Addiction has powerfully negative effects on adolescents, their families and the realization of their hopes and dreams. The sad fact is that that every addict started life as a human being with great potential. The addiction, like an overwhelming cancer can consume these hopes and dreams. There are different stages of addiction. Each stage would require a different type of treatment modality. They are the early stage, the middle stage and the late or advanced stage of addiction. In adolescents, the stages of addiction can progress more quickly than as an adult, although this is not always true. It can take a few months or a few years to reach the later stages of addiction.
Early stages of addiction
- Begins smoking cigarettes
- Experimentation with drugs
- Begins smoking pot and drinking
- Hangs out with the drugging and drinking crowd
- May steal medications from parents
- Urgent requests for money, cons and manipulates to get requests met
- Preoccupation with finding drugs and orients activities around them
- School problems begin, maybe truancies or begging parents to make excuses for them
- May not come home when requested, staying out all night
- Few consequences from their use
- Ability to control use
- Tolerance to using
- Substance use becomes a way of communicating to others
- Attention span decreases
- Lower tolerance to frustration
Middle stages of Addiction
- Beginning to try and limit their use
- Blaming others for thing that are going wrong
- Using different types of drugs to gain control over use
- Withdrawing from family and friends
- Stealing
- Academic decline and truancy
- Mood swings
- Lying
- Increase in time spent in using substances
- Changes in personal appearance
- Arguments within the family
- Legal difficulties
- Loss of control
Late stages of Addiction
- Suspension or being expelled from schoolIncrease in anxiety
- Lowered self esteem
- Increase in legal issues
- Blackouts
- Passing out
- Signs of withdrawal symptoms
- Unable to control substance use
- Isolating
- Anger outbursts
- Denial of using
- Weekend binges or daily use
- Paranoia
- Begins to steal, deal or prostitute to support their habit
- Weight gain or weight loss
- Stops trying to hide their use
Addiction is chronic, progressive and sometimes fatal. There are many forms of treatment for adolescent addiction. No one single treatment is effective for all individuals. Treatment must touch on all facets of the adolescents life. Social, family, school, legal and medical are just some areas that need to be a focus on, in treatment. If the adolescent is using heroin, medication management may be successful, such as buprenorphine or methadone.
If an adolescent is using drugs, the best form of treatment always includes the family. Family participation and counseling is vital in providing proper treatment to the adolescent. Without family participation, the chances of the adolescent getting into recovery are low.
Wendy McLellan MA, LCDPII, has an extensive background as a licensed counselor. For more than sixteen years, Wendys career involved working with adolescents and their families in agencies that specialize in residential and outpatient substance abuse counseling as well as mental health rehabilitation. As a counselor and Program Director of an intensive outpatient program, Wendy has experienced first-hand the devastating effects that abuse, violence, sexual abuse, addiction and predatory behavior have on adolescents and families.
With deep professional and personal concerns to these issues and an opportunity to help protect children, adolescents and families, Wendy has lent her experience, knowledge and time to the efforts of http://www.safecomputerkids.com and their online parental resources and components of their cyber safety toolkit in her own efforts to help parents keep their children safe online.
Gay Drug Rehab Programs in Illinois
Drug Rehab programs and alcohol rehab programs have been available for the heterosexual community in Illinois for the last 25 years. The drug rehabs in Illinois have been of high quality and both inpatient and outpatient drug addiction treatment. There has been drug rehab programs for almost any kind of drug addiction or alcohol addiction. You can ...
Other Alternatives Offered For Alcohol Addiction Treatment Program
Alcoholism is not a trouble that is restricted to adults. Many adolescents find themselves passionate to alcohol even though the legal drinking age is twenty one. The pressure to fit in with others and the pressure to be popular among peers may play a significant role in drug and alcohol ill treatment among this population. Eventually, many of thes...
Choosing a Drug Rehab Program in Maryland
Drug Rehab Programs in MarylandThere are hundreds upon hundreds of drug rehab programs in Maryland that claim they provide the most effective addiction treatment in the country. You can go on the internet and find drug rehab after drug rehab listed with a variety of recovery claims. It appears that most of these drug rehab programs and alcohol reha...
Should Parents Test Adolescents For Substance Use?
Much has been made recently of the opportunities afforded by recent technology for parents to obtain cheap alcohol and drug testing facilities. So are these a real boon to parents. Is it a positive step being able to test your teenager for alcohol and drugs? Instead of getting the surly automatic denial, is it not a genuine benefit to be able to...
Overcome Weed Addiction With These Three Tips
To overcome any addiction you need a plan, a strategy that will allow you to deal with all the problems and cravings that will challenge you along the way. Without a proper plan most people succumb to their addiction once more and continue their habit making it even harder to quit the second time with the feeling of failure that comes with a failed...
Marijuana Addiction Remembered
Every word you are now reading about marijuana addiction is 100% true. I will tell you now that I am certainly no Shakespeare, but this is my marijuana addiction story.Right now, I am typing in my office, which is in a beautiful 300 year old farmhouse which is my home, and my marijuana addiction seems such a long time ago.And yet, I reckon today wo...
Questions Answered About a Drug Rehab Program and Alcohol Rehab Program
Drug Rehab Program and the Selection ProcessSelecting a drug rehab program for alcoholism and drug abuse may be one of the most important decisions you will make in your lifetime. Most of us dont know what to look for in a quality drug rehab program. Not all drug treatment centers are the same-they differ greatly in program options, staff qualifica...
