Talk With Your Kids about Prescription Drug Abuse Before They Reach Their Teens

1-800-315-2391  |  May 21st


A lot of parents don't really start talking to their kids about prescription drug abuse until they're in their later teens but today because they're so commonly abused, it's important that the discussion about substance abuse starts much earlier. It's hard to imagine that our children can be introduced to painkillers and other drugs of abuse at such a young age, sometimes even in grade school, but sadly it happens all of the time.

Prescription pain pills like Oxycodone (OxyContin) and Hydrocodone (Vicodin) are commonly prescribed for treating pain today and most households have them in their medicine cabinet or inside a medicine drawer in the bathroom. Painkillers are so highly abused today that a lot of young kids know someone that misuses them to get high. All they really know if their parents haven't talked to them about the dangers involved with abusing prescription drugs is what they hear from other young people. Unfortunately they usually just hear how 'cool' it is to get high on them and that they're not illegal drugs.

If we wait to talk with our children about prescription drug abuse when they're in their mid-teens, it may be too late. Some young children have a parent, sibling, relative or friend that abuses prescription drugs like painkillers or ADHD medications like Adderall, Concerta or Ritalin. It's very common for young people to get prescription drugs like these from relatives or friends without having to pay for them so they're easy to abuse.

What young people don't realize is that taking prescription drugs that belong to someone else has serious risks just due to the possible side effects. Taking them orally is dangerous enough but a lot of young people actually learn to crush them into powder form and then sniff the substance through their nose. Another thing young people have no clue about is that they can become addicted abusing prescription pain pills and other drugs and there's no way they can even imagine what that would be like.

Don't wait until your child is 15 or 16 to talk with them about prescription drug use because by then, they may have already been offered painkillers or ADHD medications and possibly have already tried them. HealthDay refers to research that was done and by the time some children are thirteen or fourteen years old, they have already misused pain pills.

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