Teaching Kids About The Dangers Of Addiction ~ Where Does It Start?

The rampant addiction and overdose deaths continue to rise, and create crisis after crisis for families, communities, health care, and education.

The issue of addiction has creeped into every nook and cranny of our lives. If we ourselves have not battled it, someone in our family has.

The old adage “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” applies to the topic of addiction, probably more than most health related issues.

When asking the question about how to prevent addiction, and where does it start? For most of us, the obvious answer is that it begins in the home, and must be recognized how much early developmental learning, comes through observation, emotions, and intergenerational patterns.

First of all, we need to be cognizant of how our own parents managed addiction. In many cases, addicted children have addicted parents. Even if the parent does overcome the addiction at some point, the children are still prone to addiction, and such vulnerabilities cannot be overlooked.

We also have to be aware that parental addiction is not only about drugs and alcohol. It can also be manifested in workaholism, gambling, food, and various other forms of escapism, or habits.

The first step is in identifying increased vulnerability in ourselves, in our families, and especially for the sake of the children.

Children at most risk are those who are traumatized. Children who end up in foster care end up having more trauma than combat veterans. Children who are exposed to domestic violence, sexual assault, neglect, and shame, become hard wired to seek forms of escapism.

Our familial patterns can take many years to recognize and overcome. The effects of PTSD and profound shame associated with family of origin, cannot be shaken off in a few weeks or months.

Most of all, the emotional scars cannot be remedied with drugs or alcohol, as is so often the case. When someone tells another person to get help, what exactly does that mean?

Where do they get help? Paradoxically, every program is likely to focus on giving more drugs to combat the drug addiction. Why?

We can never under estimate the power of the pharmaceutical companies, and the role they play in contributing to widespread addiction. They want steady customers. Repeat customers are the proverbial cash cow.

Therefore many addiction programs will focus on harm reduction, which just means they substitute one drug for another. But as most of us familiar with how addiction works, we know that abstinence is the only cure. Prescription drugs can be just as deadly as street drugs.

Once a person enters a rehab facility or a treatment centre, or the mental health system, they are likely to be diagnosed with a mental health disorder, and prescribed psychotropic drugs. Often they are prescribed antipsychotics, which target the dopamine receptor sites, just as many other drugs do – especially opiates.

In addition, there is no real way to track how poly pharmaceuticals in conjunction with street drugs, can potentiate each other.

Not long ago I watched a YouTube show about a young woman who was around twenty years old, and ended up in rehab. She was bright, energetic, and had an outgoing gregarious personality. When she was in rehab, she became anxious and restless. They gave her benzodiazepines, which is the anti-anxiety class of drug, most commonly known as Valium, Ativan and the mood stabilizer Clonazepam.

Although benzodiazepines are not similar to opiates in how they work chemically, they are just as dangerous, just as addictive. People who become addicted to benzos require months, and sometimes years of very careful tapering to get off them.

When the young woman was discharged from rehab, she had a prescription for Valium. She was full of hope and had written a diary, to express her new found confidence in being able to kick her drug habit. Unfortunately, she was full of hope, but hopelessly naive.

She went home, and immediately got a job in a bar. She hooked up with old friends and was exposed to the usual party scene. She was still taking Valium during the day, and started drinking at night. Within a matter of weeks, she relapsed and started taking street drugs again. And shortly after that, she died of an overdose, leaving a grief stricken family behind.

How many times do we read about an addict relapsing a hundred times? Or going through a treatment program twelve to twenty times? In the US drug culture, they refer to this as body brokering. In other words, the system is designed to cycle people through treatment programs, with no intention of seeing them get off drugs.

They even have a referral system to see if the person has insurance, or wealthy parents, and they will get plugged into the treatment centre, get discharged, relapse, and go back for repeat treatments until they die, or the funds are exhausted.

For those of us who claim abstinence is the only way out, we get harm reduction advocates screaming blue murder. They will insist the quest for abstinence is killing people, and they will use histrionics and hyperbole, to fuel the steady, and ever increasing flow of drugs.

They will claim the push for recovery, through abstinence, represents a profound lack of compassion. But wanting to see people get well – is not a lack of compassion.

Addiction is very easy to fall into, and very difficult to climb out of. Therefore is makes sense to prioritize prevention. The cost of addiction is part of the profiteering malevolent cycle.

In order to tackle the problem of addiction, there has to be a complete paradigm shift. It starts in our minds, and in the minds of our children.

We understand there are laws to help protect us from physical, and sexual assault. But we have no laws to protect our minds and emotions from infiltration, and assault, by those wishing to exploit us, and rob our potential. 

In fact, the assault on our minds and emotions can be just as deadly as physical assaults, yet the perpetrators never face any charges, because there is no outward bruising, or signs of assault.

The stage can be set for self-medicating psychic and emotional pain, long before the individual or family is aware of it. On behalf of children, we need to protect their minds and their emotions, as well as protect them physically.

We also need to be aware that we have become a pill pushing society. Every ailment has a pill to remedy it. We have come to believe we need those pills as a quick fix for every hindrance we face.

Children watch their parents, and grandparents use medication, and begin to see it as a normal part of life.

When I worked in ER, part of the history, and documentation to be entered on the patient’s chart, was to list the medications the person was taking. Often they did not even know the names of the drugs, or why they were taking them.

It was not uncommon for the patient to bring in a brown paper bag filled with bottles of pills. The ER staff would go through them, and  write them down, because the patient could not list them all when questioned. One person could easily have fifteen or twenty prescription drugs in that bag. This was especially so for seniors.

Previously, I did some research, and wrote a blog post about the multiple classes of drugs prescribed to certain groups, and how they stacked up in relation to age, and demographics. 

Not surprisingly, it was those in poverty, seniors, and Indigenous people, who were prescribed the most classes of drugs. 

It is not to say people don’t require medication for certain ailments. It is just that we have learned to expect there is a pill for everything, from depression to high cholesterol, and every ache and pain that plagues us.

Instead, we should be focusing more on diet, nutrition, exercise, sleep, wellness, and stable routines. We need to find ways to have fun, without drugs and alcohol.

Sports, hobbies, fresh air, camping, music, learning, and positive relationships, with much care and attention to who we allow into our lives, will contribute to overall wellness. Music and sports probably top the list for young people, as healthy outlets. 

Although we may have many regrets about our own addictive tendencies, and how we may have affected our children, we can only use what we have learned to try and help others. We cannot turn back the clock.

Therefore, overcoming addiction must carry forward with love, and forgiveness within families. We need to do so, without neglecting to validate the amount of emotional pain it has caused. 

By the time a child enters school, many of the intrinsic coping mechanisms have already been established. If the schools genuinely want to help address the problem of addiction, and protect children, they must incorporate education about addiction into the school curriculums at every age level. 

In addition to validating the effects of psychological and emotional pain, and the importance of protecting our minds and emotions, the education surrounding addiction is extensive. 

How many kids have been put on Ritalin, then go on to use meth? How many of them were diagnosed with ADHD when really they were simply rambunctious, bright, high energy kids? Or maybe their lack of attention was an attempt to seek distractions, which is another form of escapism from emotional pain or trauma.

Instead of addressing the vulnerability, and properly assessing the child, they start them on drugs, in order to manage them, and keep them in line. It is the worst thing they could do to them. 

How is any school going to begin to educate about addiction, if they are encouraging parents to put their kids on Ritalin? 

To be sincere about wellness, the educational systems need to provide honest information about the effects of drugs on every system of the body. Just as kids learn the periodic table of elements to understand sodium, magnesium, calcium etc. they should also learn how these chemical elements affect the bodily systems.

The book “Molecules of Emotion” written in 1997 by Candace Pert made the connection between dopamine, endorphins, and the physiology between internal chemistry and emotions.

Candace Pert was a neuroscientist and pharmacologist who was credited with the discovery of opioid receptors in the brain, and the cellular binding site for endorphins in the body. She lectured about many related topics, and wrote a significant amount of material. 

What I found interesting when I watched some of the interviews and lectures given by Candace Pert, is that she often had a can of Coke sitting beside her, instead of a bottle of water. Even though it is a minor thing, it is interesting to note, she too experienced the pitfalls of a form of addiction. 

Candace Pert died at the age of 67 of congestive heart failure, and was clearly sick and overweight for at least the last ten years of her life. 

She had the knowledge, but she still struggled with maintaining her own health. What can we learn from it? 

The subject of molecules and emotion, and how it relates to knowledge is so complex, it transcends what our minds can grasp. 

We are constantly seeking to feel good, to feel better, and to fill a void within us. If we reach for the wrong remedy, it becomes a bad habit. if we continue the habit, it becomes an addiction. If we continue the addiction, it will kill us. 

We are the subjects of someone else’s profit motive, whether we realize it or not. So within this convoluted train wreck of addiction, there lies a profit motive, messaged toward us from every direction imaginable. 

The advertising and propaganda is beamed into our brains. Greed, and the love of money – are two of the most essential components driving it at the higher levels. These motives are often concealed. We need to learn to be far less gullible. 

Rather than allowing our minds and bodies to become a cauldron of chemical soup, we need to find ways to feel good without addictive substances. It is not always easy, that’s for sure.

It means we have to acknowledge the importance of the gut biome, as a very important part of the internal chemistry. We have to evaluate sugar, pop, and fast foods, as part of the attack upon our systems, because they too, set off a train reaction and increase our risk of addiction to harmful substances.

We have to find ways to cope with hardship, losses, and pain, without resorting to self-medicating. Fresh air, exercise, hobbies, adequate sleep, learning, our spiritual lives, our love for family and others – all contribute to our well-being. 

Personally, I believe one of the worst things for our mental health, is shame. Although it is often children from homes steeped in poverty, addiction, instability, and trauma who feel the most shame, the burden of shame has no respecter of persons either. 

Children from good homes can also feel ashamed and unworthy. Perhaps they are portrayed as the perfect child. Perfectionism is damaging, because no one is perfect.

Or maybe they have a sibling who is the apple of the parents eye, and they are not. All kinds of things can cause shame for a child. In fact, favouring one child over another wreaks havoc under the surface of many familial veneers.

Almost all families have some form of dysfunction. To make matters more difficult, we tend to be master’s when it comes to denial.

Shame increases vulnerability to addiction. It is another form of emotional pain that may seek to self-medicate. Addiction is best addressed in an open, and communicative environment within the family.

None of us can rightfully deny what the other is experiencing, because denial is also part of what fuels addiction. If there is denial, there is re-victimization. 

On the flip side of shame, we see narcissism, which also represents a very fragile ego. The healthiest outlook is one of quiet confidence, without a need to be special, or talented, or use achievements in order to measure self worth. 

There is no way to summarize the tip of an iceberg. We either hit it and go down, or we find a way to navigate around it. 

In my humble opinion, and less than stellar background, all I can say is first and foremost – protect the mind and emotions, as well as the body from assaults, grooming, shaming, exploitation etc. Set boundaries, or the destructive people, and systems – will bowl you over without giving it a second thought. 

Secondly – understand that for those who have addictive tendencies, which truthfully, is most of us, we need to abstain. For the addict, there is a constant need to fill the void with more, until there is a certain mood elevation, sleep, and then the cycle begins again.

This is not a stagnant cycle. It is a very active and ever increasing vortex, until that deep sleep brought about by the substance, ends up becoming a permanent sleep. 

And finally, probably most important of all, is the fact we are not only made up of mind and body, we also coexist in a spiritual world. Therefore, we have to integrate ourselves with a belief system that transcends our physical world. 

There is much criticism in our very secular world, towards those who acknowledge the importance of our spiritual beliefs, but regardless, they are probably at the heart of every recovery, and certainly the hope for a true recovery. 

Candace Pert acknowledged the spiritual aspect of life, and unfortunately for her, she delved into New Age, instead of Christianity. Her expansive knowledge of pharmacology, and the chemistry of emotions, and how it led to her own spiritual beliefs, does reinforce that our spirituality is an ultimate quest.

It also tells us we not only must protect our minds, heart, and emotions – but more than anything, we also need to recognize and understand the importance of our spiritual lives, and what we choose to believe. 

The void within us cannot be filled with harmful substances, because if we do, it is like feeding a wolf, prowling around with an insatiable hunger, and a determination to destroy us.

We cannot just take away the substance we are using to fill the abyss within us, because the emptiness will continue to haunt us, or we will fill it with something equally addictive.

We have to find our own pathway, and also find ways to fill the vacuity within us, with what is good, what is rewarding, and with what will sustain us for the long term.

Healing is both a journey, and a destination. It is metaphorically full of highwaymen with pistols, and wolves in sheep’s clothing.

There is a barren nihility, and a deep black hole, both on the inside, and on the outside, of this wrecking ball of the soul. 

Somehow we need to learn to be wise, to be aware, and to be willing to do what we can, to prevent our children, and our grandchildren, from falling into the pit of addiction. 

Copyright Valerie J. Hayes and Quiet West (2024). Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author/owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Valerie J. Hayes and Quiet West with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.