If you, as a parent or guardian, have discovered through observation or your teen?s confessions that they have been hooked into illegal drug use; you?re going to go through a variety of emotions. Fear for your adolescent?s health, anger that this has happened to your child, sadness that something in their life felt so bad to them that they turned to drugs to alleviate it, and others. Underlying all your emotions will be one driving force: to get your adolescent to a drug detox center and get them the help they need.
Why It Starts
There are lots of reasons why drug abuse can start. It generally isn?t just one reason, but a combination of reasons that span from the personal, to the familial, to the community. Many personal reasons are often out of a teen?s control, such as genetics, personality, and undiagnosed health conditions. Family reasons can span from seeing their parents and guardians abusing substances, which gives them access to the ability to abuse the same substances; to a laid back attitude on the parents? or guardians? half about experimenting; to family stresses such as physical and emotional abuse, or frequent fighting. Never discount the effect of peer pressure, whether from outside friends or expectations picked up from the media.
Steps of Treatment
Though every teen will have different needs for their eventual successful drug detoxification, there are broad categories that everyone beginning any good program follows: admittance, observation, and discovery; counseling both privately, in groups, and with the family; re-directional activities as substitutes for behaviors; academic and behavioral instruction; spiritual comfort if desired; and discharge. How long the process takes is dependent on how well the teen responds to the therapies.
It Doesn?t Always End
Sadly, just like in some adults, there are teens who initially responded to the drug detoxification process but at some point later in their lives fall back into drug use. This is not a failure of theirs per se, but a failure of the treatment. As people grow and change, things learned once upon a time may no longer have the same meaning for them. Many medical experts today consider drug addictions to be a chronic, relapsing kind of illness, which is why treatment, in the form of medications, counseling, or both, can sometimes be a lifelong process.
So if your teen needs help in drug detoxification, turn to Adolescent Growth here in Los Angeles. We in turn can help them grow into the adult they were meant to become.
Adolescent Growth offers several great programs to support drug detoxification in the Los Angeles area. For more information, please do not hesitate to give us a call.
