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PAS : KE ARAH PEMERINTAHAN ISLAM YANG ADIL
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Assalamu'alaikum,
Dewasa ini, proses membesarkan anak-anak menjadi semakin mencabar. Satu daripada
cabaran yang paling besar ialah penyalahgunaan dadah di kalangan anak-anak remaja.
Justeru, mencegahnya daripada terjadi lebih baik daripada memulihkan ketagihan. Apakah
tanda-tandanya anak-anak yang ketagihan dadah?
Terdapat satu guidelines yang saya temui di laman http://www.teenswithproblems.com
Saya pastekannya disini untuk kebaikan bersama terutama bagi anda yang ada anak
remaja. Juga boleh dibaca di:
http://www.teenswithproblems.com/drugabuse.html
Wassalam.
Nota kaki: Keujudan laman ini menunjukkan prihatin dan inisiatif yang tangga di
kalangan masyarakat barat dalam usaha menolong masyarakat mereka. Elok juga jika ada
laman sebegini dalam Bahasa Melayu untuk kebaikan rakyat Malaysia.
<><><><><><><><><>
INTRODUCTION -
What Is This Page About?
Every day, our kids have to make choices that we, as parents, never even dreamed about
when we were kids. Peer pressure is a powerful thing, and many times, our kids will
reluctantly go along with the crowd and do things that they are not comfortable with
and know are harmful in order to gain acceptance. However, if this behavior repeats
itself, over time it will manifest itself in addiction. This can lead to serious
behavioral, emotional and health problems, with the symptoms of drug abuse mimicking
attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), bipolar illness or major depression,
which may be misdiagnosed if the care provider does not know of an existing substance
abuse problem.
As parents, how can we tell if our children are abusing substances? This is a question
many parents ask themselves when their child is having difficulties. Unfortunately,
too many parents really don't want to know the answer, because this is one subject
that can be too scary, frustrating and guilt-laden to deal with. They may ask the
right questions and will even do a little digging around to come up with answers, but
then will conclude that there is not a problem and will ignore all the signs and
symptoms of addiction that their child actually manifests.
When my child was having multiple problems, I discovered to my dismay that he was
obtaining many of the substances he was abusing right in our own house and that these
household products can cause very serious brain damage. I have detailed information in
the paragraphs below on some of the things our kids are up to that we might never
suspect.
Who am I? I am not a doctor, social worker, therapist, etc. I am a parent who works in
the medical field, who happens to have a large family in which addiction has played a
huge role. I have dealt with substance abuse issues with five of my own children,
nieces and nephews, friends of my kids, and I, myself, am a recovered alcoholic. So I
am speaking to you from experience and from the heart, to try to let you know about
the some of the things that I didn't know about until it was too late. Hopefully what
I have to say will give you some of the knowledge you need to make the best decisions
for your own child.
DISCLAIMER: The things of which I speak below have been witnessed by me and have also
been confirmed by talking with teens outside of my family. I assume no responsibility
for any untoward event that may occur as a result of any parent using this
information. This site is not meant to take the place of a doctor, psychiatrist, or
counselor. If your child is having serious problems, you should consult with a
professional. The sole purpose of the information below is to inform parents about
some of the little known substances our teens are sometimes abusing.
What are some of the signs to look for?
CHANGE IN PERSONALITY -
Your loving child turns mean.
This can happen with the onset of puberty, but it is much worse when there is
substance abuse going on. Do you feel like no matter what you say or do, you just
can't win? Are you afraid or reluctant to confront your child due to violent outbursts
or reactions from them when you attempt to inquire about any part of their lives? Just
remember, when a kid is backed into a corner, he may have discovered that the best
defense is an offense, and many teens, particularly boys, find that by coming back
with loud yelling, they can be very intimidating to their mothers. Suspect drug use if
your child has lately become very irritable, unpleasant to or bullying of other family
members, very easy to provoke, starts to use a lot of profanity, seems tired and worn
out a lot of the time, develops a nagging cough, appears to have the sniffles or runny
nose, or develops nosebleeds frequently.
CHANGE IN APPEARANCE -
Your child's appearance has gone down the tubes.
This might include long stringy hair, too much makeup in girls (or boys), clothes that
are way too big and don't fit, all black everything, and rock teeshirts of bands that
have values that you deplore (Marilyn Manson immediately comes to mind). If your child
is espousing these bands, there is a chance he will also try to "live up to the image"
that these bands project. We want our kids to have some freedom in how they dress and
hate to battle with them regarding their choice of clothes. However, sometimes a
parent must put his foot down on certain styles. Black rock tee-shirts with obnoxious
bands on them may attract other kids who use drugs and cause kids who are not into
that scene to shy away from your child.
Also be very wary of the big baggy pants with lots of pockets. These pants, which are
quite popular now, provide lots and lots of hiding places for contraband, and many
kids also wear these pants with the sole purpose of shoplifting because there are so
many places to put things. Another rather unusual tip-off is if you go to buy your
child shoes and he states his feet have grown and he now needs a size twice as large
as the last time you bought him shoes. Don't take him at his word...measure his feet
with one of those metal foot measuring devices found in shoe stores. Our son did this
and we discovered that he was hiding contraband in the toes of his shoes.
CHILD SEEMS VERY VAGUE, APATHETIC, DISINTERESTED, OUT OF IT -
Your child seems unusually apathetic, staring into space a lot, not focused on
anything, is very vague when you try to carry on a conversation, and generally seems
out of it.
This could mean they are high while you are talking to them or that they are coming
down from some type of drug that they did the day before, like LSD. However, note that
this could also be a sign of major depression and suicidality, so if this behavior
persists, never ignore it.
CHILD IS REPEATEDLY COMING HOME LATE OR NOT AT ALL -
Problems with keeping curfew or not showing up at all until the next day, stating they
spent the night at so-and-so's house but "forgot" to call you.
Don't believe it for a minute. When kids do this, there is a good chance they have
gotten high on something and were in no condition to call or come home, or they passed
out somewhere, or because they were high, they didn't care about anything, including
the consequences of not abiding by their curfew. If a child has been brought up to let
his parents know where he is, he will generally call them if he is of sound mind and
will be worried about the consequences of NOT calling.
RED EYES -
Eyes are red all the time or you are finding bottles of Visine or eye drops in your
teen's room.
If a child is trying to cover up his red eyes, he is either smoking pot or possibly
huffing, both of which can cause red eyes. If you are finding bottles of Visine or
other eye drops, this is a very good indication that your child is up to something.
Teens rarely buy things like eye drops unless they are trying to hide something from
you.
SIGNS OF HUFFING -
Your child seems to be doing excessive cleaning with various cleaning solutions
I am going to spend a little more time on this subject because I have dealt with
huffing in my son and it left him hearing voices all the time. Huffing is a very, very
dangerous activity for your child to engage in. You wouldn't think your child would be
so stupid to do something like this, but this might be happening if you are noticing a
chemical or solvent smell coming out of his/her room on a regular basis. When you ask
them about it, they will say they are cleaning. If it happens a lot, get very
suspicious. Huffing burns holes in your child's brain and can cause permanent brain
damage, so it is better to investigate and risk being wrong than to ignore it and pay
the consequences later with a child who either dies or ends up with severe brain
damage.
Young kids are likely to start substance abuse patterns by huffing because the
chemicals needed are usually lying around the house. Some of the things kids might
huff include White-Out (yes, the White-Out that is used in an office). If your child
is asking you to buy him White-Out for a school project, your suspicion level should
go way up. Schools never require the use of White-Out in school projects. Common
markers, especially the large size markers, are also used for huffing, so if your
child is walking around with markers in his/her pocket, beware! I remember wondering
why all of my dry-erase markers kept disappearing. Kids will also huff anything out of
an aerosol can, including the aerosol out of whipped cream cans, spray-on leather
cleaners, etc.; in fact, any aerosol can of any type can be huffed by the kids.
Huffing causes severe headaches as well as chronic congestion. My son ended up using
an albuterol inhaler because of an asthma-like condition that wouldn't go awa!
y. I didn't have a clue that it w
ABUSE OF COLD AND COUGH MEDICINES -
Yes, folks, kids are abusing cough syrups and cold pills in record numbers
I thought maybe this was just a local thing, but I had the occasion to speak with a
boy who lives 1000 miles from us, and he not only knew all about this trend but
admitted to having used cold pills to get high as well. This is much more common than
any parent would ever suspect. Every kid I have asked about this has admitted to
knowing about it and many times has even admitted to using cold and cough products for
the purpose of getting high.
The cold preparation of choice is Coricidin cold pills (which has been yanked from the
shelves of numerous stores in our area due in part to this problem). Coricidin comes
in a box with 16 pills. I have talked to numerous kids about this, mostly because I
couldn't believe it, and all admitted to stealing or buying the Coricidin over the
counter and then eating the entire box, which supposedly gives a high similar to LSD.
Some of the larger boys have even admitted to me that they took two or more boxes in
one sitting (32+ tablets) in an effort to get high. If cold tablets are not available,
they are likely to drink an entire bottle of cough syrup with or without alcohol.
Nyquil, in particular, is one of the brands a teen will seek out. It is a wise parent
who does not keep bottles of Nyquil in the medicine cabinet when there are teens in
the house. If you are finding lots of cold preparations around your child's room or in
his/her schoolbag, you need to get very suspicious abou!
t what your child might be up to.
On the subject of drinking common household products to get high, another thing some
teens have used is pure vanilla extract that you use in cooking because it contains
alcohol, and mouthwash preparations, which also contain alcohol. In fact, any product
that contains alcohol that your teen could drink will be used if your teen is into
this type of high.
PRESCRIPTION MEDICATIONS -
It seems like certain medications are disappearing or being taken faster than the
prescription calls for
Parents, if you see this happening, it is not your imagination. If your child has been
diagnosed with a psychiatric illness such as ADD, ADHD, bipolar illness or major
depression, chances are he/she has also been given a prescription for at least one
psychiatric medication, which may or may not be helping. But did you know that one
pill of Ritalin or Adderall (common ADHD medications) can be sold on the street for
anywhere between $1.00 and $5.00? Both Ritalin and Adderall are in much demand as
drugs of abuse, and many enterprising kids have resorted to selling their own
prescription drugs to make a few dollars on the side. Dexedrine, another ADD
medication, might go for even more. And kids are more than willing to pay a dollar or
two for other psychiatric drugs, such as Prozac, Celexa, and other antidepressants.
Parents, if your teens are on psychiatric medications, no matter how much you trust
your child, those medications should be kept in a secure locked cabinet or a lockbox,
which can be purchased at any discount store or office supply store. You should be
administering these medications to your child and you should check to make sure he is
actually taking them. Why leave something like this to chance? In our case, my child
was not only stealing and selling his medications, he was sometimes taking up to five
pills per day more than the prescription called for. However, some days he didn't want
to take his medication, and although I stood there and thought he was swallowing his
medications, he was actually cheeking them. He would then would take them and hide
them to sell or abuse himself later on. I eventually discontinued some of his
medications altogether rather than deal with the abuse that was going on.
BAD FRIENDS -
You are pretty sure your child's friends are abusing drugs
Your child may even admit that some of his friends are using drugs, but will always
deny that he/she has any part in it. If your child is spending a lot of time with
these friends, don't believe it. If you really think that using friends are
considerate enough not to do drugs in front of your child or that your child is just
sitting around watching them use while not using himself, think again. If your child
is actually resisting taking the drugs, you can be sure he is being goaded and coaxed
into using along with the friends. Misery loves company, and it's no fun to get high
by yourself. Kids who are not using do not pick users as friends. It is also no fun to
sit around and watch other people get stupid on you. So you can bet that if your
child's friends are using drugs, he is using with them.
LOSS OF WEIGHT -
Your child is looking unusually thin to you, but denies having lost any weight when
you question it.
This could be a cover up for anorexia/bulimia, but it also could be a cover up for the
abuse of cocaine and methamphetamines, which speed up the system and take away the
appetite, thereby sometimes causing drastic changes in weight. In any case, loss of
weight should always be checked out by a doctor to make sure there is not something
more serious going on because many major illnesses can also present with loss of
weight.
EATING BINGES -
Your child comes home from being with his/her friends and cleans out your
refrigerator.
This could be a sign of anorexia/bulimia if it is accompanied by weight loss, but it
could also mean that your child has just been out smoking pot, which is notorious for
causing "the munchies." If this behavior is accompanied by red eyes, slurred speech,
nasty temper, uncontrollable laughing or exceptional drowsiness, you can be pretty
sure that your child has been up to something, probably smoking pot. (However, if he
is acting normally and he has just spent several hours in a backyard game of football
or other strenuous sport, then don't worry too much about him eating you out of house
and home.)
Keep in mind that the pot our kids get hold of today is ten times stronger than the
pot that was available when many of today's parents were kids, and thus is that much
more harmful. Pot can cause permanent short-term memory loss, particularly in younger
kids whose brains are still developing. One interesting fact that my son learned in
his substance abuse program is that five joints of marijuana have the same harmful
effects to the lungs as something like 113 cigarettes, so pot is in no way a "harmless
drug" as many of its proponents would like us to believe.
SO WHAT'S A PARENT TO DO??? -
Well, here we are back to the original question. How can a parent tell when their
child is abusing substances? Unfortunately, there are no easy answers.
Kids are very, very good at hiding their substance use from their parents. They become
very adept at lying and can be stoned out of their minds yet still look you in the eye
and deny that there is anything going on. Careful monitoring of the activities of your
child, reading notes and letters they have written to their friends, listening to what
is being said when they are on the phone talking to their friends, and getting caller
ID so you can keep tabs on who is calling are ways to help stay informed on what your
kids are up to. Some very technical parents have gone so far as to install small
hidden recorder devices to their phones so that their child's phone conversations can
be taped. You may be aghast at the idea of going into your child's room, looking
through his drawers and reading his letters, but if you suspect that your child is
abusing substances, your vigilance may well save your child's life. Remember, your
household should not be a democracy. You are the boss in !
your own home, and it is your res
If all of the above methods have failed and your child is becoming worse, you can
attempt to get information from your child's siblings, if he has any, but this is not
the best course of action and should be used only when you have exhausted all other
methods. Involving brothers and sisters can create many problems within the family
structure, so it's best to leave them out of it if at all possible. Brothers and
sisters are not always a lot of help in getting to the truth anyhow because they
sometimes are also using and are fearful of you uncovering their own drug involvement.
Instead, they will help their brother or sister along in his lie to you. I can't count
how many families I know of where the drug use is a cooperative effort involving teen
brothers and sisters, so when you go snooping, prepare yourself to find out some
things that you probably didn't really want to know but need to know. In the case of
younger or smaller siblings, they may be fearful of retribution for !
tattling on their older and stron
However, there are times when siblings can be a very good source of information. When
a teen gets into extreme behaviors, it can be very frightening to their younger
brothers and sisters, and by taking the younger sibling alone for a drive, buying them
a soft drink and having a nonthreatening conversation with them, it is sometimes
amazing what you will find out. They generally are anxious to tell you but want to be
reassured that you won't let their brother or sister know how you found out. It is
vitally important that any information that you receive from a sibling be kept
confidential, if only for the reason that you need to make sure the information is
correct. If a sibling tells you something very important, you need to try to verify
the information to make sure the sibling isn't just trying to get even with your other
child. If you are able to corroborate your child's story with other things that have
been going on, then you have to decide what you are going to do with t!
he information. It is not a good
ADOLESCENT TREATMENT PROGRAMS
If you have discovered that your child is doing something very dangerous to himself,
then your best course of action is to immediately find a counselor to consult with.
If the behavior is life-threatening, a counselor may recommend an adolescent treatment
program, either inpatient or outpatient, which are options offered by many hospitals
and psychiatric facilities. Keep in mind that most inpatient adolescent treatment
programs are generally only five days long, at which time the child will be coming
home but will be transitioned back to his regular school via an IOP (intensive
outpatient) or day treatment program. IOP is usually all day long, and after a week or
two, the child is transitioned to a day treatment program, which usually is for half a
day, either in the morning or afternoon, and usually lasts another two weeks.
Some kids respond beautifully to these programs, and most show some improvement the
first time they attend one of these types of programs. However, if a child returns to
his same friends that he was abusing substances with before the hospitalization, he
will not stay clean for very long. And if he has to return to one of these programs
due to decompensating behavior, you may not see as much improvement the second time
around.
The kids get good at throwing psychological jargon at you to use as an excuse for
their behavior. My child told me that he had trouble with his "impulse control" after
walking out of the school building in the middle of the day and smoking a cigarette on
the football field. Yeah, right!
Your insurance may cover a more intensive stay in a psychiatric facility or drug
treatment center, but it is doubtful. Insurance companies do not see the value of
paying for too much substance abuse treatment, so a parent with a child who has not
responded to the above measures sometimes has to get very creative in finding ways to
pay for more intensive programs. If your doctor is recommending residential treatment
for your child (as our doctor did), you may be faced with some very difficult
financial decisions, with the choice ultimately boiling down to whether you should
keep your financial picture solvent or save your child's life, with no guarantee that
the money you spend to save your child will actually do any good and result in a child
who is clean. It's a tough spot to be in as a parent!
DON'T IGNORE THE SIGNS - Parents on a Guilt Trip
If you have also read my son's story, which is included in this web site, then you
know that he is in residential treatment for multiple problems, one of them being drug
abuse. I ignored a lot of the signs that my son was using because
(a) I didn't want to believe it was that bad...
(b) I had no clue about a lot of the things he was doing, including huffing and
abusing cold pills...
(c) When I would question him, he always was able to give what seemed like a logical
explanation about his condition, which was easier to just believe than to keep
questioning him.
It is amazing how many parents I have talked to with kids who were severely acting out
and are in residential treatment, who deny that their child was using drugs. Many
parents just won't admit to themselves or others that substance abuse is a problem.
These parents categorically deny that drugs had anothing to do with the problems their
child was experiencing. This may be the case in a few instances, but I would be
willing to bet that more often than not, the kids have done a very good job of lying
to the parents and convincing them that drugs are not a problem. Parents seem a lot
more willing to slap a psychiatric label on their child, such as bipolar illness, ADD,
or depression, than to admit that their child was abusing drugs, perhaps because they
feel that if their child was abusing drugs, it must somehow be their fault, they did
something wrong, they failed to respond, they were too busy with their jobs and
ignored the child, and the list for guilt trips goes on and on.
If you, as a parent, fall into this category, please don't buy into this guilt trip.
As a recovered alcoholic, I remember that I blamed my parents for a long time for all
my problems, but my parents did not force me to drink...I did that all by myself. If
your kids are abusing drugs, they are making that choice on their own, without your
consent or approval. Kids all over the country are becoming addicted to multiple
different substances from every kind of background imaginable, from the poorest of the
poor to the very wealthy. And unfortunately, even inner city drugs like heroin have
been making a huge showing in suburbia, with many relatively affluent teens now
battling heroin addictions.
Don't ever underestimate the role that peer pressure plays in a child's drug use and
get off the guilt trip fast because your child will not be helped by a parent who is
feeling guilty and thus too immobilized to do anything.
If you suspect drug abuse is taking place, however, it is your responsibility as a
parent to try to get help for your child. Drug abuse ruins lives, tears families
apart, and sometimes kills. It is nothing to be ignored!!!
:)
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