How To Tell If Your Child Is Using DrugsIf you are here reading this article then you are probably at a crossroads in your child's life. If you don't do something now you many lose your son or daughter any number of ways. My brother was lost to suicide because he basically fried all the receptors that make you feel good or just normal. Suicide may be the worst way to lose your child. The guilt that you are left with, the feeling that you should have done something sticks with you for the rest of your days on earth. Don't let it happen to you. If you think your child is using drugs intervene now. The decisions they are making now will affect the rest of their lives and yours. To validate your thinking here are the signs: 1. Friends - Their friends are probably the first sign. You will start to see your child hanging out with people whom when you see them, you think... "That kid is a druggy." This is the first step and the first sign because this is where your child learns about drugs, their friends! This is where your child gets their drugs, their friends! This is whom your child does their drugs with. When you start doing drugs you don't just find a bag of weed lying out in a field and smoke it by yourself. 2. Long Weekends Away - The next step is your child will want to start spending more and more nights with these friends. They don't want to come home because they don't want their parents to see them when they are high. It makes a druggy paranoid to be around there parents when they are high. The thoughts are always running through there head... "Do they know I'm high? Do they think I'm acting funny?" ect. It is more comfortable to stay away with a friend whose parents are absent or whose parents don't give a shit. 3. Tired, Groggy and Disrespectful - The next thing you will notice when your child comes home from these long weekends are bags under the eyes. You will notice a groggy disconnected look. When you ask for help with normal things you will get utter disrespect. You will notice that your child only cares about one thing and one thing only and that is going out with his or her friends. They won't care about your birthday or walking the dog or anything really but getting out of the house to go get high with there friends. All else becomes secondary. 4. Only Room For Number One - For a while some kids can hang on to the grades and almost seem normal but eventually it all falls apart for anyone. You can't hold your life together when there is only one thing that you care about. "Yourself and getting high." Grades will go, hobbies will disappear, sports will no long interest them. If you think that is rock bottom then you are like most parents. You will enable your child to live this life and think the entire time that you are doing what is best for your child. The truth is things will get much worse if you continue to let things go on this way. Your child could cause permanent brain damage. Your child could kill someone while driving. Your child could commit suicide while on a down mood swing. Your child could overdose on any number of prescriptions medications that are widely taken amongst high schoolers or even heroin. If you made it this far in this article you are probably thinking just like my parents did... "Not my child. At the most my child is just drinking and smoking pot." People can argue all day long that marijuana is not a gateway drug and I will laugh all day long. Every person I ever met in my days of drug use started smoking marijuana first. Everyone starts with marijuana. Then with the right friends it can all lead to bigger and badder drugs. Like I said... my parents thought I might be smoking pot occasionally. I was actually smoking dust (PCP), snorting crystal meth (A huge population of today's youth are doing meth, it is readily available everywhere because you can make it with household medicine.), Coke, acid, mescaline, Special K and yes last and certainly not least heroin. Your child could be doing any one of these drugs mentioned above without your knowledge. If you are finally coming to grips with the reality of the situation and you want to know what to do: 1. Look for the signs. 2. Get proof! The more proof you get to confront your child with the better. Kids and druggies are stupid and they think you are stupid. There is any number of ways to catch you child. Recording devices on their phone is the best way. Be creative... usually the drugs are hidden in there room somewhere also. They can be hard to find though. If you get to this point there are hidden video cameras that work. Its better to find out and deal with the problem than to hide from it and hope it goes away. If it turns out your child is clean then all the better for you. 3. Confront your child with some of the proof that you have gathered. You don't have to use all of it just enough so that they know you know for sure. Give them a choice, either go to drug rehab and get clean or get out of my house. If they choose option number 2 and they are not legally an adult then call the cops and have them committed to a drug rehab center. These will be the hardest things that you will ever do in your life but they will save your child's life. 4. Depending on how bad things are, your child probably can't ever come home and live in the same community with the same friends ever again. If they get back with the same friends and the same crowd they will start using again. The drug rehab center will get it out of them exactly what they have been doing and all that information will be passed on to you. If it is serious enough I recommend sending your child to a halfway house a long way from their friends where they can start over. Why should you believe me? Because I have been there. I have seen the one who were saved in the nick of time and I have seen other's crash and burn. I once saw I guy eat an entire bottle of mescaline because he didn't want the cops to find it. The cops didn't find the mescaline but they did find him wandering around the woods naked pretending to be a deer. The guy is still not right in the head. There are so many bad things that could happen in so many different ways. If you want to let it slide and let kids be kids that is up to you but the odds are against you that your child will grow up to be a responsible adult or grow up at all. |