody
of you know, being a drug addict or anything inflammatory.
You try to take it from the point of view
of we see your struggling and we want to get
you help, and help is available, and we don't stop,
we don't give up. So it's lots of opportunities to
(54:19):
model that. Um, how do you handle a problem in
a family. UM. So, yes, there's stigma, Yes there's shame.
But if you I think, if you're really well educated
about it. You can rise above that. There's a lot
of great help. There are a lot of parent groups,
there are there's a lot of support. Um, but it's
a it's a tough initiation. It's a lot you know,
(54:42):
there's a lot of information. I can never but it's
just you get me started. I can't stop. No, But
that's what's so great about it. But also you know,
that's why I wanted to emphasize, you know, or punctuate
the things that you were saying, because I never would
have thought too sort of look look at younger kids
at all. I never even you know, talked about alcohol
(55:06):
with my kids until they were of the age. You know, right,
no one, no one does. But you know, if you
ask a kindergarten teacher or preschool teacher, you know, can
you spot the kids in your class that you think
would be at risk of like emotional problems later? Um,
they can tell you that's what I mean, But no
one wants to do it because if they're these adorable
little children and you have the impression that they have
(55:29):
their whole lives and it's all going to be you know,
sweetness and unicorns, But you can spot the children who
are fragile. This happens more to children who are fragile.
It's fragile kids who often develop a drug problem. And
so it's such a great injustice that we do when
we label them in the ways we do, because it's
(55:51):
not it's not their fault, you know, when it's not
their fault that somebody introduced them to a joint when
they were twelve or a cigarette when they were twelve.
They got this feeling and it made them feel better
than they normally feel. It is awful to go through
a childhood feeling not normal, not good, not smart, not whatever,
(56:12):
you know. So the shame that they start to carry
speeds that need for a mood change. So it's all
it's all innocent, and they're fragile kids and misunderstood big time.
M hmm. Thank you so much for this welcome, welcome,
(56:32):
my pleasure. Have educated me in in such tremendous ways,
and I hope everybody that just listened to it too
got a lot of information and helps. So thank you
so much. Well, you're welcome, Thanks for having me, Thank
you for tuning in to go ask Ali. Be sure
to subscribe, rate and leave a review, and follow me
and my undoctored posts on social media. I'm on Twitter
(56:54):
at Ali e Wentworth and on Instagram at the Real
Ali Wentworth. Go ask Ali the production of Shonda Land
Audio and partnership with I Heart Radio. For more podcasts
from Shondaland Audio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Go ask Ali, a production of Shonda Land
Audio and partnership with I Heart Radio. Hi am Alli
Wentworth and you're listening to Go ask Ali. Where this
season we're asking the question how do you grow a
teenager in a pandemic? We're talking all about teenagers and
(00:24):
addiction in this week's episode. I personally don't have a
lot of experience with substance abuse in my family or
my close circle. But when I was a teenager, I
experimented a little bit, And now years later, I have
two teenage daughters of my own, and honestly nervous, I
think other parents can relate when I say we don't
want our kids getting addicted to prescription drugs, to alcohol,
(00:47):
to vaping. I mean, first of all, dueling and vaping
didn't exist when I was a kid um and certainly now,
as teens stay indoors due to COVID nineteen and keep
us out of the rooms, I have to wonder, how
will we know if our teens are on drugs? Should
we snoop through their stuff? How can we help them
continue to be responsible even when we aren't around Today
(01:08):
We're going to figure out how our kids are getting
addicted and what we can do to stop it. My
guest today is Janette Friedman. She's a clinical social worker,
a family consultant, and a mental health and substance use
disorder specialist. Before I speak to Jeanette, I once again
have my daughter, Elliott Stephanopolis, who is my go to
for all things teenager. She is a eighteen year old
(01:31):
and wise beyond her years. And Elliott, I wanted to
ask you how rampant and you can be honest with me,
how rampant is jeeling and baping in the teen world,
because you know, when I was a teenager, the majority
of my friends smoke cigarettes to be cool. I mom,
me um, I would say, like every other person I
(01:54):
know owns a jewel or like some kind of babe.
Every other person you know, like if you put me
in a room of five people, like three out of
five will own some sort of nicotine electronic device. And
I mean people do smoke cigarettes now because jewels and
like the disposable electronic cigarettes are are harder to get,
(02:17):
so people just smoke regular cigarettes. And it's also like
and did people you just stop me? No to God,
we are really demonstrating the parenteenager dynamic right now. My
question to you is, um, did most of the people
that are vaping and jeweling did they start because these
(02:37):
companies introduce these jewels that are cookies and cream flavor,
It has anything to do with the flavors, you don't?
You think it's the high. I think it's like people
are really stressed, and like you've talked about this with cigarettes,
like having something in your hand. It's like for social
anxiety or stress, it's something to do. So I don't
(02:59):
really think it has anything you do with the flavor.
I think it's more like who I'm a teenager and
I'm an experiment. And also with the stress social anxiety aspect,
having any kind of reliever, I guess was nice. So
teenagers don't like to go to parties and just play
with their stress ball, you know. But it's also like
flavors don't matter. No one's like comparing flavors, want to switch.
(03:20):
They'll just do any nicotine they have. Now I'm about
to divulge something on this podcast, and you're gonna tell me, no, no, no,
You're gonna tell me. First of all, if it's helped,
I had you and your sister signed a contract every
if you Glorious and my social circle, you guys signed
(03:41):
a contract and basically, if you guys do not do
drugs until you're twenty one, then you will be rewarded
with maybe a trip or you know, a secondhand Honda
accord or something but something, and you haven't so far.
I'm clarifying that the contract is no no hard drugs,
(04:04):
but no weed, not pot, no weed, no cocaine, no mushrooms,
no LST, none of that stuff, right, And is that
is that an incentive not to do drugs having this
contract with me and your dad? I mean yeah, I
think like both my sister and I have like pretty
(04:24):
bad social anxiety. So I think it's one way to
avoid the pressures to be like listen, listen buddy, like
I'm gonna get money. Um, So it's like a good out.
Even though there's I haven't really experienced a lot of
peer pressure. I just also know myself like I'm very high,
strong and tend to freak out and I feel like
(04:45):
smoking weed or doing any hard drugs, but just emphasize
that rather than diminish it. So yes it will. And
I also hated my body is very sensitive because like
I've already been on drugs prescription wise, and I've reacted
really bad to it. Like I've taken adder all in,
riddle in and all that stuff, and it made me
feel sick. You also had major, major back surgery, a
(05:07):
spinal fusion, and you had to take opiates and everything
for that, and that also made you sick. So you've
had bad experiences with drugs that you actually needed to
take for And I've said that to people and they're like, oh, like,
what do you How do you know if you don't
like it? I'm like, because I've taken it when I'm
in like severe severe pain or like my brain literally
cannot focus and it does more harm than good. Why
would I do when I'm non in pain. I know
(05:29):
I'm still going to feel the bad effect, because yes,
it did help with the pain, but yes I also
had extreme side effects. Elliott. Yeah, thank you, Bye, thank you.
I love you. And I will now turn my attention
to Jeanette Friedman. She is a wealth of knowledge about
everything surrounding teens and addiction. Let's get to it. I
(05:56):
have so many questions for you, Jeanette. I got a
lot of material real so, oh god. I love when
I hear that. Um, So let's let me just start
by asking a basic question, because I want to sort
of talk about what substance abuse is, how it affects
the brain, and then we're going to kind of branch
out to why teens do drugs, what kind of drugs, signs,
(06:17):
how do we find treatment? So, first of all, how
do you define substance addiction as it relates to a disorder.
So one good way that I think, I think to
define it is to think of it something that is
going to interfere with adolescent development, because virtually all addiction
(06:40):
begins in an adolescence. And then if you go if
you die a little deeper and you look at what
happens in an adolescence, a lot of that is connected
to early childhood. So really the people who need to
be hearing this are the parents of young children, except
that when you've got young children, you're not thinking of that.
You've got other things on your mind. But in fact,
(07:01):
when you go back and you do like a forensic
evaluation on how does something really start, What what happened
to make this all um developed in the way it did,
you're looking at things like temperament, you're looking at the
risk factors, which UH are not about substances at all
in the beginning, They're about temperament. As I said there
(07:23):
about personality development, how much of it is genetic, So
genetics there is UH. There is definitely a percentage between
twenty and of genetic link that will be that will
affect a child. We try to go back about three
generations and look at whether it's parents, grandparents, great grandparents, um.
(07:44):
In terms of a biological connection. But you know, a
genetic availability, it doesn't cause it. It makes it easier
to develop. And one of the biggest reasons that it
makes it easier to develop is that a kid who
comes from a family where there's been addiction of any
so art is going to like a substance more. They
just naturally will respond more. Their brain is going to
(08:06):
respond more in a pleasurable way than someone who doesn't
have it in their family. So it's something that kids
will say, why me, because somebody else uses substances more
than me, even and they don't seem to have a problem.
Once you are introduced to a substance that you like,
that you respond to, it's pretty hard to forget what
(08:26):
that feeling was and is this. Is it the same
with alcohol and drugs. It's the same, yes, because alcohol
is a drug and it's an addictive drug. It's just legal. Um.
But but what we do find is that certain personalities
are more attracted to certain drugs than others. Those certain
personalities are more interested in hallucinogens. Let's say, marijuana smokers
(08:49):
often are much more interested in an experience that is
related to fantasy, whereas people who tend to be more
anxious and irritable are more drawn to alcohol. That said,
once you develop a ritualized use of any of those
substances and you don't have them available anymore, it becomes
easy to move over to a different substance. You can
(09:11):
switch seats, even though your favorite let's call it your
drug of choice, is one or the other. But generally
there is a kind of personality that responds more to
one than the other. And what about environmental stuff, you know,
because you always read about um. You know, children that
have gone through big emotional transitions in their life, like
(09:33):
divorce or a death, um, certainly trauma. UM. How much
do they factor into whether or not that child grows
into an addictor right? So it factors in a lot
in that. If you look at the major risk factors,
they are mental health issues like depression, anxiety, personality factors,
genetic factors, and then trauma and trauma comes in what
(09:56):
we call little tea and big t. In other words,
there are the small all kind of microaggression that everybody
suffers starting at an early age that will affect some
kids more than others. And then there are major traumas,
major things like a natural disaster, like the death of
an important person in the family that will really up
end somebody's sense of equilibrium. So certainly, you know, what
(10:18):
we know about trauma now is that what it does
to the brain can be so debilitating for a young
child because they just not equipped, They don't have that
kind of resiliency. So we often overlook what happens with
a child, a young child and trauma because they appear
to adjust. You know, you'll have someone who talks about
a five year old after a divorce and they'll say,
(10:41):
you know, my five year old is just amazingly mature
about this and really doesn't have a problem with it
at all. Well, that's because at five, you're really interested
in pleasing your parents and having no conflict at all,
So you don't even access the depth of of your
loss until you're a little older. And so trauma, for
sure is it is a problem. So let me let
(11:04):
me break down the brain a little bit. When there
is trauma, let's say, or environmental factors, um that happened
to you in your youth, when you get older and
you're a teenager, in your frontal lobe hasn't completely developed,
and you take risks and everything we know about teenagers,
are you trying to numb the pain? Is it is
(11:25):
the substance a numbing mechanism or an escape mechanism? What
is it's all? It's it's all of those. It's it's
all of those whatever works for you. So this is
partly why it is really so important for parents to
try to not have their child exposed to addictive substances
at an early age, because, as I said, once you
(11:48):
introduce that into a very fragile brain, which is what
all kids have, uh, it is very hard to turn
away from that when you want it to be numbed,
when you want to escape, If you have a memory
of what that felt like, you're going to be drawn
to going back to that. If if you have access
to it, so you know, once you discover it, once
(12:09):
it's introduced to you, it becomes it's hard to discover,
it's hard to undiscover it. So then it becomes a
question of access and keeping kids away from it. But really,
all as I said before, if we we have studies
that have shown that if you could prevent kids from
using any addictive substance until they're around three, you are
(12:30):
eradicated addiction. It doesn't exist because rain, which is dramatic,
because the brain is so much stronger and resilient when
you are in your early twenties than it is when
you're twelve or thirteen. So parents, well meaning parents who
are thinking, I just need to teach my child how
to drink alcohol during a dinner, for example, so that
(12:52):
when they get to college they won't make a fool
of themselves, Well, it doesn't work like that. If you
have a brain that's really responsive to a substance, whether
you start when you're thirteen or you're or later, there's
there's likely to be a problem, you know. So it's
not that we can teach kids how to use responsibly.
There's kind of no such thing. So let me ask
(13:13):
you this because another thing I hear a lot as
a parent is, particularly with teenagers, that the idea of
trying drugs or drinking binge drinking. Everyone says, well, it's
a rite of passage um, which has always been kind
of a strange um phrase to me. But people say, oh,
(13:35):
it's part of being a teenager. Or you know what,
I bought the kids lots of alcohol. They're you know,
they're having a party and that's just what teenagers do. Um. Yeah,
I know you have a lot to say. I could
tell my face, well, you know, it's so interesting that
whole that idea, which I know is very popular, I
think is starting to change as people get more educated
(13:59):
around what causes addiction to begin with, and that access
is important. And if you have parents providing alcohol to
underage kids, the kids automatically get the message that the
parents are really okay with that. They're not okay with
being drunk, they're not okay with drunk driving, but if
you want to drink at home with us, there's an
illusion of safety when the parents are included. So the
(14:24):
parents have the feeling that they are protecting their child
by keeping them at home, letting them get high at home,
they're thinking is better than if they're out there. In
terms of addictive process in the brain, the brain doesn't
care whether you're at home, in your bedroom or out
on the street or in college. It's that's a whole
other experience. So the ways that parents who don't understand
(14:47):
addictive process, the ways that they try to protect their kids,
the well meaning ways often sort of feed into a
mixed message about what what they're really trying to say.
Parents want their kids safe, and they often don't understand
that you can't give addictive substances to a young brain
without some sort of a cost involved. And the second
(15:09):
piece of that is that a lot of parents get
overly involved with their kids to begin with, and they
are assuming that they know how to train a child
to to be responsible with their their use. For example,
they think they actually know how that child's brain works,
and usually that's not the case. And then there's a
whole psychological emotional level on involvement with a child's life
(15:32):
and feeling close to a child. So you'll have people
talk about getting high with their child as a bonding experience, right, Well,
if it's a bonding experience, it's a problem. You see
it a lot in film, the cool mom who comes
in with margharita's for all the teenage girls, and you know,
we sort of laugh at that, but there's there is
something tragic about it, um, but also tragic about needing
(15:56):
to drink a margharita with your daughter's friends. Well, yes,
that's the other piece of it, is that what does
that mean about? So yeah, I'm I'm still infantilizing my kids.
So there I have an eighteen year old that I
want to make cookies with and she wants, you know,
she wants me to get out of her room. But
you know, it's funny that our culture we assist, you know,
(16:16):
we insist on seat belts and helmets when we bike,
and you know, sunscreen and all the precautions one takes
to keep your kids safe and healthy. And yet for
some reason, the the alcohol and substance of you that
seems to be something that people don't prepare their children
(16:36):
for as much as everything else, which is somewhat disturbing
and uh shocking to me. You know, I think if
you've had it in your family, or you've you've been
aware of it with let's say, one of your child's
friends or a friend of yours and their family. If
you know of it more firsthand, you have a very
different approach, because that's the kind of parent who says,
(17:00):
there's no way I'm going to allow my family to
go down that path because I've seen where it goes
and I don't want to even take the risk. If
it seems to have not touched you, then you are
more the way you described. You know, there's a more
there's a more relaxed attitude and the feeling that, well,
it couldn't happen to us, because we're not that kind
of family. You know, we're not that kind of parent.
(17:21):
It wouldn't happen to my child, because my child would
never do X y Z. So, you know, addiction and
accidents related to two substances, they are really accidents. They're
not you know, no one waves up in the morning
and says, how can I really ruin my future? It's
so subtle how this develops, and and people really have
(17:43):
trouble seeing what they don't want to see. We're going
to take a short break and we'll be right back.
Welcome back with more, go ask Galley. I would think
that teenagers are very susceptible because they're dealing with, you know,
(18:08):
mood swings and hormones and um, you know, trying to
fit in and social anxiety. I mean I can understand
how a drug could be so seductive, particularly at this
time in life. Yes, yes, so you know, there used
to be a joke about people in twelve step programs
that um people would say, well, I you know, I
have anxiety disorder. If you went to an A meeting,
(18:30):
probably nine of the people in an A meeting could
qualify as having a diagnosis of a generalized anxiety disorder.
Because anxiety feeds a need for calm and a need
for peace and alcohol. As I said, once you discover it,
nothing is going to work as quickly as alcohol. You know,
not talking to a therapist or reading a book or
(18:51):
taking a bath or going for a walk, nothing is
going to work as quickly as a mood altering drugs.
So it becomes so easy to get in all and
it is really accidental. It is. People are innocent victims
until it takes hold, and then there's a whole other,
you know, psychological emotional component in terms of shame and
(19:14):
feeling like they did something wrong because they got dependent
on this substance, but it happened so subtly they didn't know,
and the families often don't know that's happening, and so
and they can move from one to another, obviously, can
they can go from something softer into something harder. And
I think about like in California, where you know, marijuana
(19:37):
is legal, there is one less barricade for teenagers in
that sense too. And I've I've known friends that have
had kids that have started with marijuana and then got
more addicted to harder substances. You know, this is one
of those things nobody wants to believe. If you have
a child who is just getting high on weed, you
(19:57):
don't want to believe that there is a greater risk
for it becoming more serious with harder drugs. But let
me just say that if you have an emotionally psychiatrically
fragile kid, that kid is not going to do well
with weed. Weed is enough. We does enough to cause
a psychotic break, to cause kids to commit crimes, to
(20:20):
do things they would never ever ever do if they
were not psychotic. And that's there's a link there. It's
not to say that we'd causes the psychotic break. It's
to say that the kid who is fragile to begin with,
once they start regularly using a substance, even weed, because
people seem to think it's so benign, that's enough. They
(20:43):
don't need they don't need heroin, they don't need cocaine,
they don't need to homsin agen. That's enough. So, you know,
from my point of view, we talked about really about
ten percent of the population gets addicted. Of that ten percent,
only about ten percent get some treatment. But even if
it's only ten percent of the population that gets addicted,
(21:04):
if it's in your family, it's not it's and so
then then it doesn't matter. You know, the statistics don't matter,
the anecdotes don't matter. You haven't in your family. So
everyone is affected. You know, siblings are affected by all
the energy that gets taken up by that one kid.
You know, finances are affected. It's horrifically expensive to get
(21:28):
really good treatment over the long haul, and most of
the time treatment is a long process. It's not thirty days. Yeah.
Another myths that people think, oh, well, well right. You know,
in my work, I always think if people understood how
painful and heartbreaking it can get, they would work much
(21:49):
harder on the front end to do some of these
things that we're talking about, you know, to just protect
their kids for a time. And as I said, you know,
once they're twenty four there they can relax. Everybody can
relax much more because they're not going to damage their
brains like they do when they're younger. Now, this is
a very hard message. If somebody is regularly using we
(22:10):
they don't want to hear this. Yeah, they're not interested.
But it's also so interesting in what you're saying about
having to kind of you know, front load all that
focus because you know, I think a lot of parents
are guilty of you know, not my kid, not my kid,
and then their kid becomes addicted and then they go,
oh god, now we have to do something. Um because
(22:31):
like you said when we started, when you have younger kids,
the last thing you're thinking about is that you know,
you're thinking about, you know, potty training and all kinds
of other things you're thinking to have preschool. And also
parents blame themselves so much, you so you don't want
to think that you could actually have that problem because
you're gonna feel like you did it. You're gonna feel
like it's your fault of course, Um, that's a whole
(22:53):
other terrible thing that parents have to go through. Yeah,
well I have a friend going through it now, so
tell me about um. When we talk about drugs, we
have alcohol in one column. When we talk about drugs,
it seems to me there's the marijuana and cocaine and
you know, crack. I don't. I don't even know if
(23:14):
people still do crack, but you know, they're all those
kind of strong things. But we also have a big
opiate addiction. And also one of the things I hear
more and more is people are kids, teenagers taking prescription
medication from their parents bathrooms. So I know somebody who
a kid went into cardiac arrest because they had snorted adderall,
(23:36):
which is an a d h D drug. So in
terms of kind of what the landscape looks like, now,
what are you what are sort of big red flags
for you? Well, there's a lot of views of pharmaceuticals
kids are getting from one another, They get them from
their parents, they get them on the street, that kids
are smart drugs In other words, adderall riddling to help
(23:59):
kids study. And certainly we know that you can get
much more alert, you can you know, do a lot
more if you're running around on an anphetamine like adderall,
but the kids who have been officially diagnosed with something
like a d h D, for example, it does not
rev them up that that you know, taking it appropriately
(24:21):
will prevent substance problems later for most of those kids
because they're appropriately medicated. But for kids who are using
it kind of illegitimately or because they want to take
a test, or all the different ways that people can um,
they're getting it from a lot of different sources. They're
using it selectively. They're thinking, I'll just use it for
this test, or I'll just use it for this all night,
(24:44):
or I have to pull to get this paper done.
You develop a taste for it because you feel so
energetic and there is a euphoria attached, and so that
is that part of their recreational Like if somebody's at
a party snorting adderall, what is that? All out? Amphetamines?
If you take them, especially with alcohol, you get sort
(25:04):
of double triple the effect. So adderall will increase the
effects of alcohol um and vice versa, so you end
up with a big buzz. So this is what happens
with for example, zan X mixing xanax or any of
the benzodiazepines. With alcohol, you get high, you don't just
calm down, which is what you might use zan x for.
(25:25):
Legitimately you you actually have a much bigger effect. By
the way, this is one of the respectors with adolescence
is they don't use like adults used. They use for
a mood change, and they're interested in a mood change
as quickly as possible. They're not interested in titrating slowly
getting somewhere. They want to get there now. And so
(25:47):
this is where you get the notion of several shots.
You know, go to a bar and have several shots.
They're not having one shot, they're having six or seven
because they really just want the mood change. So it
is very different end from a mature adult who decides
to have, you know, wine with their fish. It's not
or you can go or exan X on an airplane
(26:08):
or azan X on an airplane. Right, it's a very
different thing. I know a lot of parents don't understand
that about their kids. They really think they're using it
like they would use it, and the effect is very different. So,
you know, it's a difficult thing to educate about because
people don't want to they don't want to hear that
are there. And there must be differences between a child
(26:30):
who is smoking pot and taking mushrooms to a child
that is abusing prescription man made, chemically induced pharmaceutical drugs
a difference in terms of well, in terms of what
they're doing to their body and their brain. For some
reason in my mind, and this is just based on
things I've read, that the the chemical the the opiates,
(26:53):
the klonopins, the oxycon all those drugs that are completely
synthetic are a lot more dangerous to a teenage brain.
Then let's say, uh, plant based drugs. No, I wouldn't
agree with that. I mean, obviously, if you're talking about
an opiate, that has a very intense effect and so
(27:16):
that's going to affect a teenage But again, don't forget
we're talking about a teenage brain. So whether you're talking
synthetics or whether you're talking plant based, the brain is affected.
I think the difference. You know, most kids who have
never used any drugs at all don't start with an opiate.
They're not popping a couple of anything. Really, They're usually
(27:37):
starting on something much milder or what they think of
as milder. Uh so in terms of the difference, Uh, certainly,
you know you're hurting your brain no matter what you're
using if it has an addictive property to it, which
all of those drugs do. Whether it's money or drugs
or a pure group that has access. Access and supervision
(27:59):
are two of the big, big hall marks to helping
kids with substance problems. Once they have disposable money and
you're not tracking it, you don't know what they're spending
it on, they have access to kind of whatever they want.
Two antidepressants um not the same, not to stay the same,
but do they help it in terms of addiction. Well, so,
(28:20):
here's the interesting thing is if you have a child
who seems depressed and they're also, let's say, using a
lot of marijuana, or they're using it several times a week,
it's very hard to know how much of that presentation
of no motivation, flatness, looking depressed, not being able to
get out of bed, argumentative, irritable, moody. It's very hard
(28:43):
to know how much of that is related to the
drug and how much of it is actually real organic depression.
And so it's it's just tough to diagnose. So if
you end up with taking an antidepressant and you're also
medicating yourself with we again, we don't really know whether
the antidepressant is working. To get it. To to really
(29:04):
do an accurate study on that, you'd have to have
them off of the weed. And by the time your
child is presenting as depressed, if they're a regular weed smoker,
they don't want to stop the weed because that has
become a ritualized, favorite, go to thing that they do
that brings them relief all sorts, that's connected to their
peer group. So it's not so easy to have somebody
(29:28):
stop using something like weed because you want to get
a trial of antidepressants going and see if that would help.
So then you have a whole social construct involved in
the mix that again makes it harder to make a change.
Let's look at how you can tell if your team
is on drugs, because, uh, there are some of the
(29:51):
signs that you just mentioned, Um, they are skipping school,
they're sleeping late, they're not well groom their argumentative Like
you said, what are what are some other signs that
may not be as obvious, so you it can be
hard to know. There are a lot of parents who
will say they have no idea what their child looks
(30:13):
like when they're high. And then you have some parents
who say, oh yeah, I know, I know when it's happening.
So the signs of things like as you as you
pointed out things like lethargy, you know, no motivation, seeming depressed,
dropping activities that they used to love, losing a kind
of joy and a kind of enthusiasm for a lot
of different things. Sports go by the wayside often, like
(30:36):
really good athletes who start to get involved in a
substance will lose interest um their Their peer group often changes,
so they will drop the kids from what they used
to be friends with, or they will see them less
and they'll go more towards this other group. Parents often
don't know this other group because they might come from
a different school. In high school, it can be hard
(30:58):
to trace because kids are high school are drawing from
a lot of different places. You don't always know their parents.
So that change in pure group can can be an
indication money. You know, money that's missing, money that's getting spent,
but you can't really account for it. Speaking of you,
did I know you did a podcast? On social media
(31:19):
as well as the body image one and you know
this falls right into the same They all can really
coincide all these different issues because there are a lot
of there's a lot of social media now that is
very drug related, and there are a lot of ways
to get money for kids to get money, but they
that their parents don't know about that is connected to
social media or connected to an app for example selling something.
(31:44):
So so you mean selling something like my Kashmir sweater,
used Kashmre sweater, like a picture or like a picture
of you. Uh, you know, there's a lot there's a
lot of that going on right now that didn't exist
a few years ago, and so parents are discovering that
their child has all this money all of a sudden
(32:04):
that they they can't understand, and it's because they're involved
in some sort uh, you know, clandestine social media. So
are you talking pornography? It can go there, you know,
there's certainly there's certainly that, uh, and then several steps
before that, so where you can really get a very
naive young adolescent who just wants some attention, who doesn't
(32:28):
really understand much else that's going on about that. Yeah,
it's funny that you say that, because I had a
bunch of teenage girls were over at our house the
other day and one of them said, um, oh my god,
somebody d m me on social media and said they
would give me um if I sent them photos of
(32:49):
my feet. And everybody was kind of laughing, and I thought,
that's doesn't sound very good, you know, but they to
them it was like, how easy is that? I sent
him some photos of my feet and I get money?
So well, so that's where that's sort of where it starts. Okay,
it starts with the feet, Okay, yeah, I get works
the way up and then it works is so that is, Yes,
(33:11):
that's a that's become a popular the site that again
parents have no clue A lot of this is going on.
You know, when I talk about access in supervision, that's
the piece about supervision is especially during the pandemic, where
everybody is on top of everybody else and everybody needs
some privacy and should have some. But there's also the
(33:32):
naivete of a young adolescent who is, you know, with
their computer in their room. You don't know what is,
you don't know who is the creditor in there, and
you're trying to keep them safe, and yet you want
them to be able to make their own decisions. It's
just very tough on parents. Yeah, all right, so let
me let's go through a scenario. Let's pretend I have
(33:54):
a teenage boy, which I don't. Um, but that way,
neither of my teenage girls goes are you talking about me?
I have a teenage boy named Timmy, and Timmy is
sort of skipping school. Now we are in a pandemic,
and so he spends a lot of time in its room. Um,
I start to suspect that he's taking stuff. He's just
he's not the Timmy he used to be. Um, do
(34:16):
I snoop? Do I rifle through his stuff? Do I
look for evidence of drugs? Is that the first step?
So you know, it's a tough it's such a tough question.
Parents are generally horrified at the suggestion that you might
have to look in somebody's room because they are so
um focused on the idea of trust. You have to
(34:39):
think about who's losing who's trust in a case like that.
In other words, you wouldn't probably feel the need to
look unless there was some secrecy that was making you nervous,
And so that really becomes that's sort of on the
child is why is why is he being so secretive?
What's he hiding? If he denies it repeatedly and he
(35:00):
yet he seems withdrawn, he seems different. Some parents that
you know, depending on the degree of fear they have,
will start to look. You know, I'm not I'm not.
I'm not saying one should look or one shouldn't look.
I'm saying or you have It's a double edged sword
because on one hand, it is you can trust your
gut that you basically probably know your kid, and you know.
(35:22):
You know whether they're anxious, you know whether they're insecure,
you know whether they have troublemaking friends. You know that
there tend to be argumentative or defensive, and that they
can't take feedback, or that they're just uncomfortable in their skin.
That you know, you don't necessarily know whether they're using anything,
but you know enough about their risk factors to be worried.
And then they're secretive and you start suspecting things. It
(35:45):
usually doesn't come out of nowhere. I mean, most parents
are not that paranoid about They are accused of it.
They're always accused of being paranoid, but they're not wanting
to find this. It's more the opposite. It's more that
it's around them and they they have trouble seeing it
because they don't want to see it. So I think,
based on your fear, you follow your your instinct to
(36:09):
do what you need to protect your child. They are
not going to like it, you know. It's another problem
in terms of trust. What I see is people do
it when they get very desperate and they're, you know,
just very afraid that they're missing something, and then once
they do discover it, they feel stupid that they should
have looked earlier, that they so, And then nobody ever
(36:31):
says I'm glad I didn't know all that. They always
say I wish I'd known earlier, because intervening earlier is
so much easier then later. And with substance use, the
more you do it, the more deeply involved you get,
and the more deeply your brain is affected. A good
way to think about Selsin's us is that it's a
thinking problem much more than an actual drinking problem drug problem.
(36:54):
It changes the way you think, and it changes the
way you use your defenses, the way you deal with people.
So that in itself, if you have a child who's
becoming really defensive and argumentative, and seems to always be negative,
excessively negative. There's something going on with his thinking, right,
(37:14):
and that's enough to help you maybe get him some help,
not even specifically drug related, but just more mental health,
emotional health, too much stress, what's going on. And I
find that that's a really good gait for parents to use.
Is is speaking from the idea that you're not dealing
with something. There's something too stressful in your life. You
seem really upset, you seem sad, you're not yourself. So
(37:37):
it's a mental health issue. We look at it. It's
a mental health issue. It's always a mental health issue.
There's no such thing as an isolated drug problem. Now
a quick word from our sponsors, welcome back to go
ask aali. Let's get back to the discussion. Have you
(38:02):
found that in the pandemic because of the uncertainty of
the world, there's an increase in drug take, an increase
in addiction. Well, certainly it's easier to find because everybody's
living together. It's a little easier to uncover. It's not
so easy to hide. H I think that the stress
(38:22):
of families, when kids are subjected to the stress of
their parents and see how their parents handle things, in
addition to their own stress and how they're managing It's
a lot, yeah, I would assume, to with with the
parents being stressed and families being fractured because they've lost
jobs or somebody's died in the family. I mean, you know,
(38:44):
COVID's really you know, Yeah, it's an overwhelming situation for
normal minds to manage, much less somebody who's more vulnerable.
I would assume adult adults are probably taking more duds
and drinking more us. Oh. Yes, And what do you
say to um parents, uh who see other children that
(39:08):
they suspect to have a drug problem. Do you tell
those parents? If I see a friend of my daughters
maybe who I think is as an addiction problem, is
it my place to say something? I mean, I'm terrified
of doing that, but well, you know, if you go
back to the idea of it takes a village, which
I do believe it does, we all need to watch
out for everyone's children, one another's children. I would want
(39:30):
that for mine, and you'd probably want somebody to go
to you and say something, even if you don't like
the message. You'd rather know sooner. It's a terrible feeling
to know that the whole town knows about your child,
the whole school knows, and you don't know. So I
think depending on you know, what you're on, the peer
(39:50):
group that you're in. You know, a lot of parents
get together at the beginning of the school year of
parents of teens, and they will talk about these things,
and they'll say, Okay, do we want to kind make
a pact that if we hear something, if we notice
something about one of our kids, are we all okay
with us talking about it and and bringing it to
the forefront um as a way to kind of jointly
(40:14):
own this problem and really take care of one another
instead of being so isolated and feeling as though there's
there's a lot of shame in there that you're trying
to protect. So I think that's a really good way.
Does it actually, yeah, Oh it works, It does. It works.
It works because I will have kids say to me,
you know, everything was fine until my parents started talking
(40:34):
to everybody, all the other parents, and now I can't
get away with anything. And they say it with a
combination of irritation and also pride that they're yeah, yeah, yeah.
Because the other thing to keep in mind is a
lot of kids getting situations but they don't really want
to be in and they don't know how to get
out of. We don't teach good refusal skills with our kids.
(40:56):
We don't teach them how to say no in a
way that is tactful enough that they don't break off
a relationship. That's hard for adults as well as for kids. Yeah,
I actually think there should be strategies for parents. I mean,
I know that we've sat down with our kids and
we've said, look, you don't particularly like to drink. You
don't like the taste of alcohol, so hold you know,
(41:18):
a red plastic cup of ginger ale. Nobody needs to
know what you're drinking. Um or you know, we've gone
through all the scenarios. If you're at a party and
your best friends really drunk and her parents are strict
and you don't know what to do, call us, call us,
call us. But you know that was sort of um.
That was not the case of my childhood. So it's
not like somebody instructed me that it felt like an
(41:40):
intuitive thing to say to my daughters. Just call me.
We can handle anything. We can deal with anything. I
just don't want you to be in danger in any way.
So the so the other thing you will see with
a healthier family is an ability to talk about these things.
An ability for kids to come on from a party
and say it was this, it was that, and you know,
I was a little worried about so and so, but
(42:03):
here's what happened. That's a real opportunity for the parent
to respond in the right way, so they encourage the
conversation instead of shutting it down. So if they're shocked,
if they're saying, that's such a that kid, you can't
ever see that kid again. You know, this is terrible.
They're bad, I e were good. Any of that sort
of judgment is a disaster. But but you can really
(42:27):
engage your kids in a conversation where there's no judgment,
but you're just interested. You're interested and you're curious about
them and how people cope with things. Another really good
thing to do is sort of role play with them
that you're the best friend and you're the wasted one,
or you're the same one and the other one is
(42:47):
it and help them practice scenarios. What would they do
at a time like that, You know, how do they
have a particular code word if they're calling you, that
means this is trouble, Come get me out of here.
All of those kinds of preparations make people feel safer,
and practicing um is a is a great thing to do.
(43:09):
It's just that I find it in a lot of families.
They're afraid to do that. They're afraid that they're going
to encourage something that their their kids are going to
take something away that they didn't mean. But becoming comfortable
with open conversation is is a kind of protector because
anyway you want them to go to you, you don't
want them to be stuck in a situation. You know,
(43:29):
I should say everybody should instruct their kids that if
they're with a friend who passes out from an alcohol
or drugs, they have to go straight to nine one
emergency room. They can't presume that it's just they just
need to let them sleep it off, or that it's
not a big deal. I'll put them in and over right. Yeah.
So there's one other thing besides social media that I
(43:52):
didn't grow up with that I do not understand, but
I'm scared of it is vaping and jeweling. My kids
had to teach me the difference between vaping and jeweling.
But also, you know, everything we've read is they are
also gateways to drug They are another way to get
your system addicted. How do we stop that? That seems
(44:14):
to be something everyone's doing in every bathroom and every
school all the time. You can't smell it. It's a
huge it's a huge problem because the industries that are creating,
that have manufactured these products know that they have a
huge population, a huge um sale on their hands because
(44:35):
they're really targeting kids. You know, they will say that
they're targeting adults, they're targeting kids, and so when they
taste like cookies and cream, it's not for adults, right,
So you know, again, I think it's the same message
as before with nicotine. Um, a lot of families I
know are just as upset about nicotine as they are
(44:55):
about marijuana or anything else because they see it as
so addicting. And it's true. And studies will show that
the earlier a kid is smoking cigarettes, for example, or
getting a nicotine fixed, the earlier the bigger risk factor
for later drug use. So it's it's a big problem.
And I can remember a few years ago having parents
(45:17):
early on in the vaping subject who were adamant that
wanted their child to not vape, and you know, the
child was serious because all of his friends were doing it,
and they just kind of struck to their guns about
this because they felt so strongly they had addiction in
the family. They were really determined and paid off in
the end. But it was very tough because a lot
(45:37):
of his friends were doing it, and so he was
feeling like an outsider um that his parents weren't allowing it.
These are the things in our culture that are very
difficult to really sort of separate out. Who's who can
really be a mature adult and see something as a
third eye versus someone who gets overly invested in their
(45:59):
kids success and is afraid to see what's there so
then they can't help them. It's funny because I was
I went away to boarding school at thirteen and survival
and boarding school was smoking cigarettes that sort of separated
the men from the boys. So I started smoking for
survival so I could be in the butt room with
(46:19):
the cool girls. And that started at thirteen fourteen, and
I didn't quit until I got married in my early
thirties and got pregnant, otherwise I couldn't. I mean I
smoked a pack of camel lights a day. And what's
interesting is that my kids think it's the most disgusting
thing they've ever They cannot believe that I smoked cigarettes
(46:41):
and how gross was I And they can't wrap their
head around it. I mean, they really they turned into
my parents and they're very judgmental, and which is which
is interesting to me. But yet nobody was watching me
at thirteen. No one cared, you know, and it was
and what about and what about the vaping that they see?
They saw the cigarette smoking. It's really disgusting, but not vaping. No,
(47:03):
they think vaping and jeweling is disgusting too, thank god,
but they certain, but they've but they've told me that,
you know, everybody does it. And the great thing, or
not the great thing, but the positive thing for people
that are vaping and dueling is you can't detect it. Now.
When I smoked cigarettes, and even when I first married
my husband, you know, I could take three showers and
(47:24):
brush my teeth and eat a green apple and he
could immediately smell that I had a cigarette. But you
can hide the other stuff so much better. And that's
why the rate of addiction goes up so so quickly
with them because they can because in the old days
you did it, you had to hide it because it
did smell, and so you could only do it at
certain times and you had to be very careful how
(47:44):
you used it, so that automatically limits your use. Now
there's no limit to the use. You can use it
all day long and no one really knows. So that
means that the addiction rate goes way, way, way up,
So it doesn't take long to become really addicted to nicotine.
Le say, by the way, jewel and and uh, you
know pods you can there's marijuana in there as well.
(48:07):
You can switch things out. So whether they're getting nicotine
or whether they're getting weed, there's there's something that they're
getting and it's being ingested in the law. So I
don't know. I'm sure you've seen all the recent studies
on trying to alert people to the dangers of they
being with COVID Y and the high risk factory. Yes, yeah,
and you know young people again, they they're not their
(48:29):
brains are not developed enough to even believe that that
could happen. So I think as apparent you just have
to say, you know, in terms of dueling and vaping. No,
absolutely not. You have to say no, and I think
you have to explain why, and you have to ask
that they trust you that you know a little bit
(48:49):
more because of your advanced age or all of your experience,
that you're hoping that they can trust that you're out
for their best interests, because the message would be mixed
if you said, well, you can do it a little bit,
but just don't do it too much. That's where parents
get in trouble. They try to be reasonable, and what
the kid is hearing is it's okay. You know, if
(49:11):
they're saying I can have one vodka UM on a
Saturday night, basically what they're saying is it's okay to
have vodka. That is how it's an adolescent translates that message.
So the parent means just a little and don't get
out of control. The kid doesn't hear that because their
brain they're they're thinking, is not evolved to that point yet.
(49:31):
So a lot of this is about how do you
translate between the generations. You know, are you sure you're
delivering a message that they can actually hear versus what
you think you you're doing just scare to scare tactics
work with parents. No, No, scare tactics don't. Showing showing
them a picture of lungs after vaping is not going
(49:52):
to have a big effect on them. Well, in effect,
it certainly may. It certainly had an effect on me,
but I don't think it has that much of an effect.
All the studies have shown that scared straight and those
techniques aren't really that effective. But the great thing about
adolescence is if they're very sensitive to hypocrisy, so they
can spot something disingenuous very quickly, and once they spot
(50:16):
it in their parents, especially, then they're out for blood.
Then they will debate you to the end because they
have found your weak spot. Again, it's part of their
own moral development is being able to fire it out.
What's hypocritical, you know why, unfairness, you know justice. It's
why debate teams are so popular in high school because
really the brain of that adolescent stage is primed to
(50:40):
argue and to research your point of view and to
fight for what you want. So it's it all kind
of works together. But when it comes to drug use, um,
it's it's it's humorous in a way, how much, how
very passionate they can be with their research, which of
course is self selected because they went to certain sites
(51:01):
to get their research, they need go to the other sites. Um.
But that's all right. It's still part of their their
own intellectual development. Which I think is a really great
thing about talking about something with kids at that age
is they have they have a way to see right
through to something that's fake, so scared straight. Even though
(51:22):
it's of course true that people can have horrific experiences
because of it, they see as a manipulation and you know,
they're not wrong, right. So I in terms of taking
Timmy through all this, and we've we've uh, he has
a problem. I've gone into his room, I found the drugs.
There are innumerable treatment centers, there's all kinds of hotlines,
(51:46):
um for people who need help. But I want to
just end this podcast by emphasizing a few of the
things that you said which I think are really important,
which is to h to educate our kids even before
the age where they would probably start experimenting with drugs. Yes,
but I think it's more important to educate the parents,
(52:08):
you know, I think I think the parents. If the
parents feel confident in a point of view, then it's
much easier for the kids to follow. If the parents
are ambivalent, they're not sure. They had a wild childhood
and they turned out fine. Be in your particular case,
it's almost a problem because you look at you and
yet you can say you had this this experience when
(52:29):
you were younger. So it would be easy for kids
like yours to say, well, you're fine, but their fin
it's their father. Their father was perfection, never did anything,
so I always we emphasize him. So but you can
see how it's important for the parents to know what
they're doing, to have a policy of their own. It's
not easy to do, but that is I think the
(52:51):
key is with the parents. It's and also to be
very clear and concise about what their thoughts about. Like
we talked before about you know, not a drink here,
maybe drink there, or you know not to wish to
be clear right because you know, kids will get help
when the parents are ready for them to get help.
If the parents aren't ready, it's not happening. So I
do think the power, the center of power is with
(53:13):
the parents. Even though they might feel disempowered, they might
feel as though no one's listening to them. They have
so much more influence on their kids than they might think,
and then when they are in those adolescent years, to
communicate with them, to to be able to talk with them.
And if you're really worried, you know, if you think
there's a problem, to be able to say, you know,
(53:35):
I'm too worried as your mother or your dad, I'm uncomfortable.
You might be comfortable, Johnny, but I'm uncomfortable with this,
and I think we need to go see somebody and
just get a get an assessment and see what somebody else,
what a professional thinks. Um, not a problem. Let's just
do that and then we'll take it from there. So
you really try to not raise a flag of panic.
(53:58):
You try to not you definitely don't start accusing somebody
of you know, being a drug addict or anything inflammatory.
You try to take it from the point of view
of we see your struggling and we want to get
you help, and help is available, and we don't stop,
we don't give up. So it's lots of opportunities to
(54:19):
model that. Um, how do you handle a problem in
a family. UM. So, yes, there's stigma, Yes there's shame.
But if you I think, if you're really well educated
about it. You can rise above that. There's a lot
of great help. There are a lot of parent groups,
there are there's a lot of support. Um, but it's
a it's a tough initiation. It's a lot you know,
(54:42):
there's a lot of information. I can never but it's
just you get me started. I can't stop. No, But
that's what's so great about it. But also you know,
that's why I wanted to emphasize, you know, or punctuate
the things that you were saying, because I never would
have thought too sort of look look at younger kids
at all. I never even you know, talked about alcohol
(55:06):
with my kids until they were of the age. You know, right,
no one, no one does. But you know, if you
ask a kindergarten teacher or preschool teacher, you know, can
you spot the kids in your class that you think
would be at risk of like emotional problems later? Um,
they can tell you that's what I mean, But no
one wants to do it because if they're these adorable
little children and you have the impression that they have
(55:29):
their whole lives and it's all going to be you know,
sweetness and unicorns, But you can spot the children who
are fragile. This happens more to children who are fragile.
It's fragile kids who often develop a drug problem. And
so it's such a great injustice that we do when
we label them in the ways we do, because it's
(55:51):
not it's not their fault, you know, when it's not
their fault that somebody introduced them to a joint when
they were twelve or a cigarette when they were twelve.
They got this feeling and it made them feel better
than they normally feel. It is awful to go through
a childhood feeling not normal, not good, not smart, not whatever,
(56:12):
you know. So the shame that they start to carry
speeds that need for a mood change. So it's all
it's all innocent, and they're fragile kids and misunderstood big time.
M hmm. Thank you so much for this welcome, welcome,
(56:32):
my pleasure. Have educated me in in such tremendous ways,
and I hope everybody that just listened to it too
got a lot of information and helps. So thank you
so much. Well, you're welcome, Thanks for having me, Thank
you for tuning in to go ask Ali. Be sure
to subscribe, rate and leave a review, and follow me
and my undoctored posts on social media. I'm on Twitter
(56:54):
at Ali e Wentworth and on Instagram at the Real
Ali Wentworth. Go ask Ali the production of Shonda Land
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