Young people die using/abusing drugs

Dr. Richard Keller

Thursday, July 03, 2008

Young people use/abuse drugs. Young people die from using/abusing drugs. We need to stop young people from dying from drug use/abuse. (The same goes for older people, but it always seems more shocking when it is young people who die. Is more potential lost?)

I was reading an interview with Dr Drew Pinsky (currently rehab doctor to the stars) recently and he sure makes it sound tough. Although he wasn’t talking about young people in particular, he laid out the 3 events that motivate change in his experience, i.e. motivate folks to quit abusing drugs:

Near death experience (i.e. the drug abuser nearly dying)
Looking in the mirror and feeling genuine disgust
Loss of your children, having them taken away (particularly true of women)

I feel there must be other ways to motivate the desire to make the life change involved in quitting the abuse of the drugs, particularly in young people. Or do we work at instilling self-disgust, if his motivating events are all-inclusive. The younger the person is when we begin to intervene the less entrenched the drug abuse behavior is. That should make available more intervention options. Of course, prevention is an even better goal to drug abuse prevention.

“Just say no” isn’t working, as evidenced by multiple studies. We need real, evidence-based intervention strategies. Scaring them straight doesn’t work. Their minds are still developing, but their intellect is there. Interventions need to use that fact.

There has to be something that we can do.
The 24 year-old young lady didn’t need to die today.

Jon's Friends ~ My Response

***- that was beautiful ~ *** thank you for posting your thoughts.

You all are connected & share a common bond now ~ Jon is gone ~ but lives inside each and everyone of you. Your duty to yourselves is to learn to cope with your feelings, learn to cope with the loss of your "friend". U need to communicate with each other, speak, explain to each other how you are dealing with this tragedy. Speak out like *** has ~ speak up like *** ~ this will begin your healing process. Get angry ~ get pissed off ~ get it OUT! Everyone grieves in different ways, but as you communicate amongst yourselves, you shall move on through the grief process & get to the great memories you have of Jon. I cannot possibly understand how you feel, as you cannot possibly understand how I feel. I have lost a part of my soul. I am Jon's mother ~ Jon was my son ~ children are not suppose to die before their parents.

I have started a blog for Jon ~ www.jdmachope.blogspot.com ~ with hopes of updating this my website which will be completely dedicated to everyone that has to deal with such a tragedy as this.

~ please feel free to post your comments ~ on his blog ~ I will publish them ~ as I am hoping someone will pass by & start their healing process as they read, realizing they are not alone.

Sincerely,
Momma Mac ~ U can officially call me that!
I am hugging all of U ~

~ Jon's Friend ~

I found this beautiful tribute to your friend Jon this morning right after you posted it on Facebook ~ I bless sweetie for honoring my son with your words. He will always be a part of your soul ~
Love you, Momma Mac ~

It is still hard for me to believe that my friend is gone. I can say that he always wanted to have a good time and be free.

There are so many pressures in life that we all will feel at different times and in varying levels of intensity. I guess he had slowly been fed up with a lot of those pressures. His recent mistakes, and problems with getting past them had driven a lot of the guys that were supposed to be his friends away.

People were dependent on him, and kept pushing him to be more and more without giving him any of the resources. He went from being a carefree teenager to a stressed, overworked man trying to pay back his debts to society for a mistake.

Literal debts, monetary debts. He wanted to find his light in the sun. His passion; that one thing that he could do all the time and escape. He searched through the many mediums; frantically trying to escape from the world that became reality too quick. He wanted to stay young, stay easy going and live like the rest of his peers.

In my book the system swallowed him whole.
It started with court cases and arrests; then that led to further experimentation with intoxication, and he had completely believed all the rehab self help BS that he was born with this intrinsically 'real' problem and there are all these steps to deal with it.

Those steps are for uneducated people I may add.

All the while, these ''rehab'' places are breeding grounds for the down and out drug addicts of society; and he developed his worst habits there. He was able to rationalize his pill use as part of a "problem" instead of something he knew wasn't him and should not be done. These people he was living with now were at their lowest points. He was re-socialized into a bunch of people worse off than him.

I used to get angry when Jon told me stories about his recent ''progress'' at the inpatient facility. It was at it's worst two years ago when he would make these outlandish loopy calls to me proclaiming that "he really sees his soul, and he likes to cry sometimes".....drawing and painting childish pictures that reflected that of an untied man. He had spoke as though they were his new friends. I'm sure this is part of my coping process in some unknown matter; but I'm angry at a lot of people for the way they handled Jon.

He was a person and just wanted to be accepted. That seems like an odd idea to one who is a part of the group; but when your suddenly shoved to the outskirts---you may be able to see through his eyes.