A Catastrophic Loss of Talent

There are times when those of us in the field of drug treatment can feel a little like Cassandra, the woman in Greek myth whose warnings fell on deaf ears. It’s not because people don’t care about drug abuse – they do – but because we’ve talked about it for so long.

Then something tragic gets people’s attention. Maybe a car full of teenagers crashes. Another tragedy unfolded recently, but you wouldn’t have heard about it. In one month last fall, a significant percentage of Serenity Lane’s residential patients were between the ages of 18 and 24 – and most of these young people were addicted to opiates.

It’s tempting to rationalize this kind of information. We’d like to wish it away as a statistical blip. But Serenity Lane’s experience is no anomaly. It’s a close-up view of what’s happening nationally. A federal study recently found that Oregon was #1 in the country for 13-18 year-olds using prescription drugs – mostly opiates – for other than their prescribed use.

There’s no question that this kind of drug abuse among our young people threatens all of us with a catastrophic loss. Death is the most obvious way this happens, to be sure. But a full-blown chemical dependency stays with someone for life. It can be arrested with quality treatment and recovery support, but there really is no permanent cure. The young person will have to deal with it for the rest of his or her life.

It’s important to ask ourselves, as adults, what’s causing young people so much discomfort that they turn to these powerful drugs for relief? I can tell you from my experience at Serenity Lane that it’s not physical pain that they’re medicating. It’s something deeper.

For some, it’s feelings of hopelessness about the future. For others, it’s painful feelings of “being less than” that come when they compare themselves with celebrities and sports stars. Or when they look ahead and see little hope of meaningful or good-paying work, even with a good education.

These feelings don’t happen in a vacuum; they happen in an environment where we “take a pill for every ill.” Combine that with the fact that young people have no experience getting through difficult times and turning to painkillers makes a terrible kind of sense.

So what can adults do? Well, the first step is to accept that the problem exists at all. We can pay closer attention to the warning signs that the young people in our lives might be using these drugs (the National Institutes on Drug Abuse website is very helpful for this). We can know how many Oxycontin or Vicodin pills we have in the medicine cabinet, lock them up securely, and dispose of them properly.

But in a time when things aren’t looking all that hopeful for many families, we adults can also do our own work to be honest about how tough times are. To emphasize how important each and every person is regardless of their income or possessions. We can make a sustained effort to stay optimistic. And we can attend to the spiritual needs that are really under all of this: the big-picture needs for meaning, hope and strength.

Young people are looking to us to show how to deal with difficult emotions in constructive ways. Being aware of the problem, taking practical steps and setting an example of how a person can learn to deal with difficult times are all things we can do.

As the manager of employer services for Serenity Lane, Jerry Gjesvold helps companies manage their drug-free workplace programs. For more information, go to www.serenitylane.org; past columns are found at
www.serenitylaneblog.wordpress.com. The opinions expressed in this column are those of the writer.

 

The Mindset Essential To Positive Change

There’s something about January 1 that makes many of us think of fresh starts and clean slates. We have high hopes for behaviors we want to change. It’s a time for new beginnings. It’s resolution time.
If we want to be successful, there’s one fundamental mistake we’ll need to avoid. For many, it’s so much a part of our thinking that we don’t even know it’s there. What is this fatal flaw? Overestimating the effectiveness of will power and underestimating what’s actually required to make lasting, positive changes.

 

Managing The Most Intense Time of the Year

For many people, the next few weeks will be, as the old song says, “the most wonderful time of the year” — a time of good food, beautiful decorations, get-togethers with family and friends, and generous giving. For others, the season will be very challenging — a time of difficult family gatherings, out-of-control drinking and feelings of isolation. For them, this time of year brings up painful memories of holidays ruined by drinking, drugs, and perhaps domestic violence.

 

Keeping Tailgate Parties Safe this Season

With the fall comes football season and that great American tradition: the tailgate party. It’s a party, all right: outside a stadium with 25,000 of your new best friends, anticipating the game (which your team wins), enjoying the fall weather, eating good food. And of course, drinking alcohol — often, in excess.

 

When Their Drug of Choice Comes from Your Medicine Cabinet

This is the time of year when many young people head off to college. Parents hope that they’ve influenced their sons and daughters to avoid problems with alcohol and other drugs – but also know they won’t be hard to find.

Yes, alcohol is illegal for anyone under 21 and marijuana is illegal for anyone without a medical card. Nevertheless, using them sometimes seems like a campus rite of passage.

 

Charlie Sheen’s Train Wreck Painful to Watch

Over the past few months, our national attention has been focused on Egypt, Libya, disaster in Japan, the rising price of gas and … Charlie Sheen? No matter what world-shaping events are happening, we seem fascinated with watching the soap opera of celebrity living.

As a treatment professional with three decades of experience — and as a recovering alcoholic and drug addict — I find the Charlie Sheen story to be both painful and very sad.

 

Spiritual Growth Can Be Challenging for an Addict

These days, most treatment centers combine three disciplines to help patients into recovery. Staff doctors and nurses address medical problems. Team psychiatrists and counselors tackle mental challenges. And for spiritual issues, there are 12-step meetings and volunteers who use “the program” to maintain sobriety. Some centers even have chaplains.

The first two areas aren’t particularly controversial. Medical and psychological practices to heal the body and mind are broadly accepted in our society. But the third area, the spiritual one, presents some special challenges.

 

There’s Help for Those Who Grew Up Among Addicts

One of the tragic things about drug addiction and alcoholism is the impact it has on the family members of the addict-alcoholic. Treatment professionals are clear: If you grew up in a home where chemical dependency was active, you were affected by it.

 

The Persistent Power of Denial

Over the years in my work at Serenity Lane, I can’t count the number of times that I’ve heard someone say, referring to a friend, loved one or employee, “They’re drinking (or using) again. Why can’t they see what it’s doing to them? How can they be so blind?”

For “normal” people, the situation can be truly baffling. How can someone keep abusing alcohol or other drugs regardless of the increasingly serious consequences? How can he or she go on ignoring friends, family members and employers – even law enforcement officials and judges – as life spins out of control?

 

Families: Beware the “Closed System”

If we were to make a list of the most important American ideals, family and privacy would have to be near the top. We place great value on both. We do our best to protect them. We even put the two together, trying to keep the inner life of our families private.

In some ways this is healthy. We’re often not at our best at home – sometimes far from it. We need a place free of public scrutiny to work things out, to make mistakes and to learn. It’s not always appropriate to show that part of our lives to the outside world.

In some families, however, privacy can lead to secrecy – a focus on keeping something unhealthy hidden from view. Psychologists call this dysfunction a “closed system.”