Teen Drug Addiction Help

Learning how to get help if your teen is addicted to drugs can be a scary time for many parents. However, consulting with a professional in these kinds of situations is always the best course of action to start getting help if your teen is addicted to drugs.

Your teen might be skipping school, sleeping excessively, showing signs of a dramatic weight loss and hanging out with their friends at all hours. Your teen might even be acting like a rebellious teenager, refusing to tell you where they are going and might not even come home for a few days at a time. When they finally do come home, they look sick, tired and still strung out or high from the past few days activities. As a parent this can be an extremely scary wake up call. You might wonder how it ever got this far. Your teen is clearly addicted to drugs and it is time to get them help. This is when you might be wondering exactly how to get help if your teen is addicted to drugs. There are a few ways you can go about this including several treatment options. As a parent, it is also  important to understand the types of addiction your teen is facing and the difference between physical addiction symptoms as well as the psychological drug addiction symptoms they have. Most drug addictions come with both of these issues and both must be treated in order for the addict to successfully recover from this drug addiction. 

Physical Addiction:

When a person is addicted to drugs, there can be many physical addictive qualities involved as well. Physical addiction of drugs includes building a physical tolerance to that substance. This usually means that the drug user will now need a higher dosage of the same drug just to experience the same level of high. There are many substances and drugs that cause a physical addiction including alcohol and cigarettes. Because of the physical withdrawal that comes when a person stops doing drugs, this can be a concern during the recovery process. Physical withdrawal symptoms can also including diarrhea, shaking and an overall feeling of sickness or feeling unwell.

Psychological Addiction:

This is different from a physical addiction in that is is more psychological and emotional. Drug users with a psychological addiction feel they cannot overcome the desire for drugs. They continually crave the high that they can get from doing the drug. When the person is no longer just doing the drug for fun, but feels they actually need it in order to function, this is when they become addicted. 

How to Get Help if Your Teen is Addicted to Drugs:

Treatment options include residential treatment centers or rehabilitation centers that are designed specifically for teen drug abuse. These types of facilities usually entail the drug abuser to be living on the premises during the treatment and they are pretty well confined to the center until treatment is over. Other types of ways you can learn how to get help if your teen is addicted to drugs is to simply consult with a professional therapist, psychologist or counselor that has experience in dealing with drug addicted patients. These individuals will be able to meet with  your teen and give you an assessment and professional opinion on what they think you should do to help your teen. Depending on the severity of your teen's addiction, they might have success in being treated through regular therapy appointments and possibly by attending a group setting like Narcotics Anonymous. However, there are other ways that you can get your teen enrolled in an actual facility as well. If your teen is showing severe problems with drug withdrawal after not having the drug in their system for a few days, you are going to want to get them medical help.

Some former drug addicts or drug users have been known to experience severe physical withdrawal problems like cardiac arrest, nausea, vomiting, etc. after trying to go off the drugs. This kind of withdrawal process needs to be done with medical supervision in case something goes wrong. Many of these drug rehab centers have the medical staff available to help your teen cope with the withdrawal symptoms while under proper medical supervision just in case. However, if you and your teen decides to deal with the withdrawal and therapy process instead, make sure you monitor how they do during withdrawal in case they need to get emergency medical care. Getting your teen help as soon as possible is the best way you will see the most success in their drug addiction recovery. 

Sources: kidshealth.org