Teens and Drugs: The Danger of Generational Forgetting

OK, I may have jumped the gun on the dangers of the new drug salvia. After talking to a couple of drug experts, I don't think salvia is necessarily the next marijuana although it seems to be getting some hype in the media. So, that's the good news.

And there's also good news in a recent study that found drug use by teens is much lower than a decade ago. Lloyd Johnston, one of the lead researchers in an annual study by the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research, www.monitoringthefuture.org, said that drug use has decreased since the 1990s because teens learned of the dangers of alcohol, marijuana and harder drugs like LSD and heroin.

The study found that alcohol is the biggest problem for teens, with nearly a third of all eighth graders and two-thirds of all twelfth graders reporting drinking over the past year and nearly 13 percent of all eighth graders, 24 percent of all tenth graders and 46 percent of all twelfth graders saying they had gotten drunk over the past year.

Marijuana is also a big drug of choice for teens with 10 percent of eighth graders, nearly 25 percent of tenth graders and  nearly 32 percent of twelfth graders reporting smoking marijuana last year.

The numbers are much lower for harder drugs like heroin, LSD and ecstasy but those numbers could spike up again as teens no longer perceive those drugs as dangerous and the study found fewer eighth graders view harder drugs as dangerous.  

"It's a phenomenon I call generational forgetting," says Johnston. "They have to learn the lessons all over again. They learn the lessons from parents or drug campaigns or school education programs or they can find out firsthand why it's dangerous."

The solution is obvious: Talk to your kids and make sure you're giving them good information. Don't let this generation forget. 

New Drug

I'm always amazed at how little I know about drugs today but I can't blame myself. Our generation just isn't familiar with today's new-fangled drugs.  Why in my day, kids had to make do with marijuana.  There was none of this ecstacy around.  But I know I shouldn't be joking about such a serious topic especially one that freaks all of us out.

I attended a talk by teens about drugs in the middle school last week. It turns out the main drugs in middle school at least here in the suburbs are marijuana and alcohol but that's scary enough as far as I'm concerned.   They were a pretty wholesome group but they also seemed pretty knowledgeable and they mentioned a new drug they've seen called salvia. 

Here's what I learned about salvia: It turns out Salvia is from a plant in Mexico and South and Central America.  It seems that it's mostly smoked like a marijuana joint or smoke in a water pipe or vaporized and inhaled, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse www.drugabuse.gov/infofacts/salvia.html.  It produces hallucinations that last 1 minute to 30 minutes. It's not so much a party drug as something kids experiment with individually. And it's not controlled by the federal government although the Drug Enforcement Agency has classified it as a drug of concern and is considering classifying it as a Schedule I drug like LSD and marijuana. 

Mom is the hammer

A friend tells me  her 3-year-old always wants Dad to put her to bed.  Mom tucks her in with a kiss but Dad gets her water, sits by her bed and cuddles. Dad's more fun at bedtime. Since this is my friend's third child, she's determined not to go through the same prolonged nightmare putting her third child to be so she makes it short and sweet.  In her house, she's the enforcer, or as she puts it, "I'm the hammer."

In my house, my husband is sometimes the enforcer. He wakes the kids up in the morning. They tend to move a little more quickly when he barks at them to get moving. But when it comes to most of our daily tasks: homework, piano practice, cleaning their room, I'm also the hammer.  And let's be honest, it's no fun being the hammer or maybe the reverse is true, the hammer isn't fun.

This was brought home to me when I stayed home from my weekly choir practice last night because my husband had to work late.  There was some whining and some complaining.  "What does Daddy do that makes you want him home so much?" I asked. "When we finish our homework, we watch a little football and then we play football and he runs after us all over the house." Oh.  I didn't need to tell them that  Mommy doesn't do that. I spent the night continuing to be the hammer: they had to do homework and practice the piano and read and at the end of that, we watched just a little bit of TV and I read to them.  We had a good time together.  Still it's not easy being the hammer or as my friend says, "The hammer isn't working.  The hammer is tired of being the hammer." 

I'm not sure what the solution is.  Take turns being the hammer? Start playing indoor football with the kids?  Find other tools in the toolbox? It may be that we could all use a little time out from the hammer. There's just too much pounding and it wears you out.

Daily Dose of Exercise

Every weekday I get up and walk with two of my friends.  We walk three or four miles into town and back from 6:15 to 7 a.m. Then I come back and do about half an hour of yoga.

I have to brag about this because bragging rights and feeling virtuos are two of the immediate benefits to exercising but I can't really get all "more in shape than thou," because this daily routine is new to me.

I have tried going to the gym and taking classes and I have tried doing exercise tapes at home. I have tried many things.  But all the gym did was take my $60 every month. I estimate I paid about $60 per class or on a very good month, $15 a class.  I mostly wasted hundreds of dollars because there were always better things to do but I couldn't quit because I always told myself I would go again next month.

I had been getting into yoga though and when a friend trained as a yoga teacher and started talking about a daily routine, it finally hit me: I didn't have to go to class to do yoga, I could do yoga at home. I started taking classes with my friend once a week and doing my own routine every day.

Then I decided something aerobic that would fit into my routine and not cost hundreds of dollars so I started walking with some friends last summer.  This is a little bit harder for me because I am not a morning person and I hate waking up when it's dark.  But again, knowing that my friend is waiting for me outside at 6:15 every day makes me wake up. True, I pray for rain, snow or an act of God that will allow me to sleep in.  But when I walk, I'm more awake all day even if I do get just six hours sleep.

I started doing all this mostly because I had a number of small ailments that were stress related. I have gastrointestinal problems and insomnia and I decided that it would be easier to start dealing with my stress through exercise and yoga than through weekly appointments with doctors.  And it has helped my stress and decreased my stomach problems. I still have trouble sleeping but that's gotten a little better as well.

Best of all, my husband has taken over the first and most dreaded part of the morning routine - he wakes up the kids and gets them started getting dressed and started with breakfast and lunch, while I do yoga with the all important relaxation exercises and meditation.  This leaves me much calmer when I come out to choruses of, "I can't find my socks," and "Where's the peanut butter?"  It's made our whole morning routine better and calmer.

There are all sorts of  benefits to regular exercise.  One recent study, for example, found that people who participate in regular sports at least once a week reduced the risk of blood clots by 39 percent in women and  22 percent in men.   Another study found a link between exercise and mental health and that just walking (yeah!) can reduce anxiety, stress and depression.  It did not, however, reduce hot flashes. I guess you can't have everything.  More on this study is at http://www.temple.edu/newsroom/2007-2008/02/stories/menopause.htm,

pneumonia

My younger son has pneumonia but he is by far the bounciest kid with pneumonia you've ever seen and now he has no temperature and is almost back to his old self except he is pale and has trouble catching his breath sometimes.
Pneumonia is scary because it can be such a serious illness. My son has bacterial pneumonia. The way I understand it is this: Normally we all breathe in all sorts of bacteria that can make us sick and we filter those bacteria out, particularly through the nose. But sometimes we don't (this is the worrying part) and somehow we breathe in bacteria that makes it way into the lungs and to fight the bacteria the lungs fill with fluid. Normally, as our doctor told us, the lungs are like a dry sponge that fill with air and then compress but when they fill with fluid, they don't work so well.
At any rate, my son complained he was tired one day and that was unusual enough. The next couple of days, he had a slight fever and by Monday, he had a fever and was just sleeping all day. That went on for a couple of days and on the third day of the fever, we brought him in to the doctor who listened to him breathe and told us he hard some rattling, then he sent us off to get x-rays done. When they asked for more x-rays, my husband and I looked at each other: we knew it had to be pneumonia.
But even though, he apparently had a pretty large area of infection, the doctor said he was ramarkably energetic. So we've been trying to keep him quiet and not do too much. Our biggest activity this weekend was a walk around town to get ice-cream and pick up gyros. It's kind of nice having to be housebound. But the only reason it didn't drive me totally crazy is because my husband was home and he could spot me so I could go to the library and choir and a PTO meeting without feeling guilty.
If he hadn't been home and I was teaching, I guess I would have had to call in or bundle him up and bring him to school if he was well enough.
I do worry about whether my son's asthma has any link to the pneumonia and wether this will affect his lungs in the future. He's so athletic but he's always had respiratory problems. The doctor says no on both accounts but that, of course, doesn't stop me from worrying.
Here's a link to information on pneumonia from Medline http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000145.htm