SHM Toolbox

by Marlene M. Maheu, Ph.D.

Saying no to tobacco, alcohol or marijuana in junior high school doesn't mean there is something wrong with you. It might actually mean that you have good self-esteem, that your parents are playing an active role in your life and that you have better coping skills to handle problems or stressors. This article will discuss the role of addictive substances in teen years and how their abuse can block the development of important coping skills in the average lifespan.

Psychological researchers have found that teens who stay away from addictive substances manage anxiety and cope better with problems. Psychologists at Yeshiva University have looked for patterns to help them determine if certain variables could help them predict which students will become regular drug users and which will not. They surveyed over 1000 teens during the three years of their 7th through 9th grade years. They looked at type of stress, deviance-prone attitudes, parental and peer substance use, parental support, and academic competence.

Using the variables listed above, the researchers found they could predict who would increase their drug use at stressful times. For example, they were able to make determinations such as, "If an adolescent enters 7th grade experiencing a combination of high stress, low parental support, and low academic competence, he or she is more likely to increase his or her substance use.”

The study also found that protective factors such as emotional support from parents, such as listening and trying to understand a teenager, can help to offset risk for heavy substance abuse. They also found that no one variable alone predicted heavy substance abuse. This confirms previous research that adolescent substance use is related to a number of risk and protective factors, and not just one.

The same study also found that teens who used substances frequently had higher levels of stress and could not cope as well with their problems. This is a bad combination – more stress combined with less ability to handle stress.

In fact, this combination can grow into chicken-and-egg types of situations, where people cause themselves more stress because they can’t manage stress well, which causes more problems. For example, let’s take a look at the alcohol-using teen who fails an exam because he was out drinking last night, didn’t study much and was too fuzzy-headed to think through the final exam questions. When we look at him more closely, we might see that he probably originally went out drinking because he was trying to numb anxieties related to knowing ahead of time that he would do poorly on the test.

Researchers in the study cited above also found that teens in this age group had the attitude that lying or damaging property was not wrong. Not surprisingly, these same teens had lower levels of parental support. Their parents were not as involved in their lives. And as you probably already guessed, they had lower levels of self-control than non-substance-using teens.

If we take the example of an attention-deprived 9th grader who isn’t licensed to drive yet, who might have been “fooling around” with street drugs, gotten a bit carried away, squeezed behind the steering wheel of her friend’s car and hit and killed her other friend’s beloved dog. Now she has a lot stress to deal with.

How is she likely to cope? Unfortunately, she isn’t likely to have very understanding or supportive parents to help her learn how to manage these “automobile theft, under age and wreck less driving” situations. She may or may not have been reported to the police by the owners of the dog, received severe reprimands from one or more adults, and only have her drug-using friends to try and comfort her.

She may or may not feel guilty about damaging someone else’s car and killing the neighborhood dog, but which problem came first? Did her lack of parental involvement lead to the drug use which led to driving, the accident, and the dead dog? It’s hard to tease these issues out, but kids who use tobacco, alcohol and/or drugs seem to have a very similar constellation of stressors, lack of support and lack of stress management skills. Bottom line, her chances of using more drugs are quite elevated

Personal Responsibility Never Comes to Mind

Teens who use substances to cope with stress and anxiety often grow up to be adults who use substances to cope with stress and anxiety. As adults, they are often plagued by insecurities and anxieties, but don’t necessarily realize it. Lacking anxiety management skills, they cannot tolerate the idea of being responsible for their problem-filled lives, so they learn to shift blame outwards, to other people, events, places and things. They learn to attribute the problem to anything or anyone, but not themselves. Their anxieties are not in their awareness because when it threatens to surface, when a self-blaming thought arises, they reach for their substance of choice and numb it.

Whenever a particularly stressful event arises, they automatically bypass the anxiety by lighting a cigarette, having a drink, or reaching for their drug of choice. They may never feel the need for the stress, tension and anxiety relievers that healthy people learn to rely upon, such as intensive aerobic workouts, or increasing their meeting schedule with friends with whom they can discuss their problems. They generally don’t feel their fears so they may not ever realize they need to find someone in whom to confide. They may not take advantage of free online support communities (such as those available here in SelfhelpMagazine) or seek psychotherapy and counseling because they just don’t understand how “talking about things” can make them feel better. They don’t often seek therapy, because they don’t feel the need to change.

They might even look at such activities as ridiculous, foolish or a sign of weakness. They’ve not felt the full impact of their own emotions for decades, and therefore can’t fully understand people who do. When they ridicule people who seek help, they don’t realize that they are displaying their own insecurities and lack of coping skills.

Lost Teenage Opportunities Are Difficult to Reclaim by Adults

The most tragic part of this scenario is that the teen years are ones of experimentation. If an adolescent uses drugs to turn off negative emotions, they are learning to escape rather than learning how to master themselves in a variety of important situations. They are arrested in their emotional development.

They are emotionally “stuck” at the approximately the same life stage that they opted out and began using drugs. If and when they decide to quit using tobacco, alcohol or drugs, they often find themselves needing skill training in the very same situations they previously avoided with substances. That is, a 15-year old substance abuser will grow up to have a 15-year old emotional skill set.

This process explains why many substance abusing people seem immature, despite age or social class. For instance, may teens use alcohol in social settings to escape the awkwardness and anxiety of entering a room full of unknown people or a large party. You can probably imagine that as 15-year olds, they walked into a party; headed straight for the bar and opened a beer. They then probably went outside, lit a cigarette and finally began to feel like one of the group.

As adults, they’re likely to do the same: go to a party, head straight for the bar, and have a drink or two before enjoying themselves. Some might even have a drink or two before leaving home, then go to the party. Once at the party, it would be only a matter of minutes before the smokers find their way outside and smoke the first of many cigarettes.

If and when they stop smoking, drinking and/or using drugs, they will experience the same awkwardness upon entering a room full of strangers or a party that a 15-year old would experience, even if they are 35- or 55-years old. Except now they won’t be entering a room full of awkward 15 year olds.

They’ll be entering a room full of adults. Some of those adults will be their peers and others might be their superiors. Substance abusers who stop using their substances often feel like they felt when they started using, that is, one might have the emotional skill set of a 15-year old but need to cope as a 35- or 55-year old.

There are literally hundreds of situations that need to be mastered by teens, either alone, with groups or with a significant other. These many complex social factors are often what makes quitting smoking, drinking or drug use so difficult.
When tobacco, alcohol or drugs have been relied upon to help navigate a significant part of one’s teenage years, that adult must not only find the resources to navigate these waters without their favorite substance, but also do it in the midst of other adults who expect those coping skills to already be developed. This challenge is so great that most people never really succeed without a community to help them re-learn the missing life skills in a safe and understanding environment.

This is why substance abuse treatment centers, 12-Step or other recovery programs are often required. Without adequate treatment, most people simply avoid interpersonally demanding situations and seem immature. They either live a more constricted life or continue using harmful and often-times potentially lethal substances to cope with what they experience to be serious challenges. Their lives might actually be filled with more stressors because they haven’t learned how to effectively cope with stress. They surround themselves with other people who share their dependence on their substance(s) of choice, and never realize how “altered” their life truly is.

Chemical dependency or substance abuse treatment is designed to re-train the individual to deal with anxieties in a safe and supportive environment. Unfortunately, most people never get to experience the benefits of such programs because they don’t consider their problems significant enough to warrant the time or expense involved. For those who do, the rewards are many.

Reference:

Wills, T.A., McNamara, G., Vaccaro, D. & Hirky, E. (1998). Escalated Substance use: A longitudinal grouping analysis from early to middle adolescence. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 105. 2, 166-180.