Preventing Teen Drug Use

This post is part of our current Blog Series - focusing on Addiction! As you read these stories we invite you to share your thoughts, reflections and insights. This series will include stories on addiction, along with 8 articles from our most recent Messenger magazine. Our hope is that as we engage in conversation together, we can gain a deeper understanding in the midst of trials and celebrations of overcoming addiction.

Article 3 (of 8) in the Messenger magazine - Winter 2011 Edition!
By Jack Crowley, Executive Director, Teen Haven

Many teenagers use alcohol and drugs. If you have ears or eyes, this is not a shocking revelation to you. Seventy-five percent of teens in America have experimented with alcohol; almost 40 percent with marijuana (CDC, 2005).

What may be shocking to you is that many teens began using before they even reached their teen years. More than 25 percent used alcohol before age 13, and almost 10 percent of teens have tried marijuana before age 13 (CDC, 2005).

The biggest factors leading to early use of alcohol and drugs that Teen Haven has observed among youth in our communities include: peer pressure and unhealthy family influence, family problems and the “need for escape,” natural curiosity, the perception of “fun”, and the adolescent need to declare independence.

Ironically, while two of these contributing factors are related to negative family influence, the most commonly agreed upon preventative influence in teens’ lives is healthy family influence. Positive engagement of parents in the lives of their teens is consistently shown to lower the likelihood of drug and alcohol usage (including studies by The Mayo Clinic; Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse - CASA; Child and Adolescent Mental Health Journal; Teens Today; and
Youth Specialties).

Joseph A. Califano, Jr., chairman and president of CASA, made this powerful statement: “Parental engagement in children’s lives is the key to ridding our nation of the scourge of substance abuse.”

But what about kids who don’t come from healthy families? What about teens whose homes create more stress and problems than those homes resolve? This is the reality faced by many of the teens who attend Teen Haven. At a recent girls retreat, only three of the 51 girls attending had a male father figure in their home.

In light of this, the family atmosphere provided by Teen Haven helps influence teens to make healthy choices in their lives. An environment built on love and trust is critical to helping teens know that they have somewhere to turn when faced with the temptations of drugs and alcohol.

Can Teen Haven be as effective of a deterrent as a healthy, engaged family? It is hard to know for sure, but we see how Teen Haven plays this supportive role in the lives of many teens every day. Text messages to staff members that start with: “Hey Dad, I was wondering if I could talk to you about something…”, and phone calls to discuss struggles with pressure at home, school and among peers, remind us that we often play the role of surrogate parents to those teens
who don’t have a confidant in their home.

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Previous Posts in this Series:
Fighting Addiction With the Armor of God
Fighting Addiction, and Experiencing God's Love
Dying to be FREE
She Walked In
Caught Between Egypt & the Promised Land
Quitting is the easy part!

Stay tuned for the next post in this series on Addiction!