Tween & Teen

On the street, addiction is classified a couple of ways: psychological dependency or physiological (also chemical) dependency. A physiological addiction is characterized by “withdrawal symptoms and medical complications” when people stop taking the drug, says Bruce Ballon of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto. “People who have been using alcohol for a long time and then stop will get sweats, shakes, nausea, go into seizures, suffer delirium tremens,” he says. This happens because they have built up a tolerance to the drug; their brain has developed ways to cope and function with the constant presence of alcohol. When the drug is removed, the brain can’t cope any more, hence the physical response. With a psychological addiction, users don’t build up a tolerance and there are no physical symptoms when they give up the drug.

The problem is telling the difference between the two types of addiction. “People will say, ‘I need my marijuana to go to sleep,’” explains Ballon, “which is a physical thing, but also they start to believe it and so they psychologically start to depend on the drug.”

Here’s another reason not to focus too closely on definitions: “In the parents’ minds they think if their children aren’t physically dependent, it can’t be that bad,” says Wanda McDonald, a clinical therapist and registered social worker with Choices, an adolescent drug treatment program in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. But a psychological habit can be as hard to quit as a chemical one. “We just don’t find it useful to make that distinction.”

Instead, McDonald refers to harmful involvement. “It means substance abuse — to whatever degree — that has a negative impact on a young person’s life,” she says. So if your child is not capable of going to school, maintaining relationships with peers and family, and drinking only on weekends or smoking just the occasional joint, his involvement with drugs could be a problem. McDonald is not a fearmonger, though: “According to the youth survey in Nova Scotia in 2002, 52 percent of adolescents had tried alcohol. Parents have to remember that most kids will experiment.” But here are some red flags:

• A sudden change in friends and more mystery about where they are going and what they are doing;
• Inability to account for how they spend their money;
• Loss of motivation (the kid who loved swimming lessons twice a week for three years suddenly doesn’t want to go anymore) and dropping out of activities;
• Change in eating and sleeping habits (could be eating more or less — different drugs cause different responses);
• Skipping classes and/or a drop in grades;
• Things missing from your home.