Drugs: Some teens feel adults are way too serious on the subject. Some adults believe teenagers aren’t nearly serious enough.

• Among 12- to 17-year-olds, use of drugs—including cocaine and hallucinogens—increased from 8.2 percent in 1994 to 10.9 percent in 1995 (National Household Survey on Drug Abuse [NHSDA]).

• Marijuana use increased among young people 12-17 from 6 percent in 1994 to 8.2 percent in 1995 (NHSDA).

• Marijuana use by eighth-graders has increased every year since 1991 (Monitoring the Future, a national survey of 8th-, 10th- and 12th-graders.)

In Kansas City, Kansas, Drug Awareness Resistance Education (DARE) ambassadors (high school students working with elementary and middle school drug prevention programs) asked tough questions of five recovering drug addicts.

Youth Update hasn’t identified the speakers except as former drug-using teens or drug-free teens. This promise helped everyone there to feel free to ask honest questions and give honest answers. While alcohol is a drug and some of those present were alcoholics, this discussion is focused on drugs other than alcohol, nicotine and caffeine.

This Youth Update reports on a conversation. Like your average get-togethers, this dialogue didn’t always stay on track nor did it address every aspect of the topic equally well. This isn’t the whole picture, but it’s an important part of it—the people part.

Why Do Drugs?

These Kansas teens grew up hearing “Just Say No,” a DARE representative explains. “In DARE, we work to keep young kids off drugs, so we’ve made staying clean a commitment. For some of us it’s a health issue. For others, it’s a spiritual decision. Still others make a personal choice. Help us understand why you took drugs in the first place.”

Answers come quickly.

“To escape painful, stressful situations.”

“To transcend the everyday world.”

“To fit in, especially if you’re shy or insecure.”

“Or unwanted, unimportant at home.”

“To de-stress. Girls especially want to lighten up, be seen as cute, open, free.”

“To be someone else. I started drugs between sixth and seventh grade—a transition time. I didn’t like being this people-pleasing wimp. I went through a total spiritual breakdown.”

Hiding Out

On drugs, a person may feel like a different person, unstressed, free, but he or she is exactly the same person who first took drugs. But everyone else is changing, and life is about changing, growing, moving.

If you take drugs on a regular basis, you “freeze.” The person you are when you start is who you’ll be when you stop. On drugs, you keep your God-given beauty from growing, your real personality from showing.

Drugs temporarily take you from life’s pains, but they also take you from its pleasures. They keep you from experiencing real life. While on drugs, you’re not learning to handle problems, not furthering relationships which make life worth living in the first place.

“Did drugs keep you from your problems?” one drug-free teen asks.

“While on them, sure. I didn’t know anything, especially not problems,” a former drug user confesses. “When I started seeing problems, I found something, anything, to blur the view. What I didn’t realize is the problems didn’t go away. They had to do with family, my life, stuff that doesn’t change.

“When I got straight, my messy life was still waiting. So was my family, only sadder for hurt I’d caused, less healthy for not taking care of themselves while keeping me alive and getting me back on track. They were broke from paying back money and other things I stole, and paying for my treatment. Then I had to return to school with this reputation. There was doubt from everyone.”

“I know what you mean. I’m older than other kids in my class. That’s embarrassing,” another recovering addict shares. “I’d perfected lying skills, but not study and self-discipline skills, which other kids now had, so everything was harder—plus I had this constant nag, especially at first, that I could make all the new problems go away.”

Postponing Homecoming

Drugs may work for a while, but there comes a reckoning day. From behind the smoke screen, none of the recovering teens had asked themselves who they’d be when the smoke cleared.

“So, kids who avoid drugs have fewer problems?” A DARE ambassador puzzles. “Or do they cope some other way?”

“There’s such a thing as an addictive personality,” a former user says. People agree. “I have it. It wouldn’t matter what I started, I’d do it all the time. For some people, it could become an eating disorder. Others become workaholics. Lots of people don't have this. They have better balance in life.”

“No, they deal with their problems up front,” someone disagrees.

“So, what’s life like on drugs?” a DARE girl asks.

“The first time was great. The depressing part is I never duplicated that first time. I kept trying. Sports and physical fitness had been biggies in my life, but I went the complete opposite way after that first hit. I lived two lives, had two sets of friends. I didn’t care what happened in the process; I wanted to reproduce that first effect.

“It got depressing never finding it. Appearing to be in a coma became the next best thing. It became a game going through life with only my heart and lungs working.

“While I was in that stage, nothing could have gotten me off—not coaches I once idealized—no one! I know now, I’ll never be a ‘social drug user,’ never be able to drink a beer with the guys and then go home.”

“Living in two worlds is scary,” a recoverer adds. “I’d ask myself: ‘Who am I really?’ Instead of fitting into both worlds, I worried I fit neither. Maybe neither group would accept me in the end. Sometimes I’d go ‘sober,’ study, pick up with the team, fool myself, think I was off the stuff, whip myself into being perfect in the world’s eyes. Always I’d go back to pleasing someone other than myself.”

Drug users often go from one substance to another, and to harder and harder drugs looking to repeat the thrill of the first time. Is it different for girls and boys? someone asks.

Two boys speak at once. “Yes! Girls worry about death, afterlife, not fitting in, not being adventuresome.”

“Non-using girls act more gently with their druggie friends. ‘We have to go find her. We have to help him!’ they say. Guys are more likely to get angry and say, ‘I’m gonna kick your butt, man!’”

“No amount of ‘saving’ helps anyway,” a third says. “At least not for me. I had to bottom out and then decide, this isn’t working. That and the law. Even when I was slapped into rehab (rehabilitation), I didn’t want to be there.”

“That’s another difference,” a recovering male insists. “Girls talk about everything. Guys don’t. I told everyone, ‘I don’t have a problem.’ Even rehab won’t work when you don’t think you have a problem.”

“Don’t forget pregnancy. Kids do a lot of—you know—sleeping around when they’re stoned. Guys might not get caught, unless they get a sexually transmitted disease, but girls may get pregnant.”

What’s Been Lost

What gets kids to stop using? “I didn’t decide. Maybe I did and let things fall apart around me. I wonder. I got to where everything was out of control. I wasn’t hiding things well. I guess that’s rock bottom. The only thing lower would be me underground.

“The law and my folks took over. I had no choices at that point—except treatment. And there were two rehab times before that. It took me three times to want to change my life.”

“What did you lose or what could you have lost from drugs?” someone asks. Answers are many.

“Health. I still get sick more easily.”

“Life itself. I’m lucky to be here.”

“Education. I was asked to leave two schools. I could have done GED [gotten a general equivalency diploma through private study and a test] but didn’t think it’d be as good. Now I’m back in school but I’m a year, at least, behind my friends.”

“Family. My mom will never be the same. It’s made her old, afraid.”

“Friends. Lack of esteem, especially self-esteem. People don’t believe I’ve changed. They keep waiting, not trusting the new me. Sometimes I don’t even trust myself.”

“Also brain cell loss, memory loss. Flashbacks.”

“What do you have that’s better today, off drugs?” A DARE representative asks.

“Besides my health, my family, my friends, and my whole entire life?” a recoverer says.

We chuckle at his quick honesty. “Well, independence from something that was running me, more freedom from parents.”

“I have a clue who I am and I like that,” another says. “I have this freedom to discover who I can become, why God put me on this earth. It wasn’t to go around stoned, that’s for sure. I have healthy friendships with people who have life plans, who face troubles and help me to do the same.”

“An honest way of living,” a girl shares. “I look in the mirror every morning and say: ‘Thank you, God. I didn’t steal anything yesterday. I didn’t hurt anyone last night.’

“My new strength applies to every part of my life. God forgives, so I start over. I’ve made peace, or tried to, with everyone I hurt. There’s still that little hole inside me, though.

“Maybe it’s what life here’s about, never feeling quite satisfied; maybe we’re not supposed to feel whole on earth. Maybe that’s later—with God. While we’re here, though, we better learn about living!”

What’s Found

Regrets are common. “I regret drugs and the wasted time but I’m grateful for what I learned. It could have turned out different, though, if I’d died, or been put in a wheelchair. I know a kid who fell out a third-story window and won’t ever walk again!”

“What drugs taught me about myself is important to remember, so I don’t hang myself. I sometimes feel it was somewhere I personally had to go, given my addictive personality. Now I’ve done it. Could I be further along? Sure. I could be out of this school. I could be in college like my friends rather than finishing senior year.”

“I have more appreciation of the little things. I wouldn’t have known how terrific it is just to wake up feeling O.K. Not great, mind you. Just O.K., like I can do this.”

What Helps

What would help people still using? “It sounds mean, but I’d leave them alone. Nothing I say will get them off, if they don’t want off, but I wouldn’t make it easy for them to get stuff either.”

“I agree. I wouldn’t loan them money or cover for them, say they’re at my house when they aren’t. I wouldn’t enable them, but I wouldn’t stand in their way either.”

“But you can, should, tell them you care, you’re there to listen.”

“True, but you can’t stop someone who’s determined to do drugs.”

“Is it possible not to do drugs today?” someone asks. “Is this drug thing getting better or worse?”

“Sure, it’s possible not to start. Lots of people don’t. But until kids have people care about them, adults who talk to them, who listen, not just to their good but to all the bad, the fear and junk kids have inside, I think lots of kids will do drugs.”

“So what would you tell someone tempted to begin drugs or trying to get off?” a quiet girl asks.

“Try AA or any 12-step program. Listen to recovering addicts. They’ll make you sick.”

“Most addicts aren’t addicted to just one thing. I’d warn people not to kid themselves by substituting one addiction for another.”

“Not to hide. Find someone safe and talk to that person. If you’re honest, you know who’ll help and who’ll pull you down.”

“Lay out all the bad stuff. Make someone help. I wouldn’t try to be something I wasn’t again.”

“Focus on solutions, not problems. Don’t obsess about yourself or this ‘horrible rotten world.’ That’s a cop-out.”

“Help someone else. Get outside yourself.”

“Separate bad things from bad people and rely on a higher power. God helped me.”

“Stop trying to control life. Let God. Life’s messy. People do things they shouldn’t. Even parents do, and all kinds of people who should know better. Don’t expect life or people to be perfect or problem-free. This isn’t heaven.”

Drug abuse is a spiritual crisis as well as an emotional and physical one. The young people who participated in this discussion were very much aware of that. Most experienced—and recognized—divine assistance in their time of trouble.

That same help is there for you when you need it. And you can be the loving presence of God to your friends and classmates who have turned to drugs to fill up boring hours or to hide from pain and emptiness. It’s important to say no to drugs but say yes to God and the total experience of living. This is really the prayer of the drug-free teenager.

Chalise Miner is a free-lance author and the mother of three teenagers. Sources for this article included the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and the Department of Health and Human Services. Thoughts and questions came from Kansas City teens: Benji, Monika, Dave, Anne, Alex, Megan, Sarah and Kim.