by Josh Shiels

Created on: November 01, 2008

What causes teen substance abuse?

Well to state it as simply as possible, it is a lack of connection between what right and wrong is. To a teenager, right and wrong usually clash at the worst of times, it has and always will be our youth who are the first to challenge authority.

Taking drugs has become a past-time for many teenagers and it is hard for me to say that the media didn't play apart in my experimentations with drugs, I saw it in a movie and tried it that following week, but that doesn't mean that the popular media is to blame, it is also a lack of information given to me as a child.

I was always told how bad drugs were for your body, but all I ever seemed to hear was how bad they were, thats all I wanted to be, was bad. There are so many problems with the way children are raised in this day and age, divorce is showing know signs of stopping and I found myself asking the same question that all my friends were asking, "why did Mom and Dad break up?". When things like this happen we begin to believe that we have more common ground in our friends then we do in our own parents, so when they say drugs are bad, this doesn't faze us. There must have been something that happened down the line with parents of today, they wonder what happened to their beautiful child who is now dependant of heroin, and they fail to look back through the years at their own ways of parenting. Parenting causes teen substance abuse.

Parents need to understand what teenagers are going through, this is the biggest transition in there life. They want to be adults, they look up to their parents and if they are ashamed to look up to them, then the look up to their surroundings, which are often far from pretty. So it is simple, teach you 10 year old that drugs are dangerous, that drugs kill you, show them documentary's on the addition to drugs, but never try to beat into there heads that drugs are the villain and you are the hero because when something comes between you and your teenager, they don't see you as the hero anymore, it usually turns around on itself. Let your children live life, be their friend and listen to what they have to say. if they need your help then help them out, if they need you to give them some space than let them have it.

Teenagers are young adults, they want to be treated like it. If you give them a reason to have to prove that their an adult, they are more than likely going to do what they feel is right, and right to a teenager isn't getting a promotion, owning a home, raising a family, it is having fun, fitting into a group to feel less like an outsider. Drugs are everywhere, don't believe that blindfolding your children about the world of drugs will keep them safe, tell them about that world and they might think twice about visiting it.

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