3 New Dangerous Drug Habits for Teenagers

Last week I posted about why teenagers are so vulnerable to drug abuse (read it here) and the below article follows that up superbly. Drugs are so readily available to everybody now that teens are following suit and experimenting and depending on drugs in different ways that perhaps were previously not available. This is dangerous both for physical and mental health particularly in those so young and suggestible as teenagers. 

The article was taken from LiveScience and outlines 3 new ways in which drugs are being abused by teenagers.  

1. Energy drinks in elementary school

In recent years, drinks that combine alcohol with caffeine, such as Four Loko, have been blamed for the deaths of teens and college students. But a new epidemic involves younger children: elementary school students are drinking highly caffeinated energy drinks to catch a buzz. Even without alcohol, these drinks are dangerous to kids' health.

"Energy drinks are gateway for elementary school kids," said Mike Gimbel, a national substance abuse educator. "They drink it like it's water. Nurses have kids coming in with heart palpitations."
Gimbel said he has also observed a growing fascination among elementary school students with caffeinated gel strips that you place on the tongue, such as ones made by the brand Sheets.
"One strip is equal to a cup of coffee, but kids are putting five or six in their mouth at once," he said. "You can overdose on caffeine by taking three or four."
Overconsumption of caffeine, especially in young children who have smaller bodies, can cause seizures, strokes or even sudden death, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.


2. Huffing Dust-Off


Huffing, or inhaling household products, is not a new phenomenon. But experts have started to see an increase in teens huffing the computer cleaner called Dust-Off, a trend that started a few years ago.
Dust-Off, sold at office supply stores, can be inhaled to produce a high lasting a few seconds to a few minutes.
"One of the attractions is that it can be felt almost immediately," said Harvey Weiss, executive director of the National Inhalant Prevention Coalition. "You don't have to wait for something to happen."
Inhalants can cause nausea, nosebleeds, impaired coordination and, in some cases, death.
According to a study from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, in 2010, about 2 million kids ages 12 to 17 had tried inhalants, the most popular being glue, shoe polish or toluene, a solvent.
Weiss said that parents should look to see if their children have a "sudden drop in grades, a rash around mouth or nose, a change in friends, weight loss or an odor of products on their breath."
Thirty-seven states currently regulate the sale of inhalants to minors, but many of these products are easily accessible within the home, he said.
"I hear from parents, especially those who have lost children, that they were aware of inhalants, but never imagined their kids would do them, so it wasn't discussed," Weiss said.


3. Pharm parties


At age 14, Brittany Gaydosh, walked into a New Year's Eve party at a friend's house, drank a couple of shots of Bacardi 151 rum, and made her way to a Ziploc bag filled with pills.
"There were Ecstasy, Xanax, Percocets, Valium and other pills in the bag that night," Gaydosh said. "I took four Ecstasy pills and a Xanax."
Throughout her teenage years, Gaydosh attended at least 20 parties like this, the now 23-year-old said. She would take handfuls of pills, wash some down with alcohol, and save the rest for later. And she's not alone. According to experts, such parties, known as "Skittles parties" (because of the brightly colored pills) or "pharm parties," have rapidly gained popularity among teens.
"At a lot of the parties, they just throw the pills on the table," Gaydosh said. "It's like candy that you can take home with you."
Teens are taking painkillers, mainly highly addictive opioids such as OxyContin and Vicodin, from medicine cabinets in their own homes, said Dr. Petros Levounis, director of the Addiction Institute of New York in Manhattan.
"They're getting these prescription pills from parents or grandparents," Levounis said. "Say I go to the dentist for a tooth extraction and I get 30 painkillers and maybe take one. My granddaughter could go into my medicine cabinet without me knowing and bring the rest of the pills to a party."
A recent report from researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that each year, more people die from prescription painkiller overdoses than from heroin and cocaine overdoses combined.
"Addiction to prescription opioids has become the most important problem we face," Levounis said.


Full article: http://www.livescience.com/18539-3-dangerous-drug-habits-teens.html

The Effects of Drugs in Hypnosis 'Narco Hypnosis'

Hypnosis works by shutting down the physical senses in combination with the conscious mind so that the subconscious mind can be explored in vivid focus thus creating a greater understanding of mental processes. Traditional hypnotherapy uses simply a relaxed setting and carefully chosen words to create this effect successfully but in more recent times much research has gone into the use of drugs in hypnosis and what effect they might have on the entire process.

Drugs are a controversial subject in any kind of therapy but especially it seems with ‘psycho-active’ drugs that appear to tamper with the mind. LSD for instance is poison in the eyes of the press, with horror stories appearing frequently in most modern forms of media. But LSD has been used in research for many years now with some scientists believing it is the future of therapy due to its healing properties in line with a course of measured treatment. Stanislav Grof is one of the leading figures in this kind of work and his blog (here) makes for some fascinating reading.

Traditional hypnotherapists would argue strongly that there is no need for drugs in hypnotherapy as it is a very successful practice without any need of chemical aids. The list of what hypnotherapy can be used for is very long and varied of course, and it must be stated that many problems certainly can be solved without drugs simply using the power of the mind and moving it in the right direction. So why the research? The answer to that is the human mind will always seek to improve, and if hypnosis can be improved to go further and treat more complex disorders – surely that’s worth the exploration?  

The list of tested drugs in hypnosis includes; mescaline, LSD,  MDMA (a type of ecstasy),  DMT, ketamine, psilocybin,  diazepam,  nitrous oxide, zoplicone, sodium pentothal (aka truth serum), sodium amatol – as well as experiments with drugs in their more natural form; psychedelic mushrooms, salvia, peyote, ayahuaska, iboga, and cannabis. The drugs have been studied to see what effect they have on suggestibility in a test subject, or in other words how the drugs affect a person’s ability to be hypnotised.  

Studies have shown that some of these drugs show only a minimal effect, whereas others show a considerable effect under test conditions. Nitrous Oxide for instance has been recorded as making a 36% change in suggestibility of a test subject in hypnosis (Barber et al) which is a phenomenal increase by anyone’s standards. What is not known however is why these drugs make for increased suggestibility. Cannibis for instance recorded a 22.6% change (Kelly et al) – but is that to do with the drug aligning the conscious and the subconscious – or rather just the effect of making the test subject feel sleepy and relaxed, perhaps allowing them to focus more on the hypnosis or lowering their mental resistance to it? On the other hand alcohol has never been a drug to mix with hypnosis because it lowers suggestibility – so perhaps there is something in the ‘psycho-active’ element linked to these types of drugs.

For thousands of years shaman and tribes people have used naturally existing drugs such as cannabis, tobacco, ayahuaska, peyote, mushrooms, salvia  and iboga to perform what they would call ‘spiritual rituals’ of healing which although appearing very different share many of the same principles as hypnosis (read more). For these people the ‘sacred plants’ open the mind and connect the body and soul, and are used to heal various illnesses both mental and physical, as well as delving into the mind to further understand it - perhaps to a deeper level and faster than could be achieved without chemical aids. The fact that ancient people have used drugs in such a way for so long is significant because even if their work is not scientifically recognised yet, it highlights how humans the world over have used drugs successfully to enter deeper realms of the subconscious in order to heal themselves, something that hypnotherapy attempts to achieve in modern western society.

Both ancient practice and modern clinical trials appear to show that drugs can have a significant effect on hypnosis and mind treatments that attempt to connect with the subconscious, although it is still not clear how this is achieved. I would suggest more study is required until we get a better understanding of the role of drugs in hypnosis, and whether their effectiveness is due to their relaxing ‘drowsy’ lowing resistance element or whether they actually cause the mental experience and suggestibility to be more powerful.

The work of Stanislav Grof, Timothy Leary, Carlos Casteneda and Terrance McKenna on the subject is as ground breaking in the western world as it is controversial, but perhaps to the shaman of various cultures we are still far behind what they know and understand about herbal mind therapies. In the hands of experts and with precaution, I see no reason why drugs could not be used for hypnotherapy in certain cases, possibly for more serious conditions that ordinary hypnosis would not touch such as mental illness, or other cases where hypnotherapy has proved unsuccessful like serious addictions, but certainly more research is the only way to determine the subjects future. If it is possible to cure problems faster and more effectively through the use of drugs then I see no reason why it should not be explored in greater depth at the very least.