Category: News Tags: , parenting
Drugs and alcohol don’t mix. Fewer teens seem to be learning this fact as the numbers of teens facing deadly health problems continue to grow.
Parents are urged to educate their teens on the dangers of introducing drugs into an alcohol-fueled body and to avoid underage drinking all together. The teen that wouldn’t normally touch a prescription drug without a prescription from their doctor is more likely to do so while under the uninhibited effects of alcohol, and the mix can turn deadly.
Some are calling the problem an epidemic. Thousands of deaths are now associated with prescription drug abuse mixed with alcohol and it’s the parents who are seen as the first line of defense to help turn the upward trend downward. But at the current rate, about one person dies from overdose every 19 minutes, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
One of the biggest killers is the painkiller that acts as a dangerous respiratory depressant, especially in teens that are drunk on alcohol. In most cases, the teen will pass out and their breathing and heart rate will slow until no blood-rich oxygen flows to the brain, at which point the teen dies. It happens in adults as well, but many adults already know the dangers of combining alcohol and prescription drugs, whereas many teens go into the party blindly and come out facing extremely serious consequences or death.
Experts recommend that parents keep an open communication policy between themselves and their teenaged offspring. Not all kids drink and do drugs, but most parents are too willing to believe their kids will make the right decisions, which can be a deadly assumption when many teenagers are uninformed of the dangers of drug interactions, especially prescription drugs and alcohol.
