Parents of teenagers should always be on the lookout for signs of drug use.
According to Psychology Today, recent years have shown that tobacco, alcohol, marijuana, and opioid use have been slowly trending downward among high school students. Despite this progress, however, more than one in four teens still reported using an illegal drug during the past year and about one in three had used alcohol.
One of the biggest dangers of teen drug use is that their risk for addiction is about 17 percent of users compared to the general population's nine percent. Marijuana can have permanent, adverse effects on a youth's learning ability, intelligence, and memory when used regularly before the brain has finished developing, around the age of 20, according to Psychology Today.
Parents should first be on the lookout for obvious signs of drug use such as pipes, baggies, aluminum foil, rolling papers, and other paraphernalia that could be hidden in a room, car, or school locker. If there is a problem, behavioral changes are likely to follow. Normal teens will often break house rules and stay out past curfew, but watch out if they are staying out for the whole night, driving recklessly, asking for money, or disappearing for longer periods. Red eyes, listlessness, sniffling, fast or slow speech, and poor coordination could also be symptoms.
Teens under the influence might also lose focus on their physical appearance and hygiene, lose or gain weight rapidly, or suffer from issues like headaches and irregular sleep. Emotionally, a young person with a drug problem could have wide swings between depression and excitability while becoming more secretive and deceptive as well. A teenager's behavior is primarily influenced by their surroundings so the presence of friends and family that use drugs or alcohol can significantly increase the risk of experimentation and abuse.
