Equality 101

This is a guest post by Kathy Teel.  Kathy Teel is a freelance content writer for Online Schools, who gives advice on the pursuit of education and living a healthy life. In her free time she enjoys watching old movies, snuggling her three kids, and writing fiction.  You can contact Kathy at kathy@teelwriting.com.

Anyone with a child in middle school or junior high knows about the prevalence of illicit drug use.  But how many parents recognize the prevalence of medication abuse?  Not many.  Studies published by the Adolescent Substance Abuse Knowledge Base indicate that most parents still do not realize how young children are when they begin experimenting with drugs, or that the most common ‘gateway drugs’ are ones kept in the family’s medicine cabinet.

Parents need to be aware of the dangers of prescription drug abuse among middle schoolers.  While most illicit drugs, like heroin or methamphetamine, have no medicinal purpose and are taken for the high they produce, prescription drugs are often taken for different reasons.  Prescription drugs have physical and psychotherapeutic effects, and are only sometimes taken for a high.  More often, middle schoolers (like others addicted to prescription drugs) are self-medicating.  A girl teased about her weight will start looking for weight loss drugs.  A boy who wants to impress a teacher will take his brother’s Adderall.  Sleeping pills, psychostimulants, depression medications: all of these provide a potential solution to a child’s problem.  But parents needs to be on the look out for these quick fixes, because they turn debilitating, sometimes deadly, overnight.

Where do middle schoolers get prescription drugs?

Middle schoolers get prescription drugs from a variety of places: the family medicine cabinet is the most obvious, but others include:

• grandparents’ house or the houses of other family members;
• older siblings, especially those already hooked;
• friends, who often trade prescription drugs among themselves; and
• neighbors.

What should parents be looking for?

Signs that your middle schooler might be abusing prescription medication include:

• Finding prescription drug bottles hidden in his or her room, especially if the prescription is made out to someone else or the labels have been torn off;
• Dramatic weight loss, which often occurs with an addiction to diet pills;
• Agitation and anxiety, often the effects of stimulants like those found in prescription nasal spray;
• Dizziness, drowsiness, impaired motor function, or a general sense that the child is ‘out of it’ (especially common with depressants like Xanax and Valium);
• Bottles of pills missing from your medicine cabinet, or fewer pills in the bottles you have; and
• Miscellaneous unidentified pills inside desk drawers and dressers, under pillows, or in the pockets of pants.

What are the most commonly abused prescription drugs among middle schoolers?

The prescription drugs most commonly abused by middle schoolers are:

• Ritalin, often taken as a study aid;
• Klonopin, sometimes called ‘kiddie cocaine’ because of the high it produces;
• Ketamine, usually prescribed for animals by veterinarians but producing a high similar to angel dust;
• Fen-Phen, an anti-obesity drug iilegal in the US but available in Mexico;
• Valium and Xanax, often taken because of their euphoric effects or as a way through significant stress; and
• antidepressants, often taken by kids who want to ‘lighten up’ or feel less constricted.

Kids as young as 11 or 12, from all ethnic and economic groups, are taking their treatments into their own hands…often with disastrous results.  As parents and teachers, it’s our job to help them identify and access real solutions to their problems, not the dangerous ones found in someone else’s medicine bottle.