Teen Drug Use Influenced By Their Gender And Their Friends
If you’re worried that your teen or adolescent child is using drugs or drinking alcohol, you may have only to look at the combination of gender and their friends for the definitive answer, according to one new study published in Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.
According to the new research, if your teen has friends who are drinking, smoking and using drugs, they are more likely to be doing the same. Girls, it was found in this research, tend to be more influenced by their peers and having friends of the opposite sex who use and drink also makes it more likely that your child will do the same.
Danielle Dick is a corresponding author for the study and was an assistant professor at Washington University, St. Louis when this study was conducted. She says, “Several studies have found that peer drinking has more of an influence on an adolescent’s drinking than his or her own parent’s drinking. We wanted to more closely examine the role that gender may also play, because even though there are profound differences that occur in development between girls and boys during adolescence, little is known about how influences on alcohol use may differ between the sexes during this developmental period.”
If you’re concerned that your child is using drugs, take a look at her friends and her position in her group. Is she a leader or a follower? Have you seen her maintain her opinion when her friends disagree or does she tend to go along with the crowd and develop opinions based on them?
Dick also said, “Our findings suggest that girls may be more susceptible to their friends’ drinking and that having opposite-sex friends who drink is also associated with increased drinking, for both sexes. Furthermore, genetically based analyses suggest that the correlation between adolescent/friend drinking was largely attributable to shared environmental effects across genders. This suggests that the association between an adolescent’s alcohol use and that of his or her peers is not merely a reflection of genetic influences on the adolescent’s own alcohol use that cause them to select drinking peers.”
If you are concerned that your child is not only using drugs and alcohol but addicted to opiates specifically and if he or she is 15 years of age or older, you can help by getting them a prescription for Suboxone. Rather than pull them out of school and into a drug rehab, you can have him or her go through a Suboxone detox at home. The naloxone in Suboxone will keep them from “getting high” on opiates for up to 3 days after the last dose. In the meantime, you can work your magic and redirect their attention to what’s important in life: introduce them to a substance abuse counselor who focuses on kids, introduce them to the extreme effects of lifelong opiate addiction and give them the guidance they need to find the friends and activities that will help them feel healthier and happier. In the holiday season, a little volunteer work never hurt anyone—even something small like cleaning cages at the animal shelter or contributing to a food and clothing drive for vets, the homeless and underprivileged kids—and is always recommended to those who are dealing with personal drug addiction issues.
For more information about this study and others, check out Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.
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