If you think your son or daughter is using drugs or drinking alcohol, trust your gut. 

I’m not talking about hard core drugs like meth, cocaine, heroin, fentanyl, and I’m not referring to daily drinking or falling down vomit drunk. I’m talking about early teen marijuana use, vaping, and alcohol experimentation. This is not necessarily the time to go ballistic, send them away to treatment, or research monasteries in Siberia. But it is time to get clear about your family values, your boundaries, and what you will and will not permit in your home, especially if there are other children in the home. 

Decide now if you will allow non-prescription drugs or addictive substances that can be addictive in your home. Will you allow their use by your teens in your backyard or when they are with their friends in their backyards.  Parents, make a united decision and stick to it.   If you allow it outside of your home, it’s only a matter of time that your teen will bring it home and use at home.  

So, what are some of the signs of early teen using? 

Loss of motivation at school. Dropping sports or activities they once enjoyed. Friend relationship problems or isolation. Lying. Stealing. Secretive about where they’re going or what they’re doing. Pushing boundaries. Asserting their rights. Defiance, Mood dysregulation.  Yelling, Crying, Blaming. You say, that is a description of a normal teen 13-16 and you’re right but all of these behaviors escalate with alcohol, nicotine and marijuana, so a 3 on a scale of 10 quickly becomes a 9.  

Some facts:

  • The pre-frontal cortex or Executive functioning, Decision-Making brain does not fully develop until 25 or 26. Teens think they are making rational decisions, but they are not.  
  • Using drugs prior to that delays brain development and in some cases damages normal development of brain function.
  • The use of drugs dysregulates the nervous system, so normal teen body changes and development are exacerbated by mood swings and Dopamine overloads.
  • The use of drugs is a synthetic attempt at mood regulation and if a teen likes the way the drugs make them feel or numbs feelings out entirely, they will see their drug use as their solution.  
  • This “solution” escalates all related problematic behaviors:  lying, stealing, secrecy, pushing boundaries, assertion of rights, defiance, mood swings – yelling, crying, blaming.  It’s a vicious cycle.  

What can you do:

  • Set clear boundaries. Teens need clear boundaries to feel safe and loved and to push against.  They need to try those boundaries to see if they are secure.  Parents who relax boundaries climb onto the roller coaster of the teen’s making.  Buckle your seat belt.  
  • Ask for help. There are many excellent therapists, social workers, and coaches who specialize in parent/teen relationship.  School counselors have resources.  Cities have hot lines for several stages of help prior to the 911 call.  Find them.
  • Listen to the experts. Get help for yourself and for your teen.  Insist that this is “what we, as a family, do.”  We identify problems and we ask experts to help us find solutions.  This is how we model healthy living and positive values to our children. 
  • Invest in the future of your family by identifying spiritual values, mental health standards, and behavioral parameters and finding the professionals that can help you cultivate and support this legacy.  Just as we hire wealth managers, we need managers of our human and spiritual capital.
  • Don’t ask your teen to buy into a double standard. If you are drinking nightly in your home and insisting that your teen cannot use substances in your home, that is a double standard and a request for double trouble. Look at yourself.