Christian Parenting Advice on Classifying Drugs Your Teenager Uses
The main reason I write all the articles I do on teenage drug abuse is because of my own drug abuse problem as a teenager and even young adult
. You could say I used more drugs than not. I say this not to glorify it in any way but to say I know of the damage because I use to be there. I have some understanding of the issue and effects of certain drugs.
For instance, when I was growing up we would pick and choose the drug we would use depending on the activity we were going to engage in. Because we knew that different drugs would produce different results.
Even as a parent we might find ourselves responding differently to the knowledge of the type of drug our teenager is using. You would feel better if your child is smoking dope instead of shooting up heroin. Because of the stigma and effects of each drug. We would probably not even bat an eye if we knew our child went and got drunk somewhere?
But think about this...and please know that I am not advocating nor promoting any type of substance use. But marijuana has never been shown to cause an overdose death while alcohol poisoning kills more people every year than all illegal drugs combined.
However, we find an empty beer bottle verses a blunt in our kids room, the amount of panic would be different. Even though we know Alcohol dose more damage in our society than all the others combined. We dont fret or freak out over our teenagers drug abuse if it is only a beer.
Even when it comes to the addiction of some drugs. We can mis-classify them. For instance I know from personal experience that crack is probably one of the most addictive drugs out there. We would even think of heroin as an addictive drug. But did you know that the former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, M.D. has described tobacco as more addictive than heroin.
During a 1988 government hearing Dr. Koop testified that "f tobacco suddenly were unavailable and was as expensive as heroin and cocaine, I think that you would find that the behavior of some tobacco addicts would be very much like the behavior of some addicts of heroin and cocaine."
My point is this. Don't try to classify the drugs you catch your child with. Make sure you treat them all the same and deal with them in a timely fashion.
Christian Parenting Advice on Classifying Drugs Your Teenager Uses