How substance abuse can affect high school students
When students enter high school their whole life changes, they have so many new and different opportunities. They can try so many new things like being apart of different academic clubs, drama clubs, or sports teams, they can find new friends, even build a second family. Some students, however, fall into bad groups of friends and into bad habits such as drug abuse and crime. There are many different reasons that this happens for students but it does happen more than a lot of us know or realize.
Some students turn to study-aid drugs like Adderall or Ratlin for help with school, studying, and grades because they are under so much pressure from their own parents, teachers, and even their own peers to do well and they feel as if they can’t keep up with this large amount of stress and work they’re now experiencing for the first time in their life, so they turn to these different substances for extra help and end up getting addicted to them and having serious life long problems because of it.
One of the most common drugs used among high schoolers is alcohol. Many students don’t view this as a drug and that’s why they think it is okay, but it is. However, students that start drinking before the age of 15 are 6 times more likely to have a problem with alcohol later in life than students who wait till the legal drinking age of 21. One major consequence of teen drinking is they overdo it — binge drink. This is because they are not responsible enough to understand their limits and they really don’t know them. This can lead to blackouts and even server alcohol poisoning. If teens give themselves alcohol poisoning they can suffer from passing out, vomiting, irregular breathing, seizures, and they can even stop their heart and die from it. It’s important for teens to understand that this can happen and that there can actually be serious consequences even though they don’t view this as a drug.
One large drug issue in high schools are steroid use by student-athletes. These students face tremendous pressures from coaches, parents, and even teammates to perform at ridiculously high standards. Students are desperate to make it into these colleges and get scholarships and when they fell they aren't improving enough or fast enough then they can turn to drugs. It is found that as many as 12% of male student-athletes use anabolic steroids, while only 1–2% of female student-athletes do. Students feel that they can get away with this because drug testing is so lax in high schools. Only about 20% of high schools drug test their students, and it is even said that coaches tend to be silent even if they do suspect for fear of lawsuits and angry parents.
By the time they’re seniors 68% of high schoolers have tried alcohol
Another drug that students are commonly exposed to for the first time in high school is marijuana, almost 3,300 teens try weed for the first time every day. Smoking weed regularly can drop your IQ 8 points, which can really affect a students performance in school, 48% of D and F students smoke weed regularly. Most students think it’s good for them because it’s “natural”, but it affects the brain in many different ways and can even be laced if they are getting it from an unreliable source, which can cause the teen to be another bad situation where they could be seriously hurt.
Some consequences of addiction in high schools can be abnormalities of the brain, like slowed thinking and impaired learning and memory. It can affect the chemicals produced in the brain causing high schoolers to go into prolonged depression and leaving them more vulnerable to different substance abuse. Most teens don’t know but it can stunt their growth, it was found that high school boys who regularly smoked weed were 4.6 inches shorter than those who did not when they reached 20 years old.
Some other drugs that affect high schoolers are:
- Amphetamines
- Adderall
- opioid pain killers
- Synthetic marijuana
- Tranquilizers
- Cough medicine
- Vicodin
- Hallucinogens
- OxyContin
- Sedatives
- Ecstasy
- LSD
- Cocaine
- Ritalin
- Inhalants
- Salvia
You can look for signs of addiction in behavioral and physical ways. Some behavioral signs of addiction you can look for are loss of interest, a shift in social circles, sudden drop in grades, difficulty remembering or paying attention, unexplained temper tantrums, paranoia, and many more. Some physical signs of addiction you can look for are insomnia, oversleeping, irregular heartbeat, sweaty or cold palms, shakiness, change in pupil size, grinding teeth, or smelling strange, and many more. These are just some signs you can look for but if you notice these you may want to talk to your teen and get them some help before they cause any more serious issues to their health.
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