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Drug Addiction Ordeal at a Young Age
Drug experimentation during adolescence is common, according to Focus Adolescent Services.
Focus Adolescent Services is an Internet clearinghouse of information and resources on teen and family issues to help and support families with troubled and at-risk teens.
Teenagers use drugs for many reasons, including curiosity, because it feels good, to reduce stress, to feel grown up or to fit in.
Ben, a 19 year-old former drug addict in Lumberton N.C., used for all those reasons.
“I started smoking heavily when I was 13 or 14, with my friends after school cause they were cool with everyone in the school. They had accepted me and thought I was cool,” said Ben.
Ben admitted that his addiction went too far one night at a party.
“I smoked about six blunts to the head and I started feeling really weird and started thinking strange,” he said.
“Someone then told me after I had tripped out for a few hours that I was on LSD,” said Ben.
“I was so upset that I quit everything including cigarettes for a year. I was about 16 years-old then.”
Focus Adolescent Services revealed that teens also have a tendency to feel indestructible and immune to the problems that others experience.
Ben feels that is the reason he began his drug habit again.
“I started back because my great and beautiful girlfriend broke up with me. She also had been addicted before we started dating,” he said. “We were together for a year, when she got mad that I tried herb again without her. Once that happened I got job and started doing it everyday.”
No one knew of Ben’s drug use until he was 17, and overdosed on Coricidin, a cough medicine. When he started to come down from his high, he became extremely depressed.
“I did this twice for some stupid reason, and when I did it the second time, I ended up in the hospital,” Ben said.
Ben had to be tested regularly for drugs after that. Each time a test was done it came back positive.
“I didn’t quit. I kept partying. If I wasn’t working or going to school I was partying,” said Ben.
After a while Ben had the desire to experiment with new drugs. He began using mushrooms often.
“I got in trouble a few times while using, because I told my mom that I was on them and she got upset,” he said.
Later, when Ben was about 19, he stepped up to cocaine. By then, he confessed, he had done it all.
“I used a lot of cocaine to where it gave me such a strange head-ache, which I planned for that way it would make me not want anything,” he said.
Ben’s mother threatened to admit him to a mental hospital for treatment, if he did not give up his drug habit.
Ben realized what was important to him and decided to give up his drug tendency.
“I quit cold turkey, purposely nearly overdosing on powder, making me not want to do anything,” he said.
Ben currently lives in Lumberton with his mother who persuaded him to kick his habit.
“I was enjoying myself but my family hated it. So I decided I wanted my family more than drugs. They are still a little bitter towards me but things will get better,” Ben said.
Ben jokingly said he will live happily ever after and hopes that’s how it ends. However, he also knows drug addiction is a disease and things can trigger it.
I hope I don’t go back. I’m trying to meet friends that don’t use, so I can forget about it and see how people that don’t use function,” said Ben.
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