Posts by Kyle Nowak

Should You Drug Test Your Teenager?

It can be extremely confusing, scary, and frustrating to discover that your child may be using drugs. What’s more, it’s usually unclear whether or not your child is being honest with you. During this time, it’s common for parents to wonder: should I drug test my teenager at home?

At face value, it seems like a good idea. The aim would be to gain a more accurate picture of what’s really going on. That being said, I’ve found that this has a tendency to backfire more often than not.

While the intention behind drug testing may be to protect children from substance abuse, it can actually have limited effectiveness in its application for teenagers. The reason is that they are extremely easy to fake and tend to do more harm than good when it comes to the relationship with your teen.

I’ve been working in the teen substance abuse field for many years now, and in this article, I’d like to address some of the common pitfalls associated with home drug testing your teenager, as well as discuss some of the pros and cons.

3 Potential Drawbacks of Drug Testing Your Teen

I have been a substance abuse counselor working with young people for 6 years, and of the parents that I have met with, many of them have either considered home drug testing or have already applied this tool to attempt to prevent their kids from using illicit drugs. However, drug testing comes with a host of possible drawbacks.

A clinical report by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) states:

“However, drug testing also has a number of drawbacks; it can be invasive, it yields only limited information, and results are easily misinterpreted.”

Having seen these issues first hand, I tend to agree. Let’s discuss the drawbacks one-by-one:

Drawback #1: Limited effectiveness

It’s extremely common when working with young people to hear stories of teens and young people successfully tricking drug tests administered by their parents. There are numerous ways to accomplish this, some of which can be bought at smoke shops and some of which simply require resourcefulness on the part of the teen:

Fake pee,
Vitamin concoctions to detox the body, or
Secretly squeezing a water bottle taped to their leg with a hose attached.

Compounding this problem is the fact that drug testing can’t test for every drug. It will always leave potential loopholes. LSD, for example, isn’t typical on most drug tests, though we know it’s currently one of the top five drugs used by teens.

According to the Medical University of South Carolina, urine screens can test for alcohol up to 48 hours, and sometimes up to 72 hours if the drinking is heavier. These limitations undermine the effectiveness of drug testing as an effective preventative or intervention measure.

Drawback #2: False Sense of Security

Another problem families face is reconciling the false sense of security that drug tests can create. Since drug tests are unreliable and easily circumvented, families should avoid placing trust in the result of a drug test.

The reasons for avoiding it are that over-trusting drugs tests may lead to questionable situations where their child may:

Use the drug test to manipulate the family, and/or
The drug test will falsely state they are passing, despite showing signs of drug use and other at-risk behavior

It’s common for families to feel as bewildered after the drug test as they did before. In other words, it tends to not actually solve anything because you still don’t know if your teen is using drugs or not.

This can place families in a difficult position because even though they may be observing using behaviors and causes for concern, they have to rely on their teen testing positive on a drug test in order to catch their kid and administer a consequence.

Drawback #3: Cause Distrust

This leads to another issue which is that administering a drug test may be construed by their children as a sign of distrust from the parents. Even though young adults abusing drugs often take actions that jeopardize trust, parents may further alienate their kids by feeding the culture of distrust.

A successful response from parents is taking the stance of “You trust, you win.” There are two outcomes:

1. They abstain from drug abuse: For this outcome, everyone is happy. The teenager is staying sober, allowing their brain time to develop, and parents can nurture trust in their child and help promote their further growth.
2. They continue abusing drugs: If parents rely on the young person’s actions reflecting their behavior. In most cases, something happens that creates cause for concern or directly catching the young person using drugs. In this case, it can be the child who faces the consequences of breaking trust.

By allowing your teen’s actions to take the lead in these scenarios, it allows the parent to be on the side of their son or daughter while still utilizing logical consequences for the action. This can include losing their phone, car, weekly allowance, hanging out with friends, and in more severe cases seeking substance abuse treatment centers.

Parents can even lovingly say, “We made a decision to trust you, and you broke that trust and there are consequences to our actions.” Any teenager may argue or try to manipulate but the statement displays simple love and logic.

Alternative approaches to determining if your teen is using drugs

I believe there are far more reliable ways to determine whether or not you should be concerned your child is taking drugs.

Our recommendation is to help parents take a holistic approach to be able to address a range of issues affecting their child:

How are their grades in school?
Do they have a good peer group?
Do they isolate often?
Have there been any recent changes in behavior?
Are they an active part of the family?
Are they argumentative at home?

In this way, parents can observe their kids’ progress more objectively and recognize when digress is happening. This is preferred over leaning on drug tests to confirm drug use.

What to do if you do decide to drug test

While I’ve painted a fairly bleak picture of the efficacy of home drug testing, I do acknowledge that it is sometimes the right thing to do. If, for instance, you are working with a professional substance abuse counselor or physician on an intervention process that involves a drug test, here are some general guidelines for the best outcome:

Utilize professional drug testing services, if possible
Combine your drug test with some type of substance abuse evaluation
Learn the signs of teen drug use and evaluate your experience with your teen based on them
Don’t discount what your gut is telling you
Ask for Help

Don’t forget to ask for help

Responding to teenagers who might be abusing substances is a scary proposition – one that many of the parents we work with never saw themselves having to face.

If you’re concerned that your teen may be using drugs, it’s worth it to consider a professional opinion. Having a simple discussion on the phone with a substance abuse counselor can go a long way towards helping you decide what to do next (regardless of whether or not you seek any further services).

If you’re in this position, don’t hesitate to contact us, even if you’re not close in proximity to one of our two substance abuse programs. We’d be happy to help you develop a game plan and make any necessary referrals.

You are not alone!

How Drugs Affect The Brain of a Teenager

By Kyle Nowak on June 2nd, 2021 in Adolescent and Young Adult Substance Use

Learning to respond to teenagers with drug problems has always been a challenge in the drug addiction and mental health world. The differences between the effects of drugs on teens and adults on drugs is enough that SAMHSA and the National Institute on Drug Abuse have both separately built resources centered on teen drug use. When it comes to teens drinking or using drugs, it’s tempting to ask drug-specific questions, like “how does alcohol affect the teenage brain?” or “what are the effects of marijuana on the teenage brain?” While it’s true that each drug is different, we would submit that the broad strokes are largely the same from drug to drug. Teenagers who use drugs largely all have the same outcome, whether they are drinking alcohol, smoking pot, or using other illicit drugs.

In order to better understand how drugs affect the brain of a teenager, we’re taking a look at some of the work done by Dr. Steven Jaffe, MD – a pioneer in the development of substance use treatment programs for teens and young adults. Jaffe is a professor emeritus of psychiatry at Emory University and a clinical professor of psychiatry at Morehouse School of Medicine. He is also a consultant for multiple teen-focused alcohol and drug treatment programs around the country.

What follows is a discussion of the neurobiological information presented by Dr. Jaffe in his 2017 book, Sacred Connections: Studies of Spirituality in Recovery Adolescent and Young Adult Substance Abusers. His work has been invaluable to us in the field of teen drug use treatment.

What Motivates the Teen Brain, and Why Teen Drug Treatment Often Doesn’t Work

Teenagers operate under an entirely different set of motivations than adults who are entering addiction recovery. In general, adults enter recovery from drug and alcohol addictions as a response to the consequences they have faced – many times they’ve lost homes, businesses, or respect in their communities. Often their families won’t talk to them, or they are on the verge of divorce. For adults, these consequences spark a powerful motivation to change. Addicted teenagers, on the other hand, often enter a drug abuse treatment center because they’ve been caught by parents, their school, or the police – leading to the belief that the parents or school are the problem, not the drugs. Almost every parent of a teenage drug user has heard some variation of these words:

“If everyone would just leave me alone, I’d be fine.”

Anonymous surveys on teen drug use show that high school age teens essentially use drugs to feel good and have fun. Teens often haven’t been exposed to the long-term effects of drugs and alcohol. Dr. Jaffe spends some time in his book addressing the factors that lend to the success of the enthusiastic sobriety model in particular. Specifically, he provides a clinical approach to what is happening in the adolescent brain on drugs to shed light on how to best help young people recover from the effects of alcohol, marijuana, or other drugs.

Alcohol, Marijuana, and the Teenage Brain

In the book, Dr. Jaffe discusses two important parts of the brain: the prefrontal cortex and the nucleus accumbens.

The prefrontal cortex:

Helps to regulate impulses and make informed and smart decisions.
It is well documented that this portion of the brain is not developed until a person is in their mid-twenties.

The nucleus accumbens:

Is a vital part of the brain’s reward circuit and is responsible for regulating motor functions relating to seeking things we “like” and avoiding things we “don’t like.”
Unlike the prefrontal cortex, the nucleus accumbens develops much earlier and is fully developed in children.

Teenagers differ from adults in that their “reward-seeking” system is working properly whereas their “inhibitory” system (prefrontal cortex) isn’t developed. The result is that teenagers are naturally predisposed to impulsive or risky behavior, such as binge drinking, partying late, or driving drunk. For instance, an adult may think, “doing cocaine would be really fun,” but then immediately think, “I could lose my job,” and decide not to use drugs. The second inhibitory thought never occurs to the teenager.

To understand how recovery occurs, it is paramount to address what happens when a teenage brain is affected by drugs and alcohol. In Jaffe’s own words:

“Heavy drug use in adolescence is diminishing a not yet fully developed inhibitory prefrontal cortex.”

Therefore, in addition to the prefrontal cortex being under-developed in teenagers, its development is further stunted by substance use.

Reversing the Effects of Marijuana, Alcohol, and Other Drugs on the Teenage Brain

From a biological standpoint, there are two neurological brain function “problems” to address when a young person enters our program with a substance use disorder:

There is an underdeveloped prefrontal cortex.
Drug use results in a numbing of the response of the pleasure center (nucleus accumbens) that leads to a diminished response to normal everyday pleasures.

The result is a teenager having a need to seek extreme risks to enjoy their life, even if those decisions are dangerous or even life threatening. For a parent, this is quite a predicament. They often ask, “How do I help my son or daughter get off drugs?”

Jaffe provides the following solutions:

First, sobriety needs to be something that is fun and attractive to the teenager, in order to stimulate the nucleus accumbens. Since the nucleus accumbens has a lessened response to life’s pleasures, teenagers need to take fun, safe risks while being sober! Dr. Jaffe refers to these as “high stimulus experiences.” These high stimulus experiences create an opening for the brain to heal and create positive neural pathways related to being sober and seeking joy in a more positive way. Over time, the teenager’s brain becomes resensitized to normal dopamine levels and the brain resumes normal production of neurotransmitters.

The next step is to include a spiritual component, to help the prefrontal cortex recover from the damage done. Enthusiastic sobriety (and 12-step recovery in general) includes a spiritual component. Dr. Jaffe includes information saying, “some brain scan studies have shown increased activity in the prefrontal cortex while a person is engaged in prayer.” He goes on to describe increased brain response from meditation and prayer. In other words, the prefrontal cortex is allowed to function normally and its development is resumed.

Last, the positive peer support group plays a large factor in recovery for a young person. Dr. Jaffe coined the term “borrowing another’s prefrontal cortex.” Seeking the opinion and suggestion of another young person who has experienced recovery from a substance use disorder can be someone’s greatest ally against using substances or engaging in negative behavior. One of the primary ways for this to happen is when a positive peer support group helps guide the young person’s decision making processes for a time. It is because of the strong relationships based on love and healthy attachment that recovery begins.

Dr. Jaffe states, “The biochemical systems that are impacted by drugs and alcohol are the same systems that are regulated by relationships and love.” The prefrontal cortex responds strongly to attachment, fun, hope, faith, trust, and love. The enthusiastic sobriety model and 12-step approach help to target the prefrontal cortex and resume its development and healing.

Simply, by stimulating the nucleus accumbens and reawakening the prefrontal cortex, we can begin to reverse the effects of alcohol, drugs, or marijuana on the teenage brain.

Why Punishment and Fear of Consequences Is Not The Answer

One common traditional approach to getting kids off drugs is to educate them as to the dangers of substance misuse. While we are certainly not against anti-drug education (it can be very helpful in substance abuse prevention), we’ve never seen it work very well in teenagers who already have drug problems.

This is because foresight, predicting the future, and planning complex behaviors are tasks handled by the prefrontal cortex. In short, the teenage brain is not equipped with the tools to be able to identify the long-term consequences of their actions following extended substance abuse.

In Conclusion

By knowing how drugs affect the brain of a teenager, we can better formulate some basic strategies that will help. A teenager can experience success in sobriety through a combination of:

High stimulus experiences
Positive peer relationships focused around trust and love
A spiritual component to have hope and faith in the future

In this way, a teenager can recover from a substance use disorder that is appropriate to their age range and adequately adapts to their social and emotional needs.

Rather than a focus on consequences, enthusiastic sobriety focuses on providing a safe, fun environment with a positive peer support group. Applying that foundation, sobriety is transformed into something that can be fun and attractive to a young person. Once this precedent is set, providing tools to help stay sober long-term can be provided. In short, a young person can stay sober and gain tools to build positive relationships.

My Teenage Experience Using Marijuana

By Kyle Nowak on April 10th, 2020 in Addiction, Adolescent and Young Adult Substance Use, Articles

As a substance abuse counselor for young adults and adolescents, the use of marijuana by young people is a topic that comes up daily. On one side of the discussion, there are those who speak of the multitude of health benefits from marijuana. On the other side of the discuss, there are those who argue that a drug is a drug and that it is never acceptable to use drugs. In this article I hope to provide a personal testimony of my own experience with marijuana and my opinion on marijuana’s effects on teenagers specifically.

My Story with Teenage Marijuana Use

I remember being in elementary school, learning about various drugs and sitting in the classroom making a personal vow to never to use drugs. Especially hearing these various stories of people overdosing from drugs, getting caught by the police, or losing everything they love. It was easy as a child to determine that drugs were bad and that I wanted to avoid them. As I grew, however, that perspective began to shift. I began to see TV shows and movies where kids sneak out and smoke weed or get drunk at a party. They made it look like a lot of fun! By middle school I had friends who were cool to me that used marijuana, and they were the rebels. My personal vow was losing it’s appeal. My idea condemning marijuana lost the foundation of its argument.

I tried marijuana for the first time when I was 14 years old. I didn’t get high, but another thing stood out about that experience – I got in no trouble whatsoever! I didn’t get caught by the police, my family had no idea, and I didn’t experience any adverse health effects. This immediately changed my perspective on marijuana and I decided to try it again.

The next time I smoked marijuana, I actually experienced its effects. At that point I felt I had every reason to continue smoking marijuana! At the age of 14, I was concerned with one thing more than anything else: having fun. Despite the fact that I had a basic understanding that drugs were bad, I did not care. I had a host of new friends that I thought were cool and getting high felt extremely positive to me. Like many teenagers who begin abusing drugs, I wouldn’t start to experience real consequences until much later in life.

Consequences of Marijuana Use and Recovery

The first time I got caught doing drugs was spring break when I was 15. My friends and I stole a little alcohol from the top of every bottle from a friend’s parents’ liquor cabinet. We drank the liquor in my room, and a few hours later one of my best friends was puking all over himself and barely conscious. Worried, I woke up my mom. She was upset at the scene she found, but I was careful to insist that “it was the first time and I won’t do it again.” I took my month’s grounding and moved on.

Gradually, using drugs and alcohol took over my life. I continued to drink, but primarily used marijuana. By the time I was a senior in high school, there were a few distinct changes in my life. I constantly argued with both of my parents. I had manipulated my mom to the point where she was okay with me using marijuana because she believed I was limiting my use to once a week. Little did she know that I was using drugs every day! At this point, my life centered around my marijuana use. I viewed it as essential to be able to use marijuana. It had become more important to me than sports, extracurricular activities, or my schoolwork. I had changed groups of friends multiple times to people who used drugs the same way I did. I tried other drugs, including LSD, prescription stimulants, and prescription benzodiazepines (Xanax). I believed that I was having fun, and looking back, the insane part is that I didn’t see anything wrong with it.

Not unsurprisingly, I began experiencing more significant consequences. I found myself in the hospital. I was nearly expelled from high school. By this time, I was completely dependent on drug use to get through the day.

Something had to change.

Thankfully, it was during this time that I was introduced to sobriety. At my family’s urging, I begrudgingly agreed to have an appointment with a professional. I got into a good treatment program that specializes in adolescent drug use in my area. Though I fought it every step of the way, I began to abstain from drug use.

During my first six months of recovery, I began to understand and accept the consequences of using other drugs besides marijuana. I gained new tools to cope with life and rebuild my broken relationships. However, I could not part or wrap my head around the negative consequences of marijuana. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I had become everything I had sworn not to be when I was younger. I talked loftily about how marijuana was actually good for the brain and led to better decision making, rather than worse.

However, around the six month point, some things finally clicked. After months of staying clean, I began to clearly see some of the real consequences from marijuana specifically.

The Turning Point in My Recovery

The counseling staff and my peers in my recovery group used to use the term “three degrees off” to describe marijuana users and pot smokers. This is not intended as an insult, it’s simply a description of the effect of marijuana on our brains.

It’s important to remember that in marijuana users, cognitive functions are affected until 28 days of abstinence. Click here to read one of the many clinical studies on the topic. What this meant for me was that my decisions were not only affected for the few hours that I felt intoxicated, they were also affected, on some level, for up to 28 days after using marijuana. Compound this with daily marijuana use, and we end up with somebody who makes chronically bad decisions and doesn’t experience the true emotional repercussions of their actions.

For the first time, I took stock of the real effects of marijuana use on my life:

I didn’t become a drug using teenager overnight. However, with my slightly altered, “three degree off” decision-making, the end result was same. Over time, I had gone from a respectable, athletic, smart teenager to someone who lied to family and friends, cheated those around him, and stole from those he loved to be able to use marijuana and obtain drugs. I was willing to manipulate and argue to get high. While my brain was in the its peak of cognitive and emotional development, I was using a substance that blocked its normal functioning.

Manipulative and dishonest behaviors became easier and easier to justify. It wasn’t a bad kid, but I was willing to do anything to protect getting high. Over time, I even moved on to using other drugs, answering the age old question of if marijuana is a gateway drug. One national study by Secades et al shows that for people who were life-time marijuana users, 44.7% moved on to other illicit drugs. Comparatively, this is significantly higher than someone who never tries marijuana in the first place. In my professional experience counseling drug using teenagers, young adults, and their families, nearly every young person who receives counseling services started with marijuana.

Why Teenage Marijuana Use is So Damaging

I especially take notice of teenagers who use marijuana. The results are in: this 2014 evidence based study showed that marijuana users who began before age 17 experienced long-term issues with executive functioning. This includes problems with abstract reasoning, verbal fluency, verbal learning, and memory. This differed from users who began using after 17.

Another study showed that users who began using marijuana before 18 were 4-7 times more likely to develop some sort of substance use disorder.

From personal experience, I see that my marijuana use held me back from gaining the real tools to succeed long-term. Rather than coping with the problems in my life, I resorted to using marijuana. Marijuana created such a strong instant gratification that I had no need to develop real friendships. Rather, I made a decision to choose friends based on whether or not they used marijuana. As my tolerance for marijuana developed, I had nothing to fall back on to create lasting self-esteem and happiness.

Giving Back

Today, I want to help prevent young people from moving backwards because they didn’t give their brains time to develop. It is not surprising to me that marijuana is the number one drug used by teens. My goal is for teenagers and young adults to find long-term happiness. In my life, I ended up finding and utilizing real self esteem building tools. I utilize the 12-steps, a sponsor/mentor, and positive relationships to help accomplish this. The result of this has been a life that is more fruitful than anything I attained when I was using marijuana or other drugs. Even if it is “only marijuana” I hope to encourage any young person to seek sobriety to support long-term success.

References

Crean, R. D. Crane, N. A. Mason, J. M. (2011, March 1) An Evidence Based Review of Acute and Long-Term Effects of Cannabis Use on Executive Cognitive Functions. Journal of Addiction Medicine, 5(1). Retrieved From https://journals.lww.com/journaladdictionmedicine/Abstract/2011/03000/An_Evidence_Based_Review_of_Acute_and_Long_Term.1.aspx

Pope, HG Jr., Gruber, A. J. Hudson, J. I. Huestis, M. A. Yurgelun-Todd, D. Neuropsychological performance in long-term cannabis users. Archives of General Psychiatry (2001, October) Retrieved from ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11576028/

Secades-Villa, R. Garcia-Rodriguez,O. Chelse, J. Jin. Wang, S. Blanco, C. (2014, August 2). Probability and predictors of the cannabis gateway effect: A national study. International Journal of Drug Policy, 28(2). Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.drugpo.2014.07.011

Winters, K. C. Lee, C. S. (2008, Jan 1) Likelihood of developing an alcohol and cannabis use disorder during youth: Association with recent use and age. Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 92(1-3). Retrieved from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0376871607002979?via%3Dihub