• Avoidance of family dinners
• Sleep problems (too little or too much)
• Passing out, seizures
Behavioral signs
• Lower grades, skipping classes, lack of participation, loss of interest in extracurricular activities, hobbies, sports; complaints from teachers
• Many (or more) arguments with family or friends
• Emotional meltdowns: irrational and inexplicable mood swings—such as being friendly, then angry, sometimes violently so—ADHD, rebelliousness, inability to control impulses, paranoid thoughts, panic attacks
• Depression, anxiety, conduct disorders
• Stealing money; unexplained need for money; disappearance of valuables
• Lying, including asking others to cover for her
• Sudden use of air fresheners, incense
• Car accidents
• Marked withdrawal from family and friends
• Different friends—usually older; avoids introducing them to you
• Paraphernalia such as pipes, razor blades, vials, baggies, straws, rolling papers, rolled-up money, pill or alcohol bottles hidden in her room, purse, or car
• Overheard conversations that raise suspicions
• General lack of responsibility—failure to do schoolwork or chores, flimsy excuses for missed curfews or obligations
• Chronic defensiveness
• Trouble with the law for any reason
• Someone (siblings, neighbors, school officials) trying to tell you she is using drugs or drinking too much
• Thinking that drinking and/or using drugs isn’t that harmful
Effective Conversations with Your Daughter Early On
If nothing on this list resonates for you, you may still be concerned about preventing a problem before it starts. Or maybe you still have that lingering gut instinct that something is off. There may have been an “incident” or two that doesn’t sit right. Perhaps emotions have escalated between you and your daughter. No matter what the reason, parents can play a vital role in helping her make good decisions about using substances. Even if she’s not using now, you can’t assume
• she’s not interested in drinking or drugging—the majority of high school students will try something before they graduate, and binge drinking and drug taking is rife on college campuses;
• she’s already learned about it at school—with certain exceptions, schools aren’t effectively teaching about today’s reality;
• she won’t listen to you—parents are known to be the number one source kids turn to for important information.7
As a starting point, when and how you talk to your daughter can make a big difference. You’ll be more effective when you’re prepared and focused on avoiding a confrontation. Kids are much more approachable when they are not tired, such as at the end of a school day or after a sporting event. Choose a time when you both are more receptive. It may be going together somewhere in the car, at a coffee shop, or at home if that’s a comfortable place. Remember all kids are generally resistant to “the talk.” You need to be caring, respectful and, as my daughter’s kindergarten teacher used to say, “put on your listening ears.” How you talk to her can mean the difference between her shutting down or opening up. Showing concern and respect for her are bouquets.
Many experienced counselors suggest opening up the conversation by asking about other kids she knows. If you begin with general concern instead of zeroing in on her, it will probably be easier for her to open up, or at least not shut down, than if she feels she’s being scrutinized or judged. Is she worried about any of her friends? Ask her how so-and-so is doing. Let her know you understand some kids struggle with substance use, and that you are genuinely concerned for their welfare. If you do ask your daughter about her own use, you may not get a truthful answer, but you have set a tone and reminded her of your positive role. By doing so, you have opened up a new pathway that you can revisit.
Don’t Dance with Her Denial
Let’s say after one or more of these kinds of conversations with your child and a look at the checklist of warning signs you do suspect there may be more going on with her than the ups and downs of adolescence. Or that, again, you have that sense something else is wrong. Respect your parental intuition. But now what? It is a huge step to confront your child’s risky substance use. Minimizing a suspected problem by making excuses for her drinking and/or drug use changes nothing, but a full-on confrontation usually does not work either. Demanding the truth from her can backfire. As one mother of an addicted daughter writes, “In my experience, denial, dishonesty, and manipulation are the behaviors most fundamental to addiction . . . . These behaviors become like second nature, helping the addiction take root and blossom.”8
The operative word being denial—hers and yes, yours: an inability or refusal to face the truth because it is so painful and frightening, whether for the person who is addicted or her loved ones. The user becomes incapable of being truthful to herself about what she’s doing. This is the aspect of addiction that may be the hardest to understand. When I was at the worst phase of my addiction, the need for the substance and the neurological distortions caused by the substance, degraded my ability to see reality to such an extent that using logic with me was pointless. My daughter, for her part, would explain away a slew of symptoms associated with addiction—irresponsibility in every area, extreme messiness, poor hygiene, high irritability, and deceitfulness—as being due to “teenage hormones” and “PMSing.” (Ironically, she was partly right, as we do know sex hormones play a vital role in the emotional lives of young adult women.) Kim also played the moral outrage card: I was “invading her privacy.” I was “a snoop.” And my favorite: I was “bipolar.” Like many other parents of addicted daughters I’ve met, she used lies and anger as weapons to fend off the truth. She lied because she was on the defensive and had to protect her addiction. For a while, it was effective.
When confronted about her use, a young woman is likely to minimize the problem or just lie about it. In scientific terms, the intake of booze or drugs increases the experience of pleasure and reward in the user’s brain because more dopamine is being produced. Anyone who has a drink knows this feeling. But for the habitual user, there is a hazard: Over-stimulated by all those calls for dopamine, the brain of the heavy substance-user in time slows the process down by decreasing nerve cell proteins that function as dopamine receptors. It is then that the alcoholic or addict experiences a deficit of pleasure, tries to recapture that pleasurable sensation by drinking or using more in compensation. In short, a user needs more and more of the drug to recapture a sense of normalcy and, in short order, to avoid a mental crash since alcohol and other drugs drastically change the normal brain circuitry. In time, to feel just “okay” she has to get the next fix, which becomes a constantly diminishing okay, and in-between the lows get lower and lower. When backed into a corner, an addict guards her addiction as ferociously as a mama bear protects her cub. She’ll view confrontation as an attack. This is the tough reality we have to face to be helpful.
Things kids who use drugs may say to protect their drug use:
“You don’t understand.”
“I’m just having a tough time right now.”
“I’ve cut back.”
“I can cut back.”
“I will cut back.”
“I can stop whenever I want.”
“I’ll deal with it when I find the right person/get the right job,” etc.
But the truth may be quite different: She physically craves the pleasure—the