Symptoms of Teenage Drug Abuse Problems

Published May 13, 2010

Drug abuse problems are one of the major worries that parents face as their child enters teens. With drugs it is not just illegal drugs, even if certain substances are freely and legally available in the market, they could be fatal if consumed beyond certain limits. Parents need to be aware of all these substance and need to protect their child from them. Below are some of the symptoms that can help you identify if you are facing such drug abuse problems:

Lower Personal Effectiveness: The first signs of drug abuse problems are a decline in personal effectiveness at school and home. Teenagers with this problem start dropping grades, you may also start getting more complaints from school, play truant at school and will stop following common rules at home.

Risk Taking: Drug abuse problems can also lead your teenager to take more risks to fuel their addiction, like stealing from friends or family, taking out loans and mixing with socially disruptive individuals. You may even start getting police complaints or have to visit the police station.

Disruptive Behaviour: Drug abuse problems can result in disruptive behaviour like argumentative nature, disregard for relationships and fights at home and outside. They might also break-up with their boyfriend or girlfriend for no obvious reason. They might give up some of their favourite hobbies and sports and become less interested in areas that they were previously very passionate about.

Dress Style Changes: Drug abuse problems often lead teenagers to change their dress style. They start dressing in long sleeved clothes which, may indicate drug injections and needle marks or marks from cigarette buds. The even cover their fingers with rings or paint their nails dark to avoid showing off syringe marks.

Object giveaways: If your teenager is suffering from drug abuse problems, then a visit to their room would reveal unexpected materials like pipes, roach clips or syringes.

Physical Changes: Further signs of drug abuse problems can manifest themselves in changes in physical characteristics of your teenager. Depending on the type of drug taken you may notice some or all of the following: dilated pupils, excessive energy, lack of sleep and restlessness, tiredness, slow body movements, slow speech or reaction time, confusion, disorientation, unusual sleep cycles, weight loss, nose bleeds, bad breath, reddening of eyes, constant coughing and dental problems are all possible signs of drug abuse.

Mood Patterns: Drug abuse problems may also result in increased mood swings displayed by either excessive talking when they are on a high followed by depression, delusion, paranoia, increased irritability and even violence. Social skills take a complete beating when under the influence of drugs and the teenager may prefer to be left alone and be unresponsive and look spaced out all the time.

In the book “Solving Teenage Problems”, various tips to deal with drug abuse problems have been discussed. However, most of these tips can work only in early stages. If you notice certain serious symptoms you need to get external help as soon as possible. The book helps parents to identify these serious symptoms so that no time is wasted in getting the right help for your teenager.

The author is a successful marketing executive in a large consumer good company and a mother of two boys. She has had a rough ride in the past two years and has successfully saved her family from the brink of disaster by working on her parenting techniques. She has recently built a website http://www.newparentingstyle.com and also written a book “Solving Teenage Problems”, which can be accessed on http://www.teenageproblems.newparentingstyle.com.

Symptoms of Teenage Drug Abuse Problems

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