Sunday, August 31, 2014

Everyone's doing it...even my parents!




Everyone’s doing it…even my parents!

The world today has become drug tolerant whether it be, alcohol or marijuana nothing seems to come as a shock anymore.  A lot of this started in the family dynamic though. Many parents may smoke a joint or have one two many beers in front of their children and not even think twice about it. In many cases of substance use and abuse it is a learned behavior and this creates a lot of children using.

A study was done on the effects that parental substance abuse and peer substance abuse had on families. The study was done over the telephone by interviewing parents who had used their drug of choice and offspring whom had, had parents and peers whom took part in these behaviors. The study showed that the majority of the offspring was effected in by their parental and peer’s abuse either that they also developed a drug use disorder or they developed an anxiety disorder. The study also breaks down the different outcomes from these learned behaviors from the most prevalent to the lesser and they are: nicotine dependence and conduct disorders being the most common, then anxiety disorders or depressive disorders and lastly illicit drug use. This is not to say that all of the offspring in this study showed that their parents drug abuse had made great impact in their life. It is a limitation of the study because the child may have not been old enough to have done any experimenting with drugs.

Participation in drugs is a choice and some parents choose to participate and the repercussions of them choosing to take part in that lifestyle is on them. But, after seeing the effects that this has on their offspring it can be made very clear to any individual who is making this choice the consequences not only they will face, but also their children. By continuing to make it very clear to society that drugs do come with consequence this may help to decrease use.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3514649/pdf/nihms400052.pdf
Vivia V. McCutcheon, Jeffrey F. Scherrer, Julia D. Grant, Hong Xian, Jon Randolph Haber, Theodore Jacob, and Kathleen K Bucholz (2013). Parent, Sibling and Peer Associations with Subtypes of Psychiatric and Substance Use Disorder Comorbidity in Offspring. Drug Alcohol Depend, 128(1-2): 20–29. doi:10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2012.07.015.

Abstract

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