Preventing Addiction in Adolescents: A Powerful Perspective that Could Save Lives

Written by Alicia Roselli

Addiction is a disease, plain and simple. It is not a choice, it is not a moral failure, it is not a lack of will-power.

This is an illness that does not discriminate - people of all ages, races, religions, and socioeconomic backgrounds become afflicted.

For a variety of reasons, adolescents and young adults are most vulnerable - some experts claim that substance abuse among adolescents is America's #1 public health problem.

There is hope -- it CAN be prevented and it CAN be treated. The basis for formulating prevention strategies is understanding how it starts.

So how does it start?

How does addiction in adolescents and young adults happen? The devastated parents of an amazing young man who lost his life to an overdose on his 22nd birthday were determined to answer that question, with the goal of helping other parents and physicians gain a perspective that could save lives.

They created a video called "How Addiction Happens." It is short but powerful. In 2018, it was posted by the United Nations Social Development Network. It is being used by schools nationwide in their substance abuse prevention programs and was chosen for inclusion in the Los Angeles Reel Recovery Film Festival.

Can physicians incorporate this video into their toolkit as well?

The physician community has become the scapegoat for the current opioid crisis in the United States. If one were to believe the headlines without critically thinking about the “big picture,” one might assume that doctors single-handedly caused the epidemic of heroin and painkiller addiction that is currently ravaging communities across America.

We are not without blame, but we were also unknowingly influenced as a profession by powerful lobbyists. Hindsight is 20/20 and we now know that powerful, long-acting narcotics have very limited use in treating chronic, non-cancer pain.

Physician Outlook will be covering different topics monthly as they relate to addiction, as it is a condition that affects ALL of us. We have close family members who are battling addiction, we take care of patients who are deeply affected, and we ourselves are silently suffering from our own addiction demons (whether it be food, exercise, shopping, work, drugs or alcohol). We need to be at the forefront of these discussions and be open to honest dialogue.