Alcohol, Drugs, and Teens

Addiction is one of the most poorly understood phenomena in America today. Most people believe that it is a lack of willpower. Most people think that it is full physical addiction to a drug. And most people think it can never happen to them. But addiction itself is a spectrum disorder, and can be anywhere along any point in the disease process - early, middle, or late stage.
Nine-out-of-ten addicts began using alcohol or drugs before age 18, and not one of them ever said, "When I grow up I want to be an addict." But that is the nature of drugs.
Addiction is definitely a process of morbidity, of making people sick. It is definitely a disease. It affects mind, body, emotion and soul. And addiction always begins with simple use. If one never smokes one does not develop addiction to nicotine. It is the act of using a substance that potentiates the addiction potential.
Addiction is the Number One Public Health Problem in America. One estimate is that addiction affects 16 percent of Americans ages 12-and-older - some 40 million people. That is more than the number of people with heart disease (27 million), diabetes (26 million), and cancer (19 million.) And addiction always begins with simple use.
The purpose of this book is to help people improve the quality of their lives by avoiding one of the greatest health problems this country - and this world - faces: drug abuse. Just in one study of premature deaths they found that the majority of premature deaths were drug related, and the average years of life lost (YLL) from the point of death until the average life expectancy - was 46 years, i.e, all of these drug related individuals died an average of 46 years earlier than non-drug using individuals. In addition, the quality of life that these individuals experienced was much lower, ex., multiple relationships and divorces, increase in poverty and homelessness, increase in lost jobs, unemployment and under-employement, low degree of quality relationships with children, low degree of family satisfaction, and overall low degree of life fulfillment.
Alcohol and drugs remain one of the great puzzles of the world. These are powerful pharmacological substances. They are substances that attract people to them like bees to honey, except that in this case the honey is a poison that can hurt, maim and eventually kill.
This book spells out the major problems with alcohol and drugs and young adults and recommends that as with many other social issues, the best medicine is "Prevention First". And the best prevention message for everyone, is, simply, do not use alcohol and drugs.