Drugs: Don't Ever Think..."Not My Kid"
It's the reason why kids die from overdose and their parents had no idea!
As a law enforcement officer there were few things, if any, worse than having to inform a parent that their child had died. Its gut-wrenching! But, when the reason was overdose, in too many instances, the parents were shocked. Why? They didn’t know that their child was using drugs. Why? Because they never thought that it could be their kid and therefore, they weren’t watching them closely enough. They missed the very clear signs.
So…Don’t ever think…”Not my kid”!
Let me make this very clear:
I don’t care how good of a family you have, how wonderful your kids are and/or have been, that they have the best of friends, that you and they go to church every Sunday, that you have a ton of money, that your kids are straight-A students, promising athletes and on-and-on…
Drugs can, and do, victimize everyone! Even those kids and families that you would never, “in a million years”, think it could happen to.
If you truly care about and love your kids you will go out of your way to learn about drugs and the signs and symptoms of their use, and abuse. There are venues everywhere for this. It was always amazing to me that when we did free training on this, mostly for parents of school students, that only a small handful of people would show up. And these were parents who already knew that their children had problems with drug use. These are not the parents that we need to be talking too. We need to be talking to the parents who have the “not my kid” mindset and get them out of it before it becomes a problem for them.
This is a huge problem - everywhere!
This is what I tell people:
You know someone who has a drug problem! You may not know it, but you do. And, if by some chance you don’t…you will! I promise you that!
You have to catch it early
Today’s most dangerous drugs take very little consumption to create an addiction. As a result, catching it early is critical. How do you catch it early? Pay attention and know the signs!
Why is this so challenging?
Because today, we communicate with those even closest to us more via devices (text, email, chat, etc) than we do in person. Let me reiterate - even with those closest to us! Most of the signs of drug addiction are visual - you see them rather than hear them. The way the eyes look, the actions of the person, sleeping excessively, stumbling, and more. And…emotion is very difficult to determine via electronic communication - unless we desire for it to be known. When we don’t see and interact with people in-person, we miss signs.
Seeing signs also requires a deep understand of a person’s “normal”. If we have a deep understanding of what is normal, we will quickly note what is not normal.
Today’s we just don’t know people, even those closest to us, the way that we used to. We don’t know our children’s friends because now, they “technically” have hundreds and even thousands that can actually influence them. This opposed to years past, prior to social media, when they only had a handful of real influencers and we, as parents, knew who they were.
They is a lot more to this
I will continue to post on the dangers of drugs and give you everything that I can to help you avoid this very real and very dangerous problem.
For now…know your kids, know the signs, and pay attention!