Wrong Beliefs That Push Teens Toward Drug Use
A Guide to Adolescent Addiction Treatment
Thailand has faced drug problems for a long time, and the nature of the problem has shifted with the times. Today, children and young people are starting to use drugs at increasingly young ages. (According to the mental health department’s treatment reporting system, the number of people entering addiction treatment through the Ministry of Public Health between 2018 and 2022 was 248,585, 263,514, 221,744, 176,889, and 58,286.) Most people entering treatment are between 18 and 24 years old, but they typically start using before age 18. When parents adapt to become more like friends to their children — taking time to talk, asking questions that encourage them to think, and listening attentively with love and compassion, while judging behavior reasonably without scolding or criticizing — this itself becomes a way to prevent and address the problem. It builds good family relationships and gives children the courage to talk openly about their problems or share their opinions without hiding anything. [Reference: https://antidrugnew.moph.go.th] All of this helps parents recognize problems early, address them promptly, and prevent children from being led astray into drug use in the first place. Modern parents need to shift from being instructors who give orders and forbid things, to becoming friends who understand, listen, open up opportunities, encourage their children to think for themselves, invite them to share opinions, and support them in learning to make sound, reasonable decisions about their own lives.
Wrong Beliefs That Push Teens Toward Substance Use
1. Adolescence is a time of curiosity and wanting to experiment. In a poor environment, this curiosity can lead teens to try things they shouldn’t. This drive to experiment plays a major role in the decision to use drugs, since it’s also tied to wanting acceptance from peers — a strong need during adolescence. If a teen’s friends are involved with drugs, there’s a real chance they will become involved too, and social pressure from those around them can push them toward substance use. A lack of knowledge about the real consequences of different drugs, along with experiences of failure in life, can also lead to drug use — often rooted in simply not understanding the harm each substance can cause.
2. The belief that addiction takes a long time to develop. Many people believe that drugs commonly available in Thai society aren’t potent enough to cause addiction from a single use. Combined with carelessness or a lack of awareness, this belief often leads to a second use. Once the body has adapted to the stimulation a drug produces, it begins to “need” more of that same stimulation repeatedly — becoming a routine need for the drug that grows in quantity until tolerance sets in.
3. Family plays an enormously important role. Poor family relationships make it easier for children to develop problems, since the family is the most important social institution a person can rely on. The reason “family” becomes a major factor in drug use is tied to how central family is to a person’s daily life — a person will naturally observe the behavior of family members around them. Families with a member who uses drugs commonly share the following characteristics:
• A family member already uses drugs, making it easy to imitate and easy to access
• Lack of warmth within the family
• Frequent arguments
• Divorce or remarriage
• Family members failing to understand one another
• Unequal love shown between children
• Comparisons between siblings that cause feelings of resentment or inferiority
• Using substances to cope with pressure from home
4. Adolescence is a stage when the brain is not yet fully developed — particularly in areas responsible for thinking, analysis, and decision-making — making teens more easily led astray.
5. Modern media often glamorizes risky behavior, for example portraying smoking as cool or drinking as a sign of being socially skilled. Media like this helps promote a positive image of substance use.
6. The belief that addiction only applies to drugs and alcohol. Most people think of addiction only in terms of drugs and alcohol, but these are just part of the picture. Few realize there is another form of addiction called behavioral addiction, where a person becomes dependent on the feeling produced by a particular activity or behavior and cannot control themselves enough to stop — for example, gambling addiction or gaming addiction. Gambling in particular is a widespread form of behavioral addiction today; while most people gamble purely for entertainment or to cheer on a favorite team, a significant number of people end up becoming addicted to it as well.
7. The belief that drugs improve work performance or sports performance. This is an important risk group that requires close monitoring, since these individuals are more likely to become involved with drugs. They should be given tools to build resistance against drug use and other triggering factors, along with life skills training to prevent relapse. A concerning trend in drug use behavior is the growing tendency to use more than one substance at a time, which makes treatment considerably more complicated. It’s also increasingly common for children and young people to mix easily available substances together to try to create drug-like effects, experimenting with these combinations because they assume the ingredients are harmless — without realizing the mixture can still be addictive. Substance use is a serious threat to both physical and mental health, affecting the physical, emotional, and cognitive development of children and young people, both in the short and long term.
A Guide to Adolescent Addiction Treatment
1. Prepare the patient and their family or caregivers. Both the patient and their relatives need to understand what the treatment process for addiction actually involves.
2. Detoxification. This stage treats the body’s physical dependence on the substance so that use can be stopped. For people dependent on sedatives, withdrawal can be severe enough to become life-threatening — including high fever, seizures, and shock — so this stage requires medical supervision. Addiction treatment generally takes one of two forms:
1) Outpatient treatment does not require an overnight hospital stay. A physician manages the medical treatment while a multidisciplinary team provides psychosocial therapy. Patients see the doctor at scheduled intervals, and treatment typically runs for around 4 months to support behavior change, followed by a year-long follow-up system to track behavior and prevent relapse. Academic reports show that when a patient has not been using drugs for very long, has no physical or psychiatric complications, and has strong family cooperation with the treatment process, this approach tends to produce good outcomes.
2) Inpatient treatment is used when a patient has been using large amounts of a drug over a long period, resulting in physical or psychiatric complications. This treatment also typically runs for around 4 months, based on evidence suggesting that the brain of a person with addiction can recover when they receive rehabilitative treatment and abstain from drug use for more than 4 months.
3. Addressing psychological and personality factors. The main goal of this stage is to work on psychological factors so the patient can stop using permanently, or at least significantly reduce their use.
4. Building a sense of purpose. People with addiction often have underlying personality difficulties, and psychological dependence on the drug can be replaced by building something meaningful to hold onto — which can improve treatment outcomes.
5. Addressing the environment. Vocational training, job placement, and social work support can help some people with addiction who are unemployed gain the knowledge and skills to support themselves and earn an income once they return to society. Counseling parents and guardians of the person with addiction so they understand the problem and can work together to improve the environment also reduces the likelihood of relapse.
6. Treatment to reduce the social and economic burden of addiction. All of the treatment approaches described above ultimately aim to help the person with addiction stop using and successfully reintegrate into society.
[Reference: Addiction Treatment for People with Drug Dependence, Chaiya Ratanaphan]
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