STRAIGHT TALK

This month we were honoured to have two special guest speakers. In order to protect their identities their real names have not been used in the blog.
‘Jane’ is 18 years old. She began smoking cannabis around the age of 13 yrs after first smoking cigarettes at the age of 12, and drinking alcohol at 13. The cannabis smoking led on to ‘Jane’ trying other drugs including cocaine. ‘John' is 19 and like ‘Jane’, he began firstly smoking cigarettes at age 11, this led on to alcohol and other drugs at age 13, including pills, cocaine, and trying heroin. Both ‘John’ and ‘Jane’ agreed the drug and alcohol users are getting a lot younger now. So why? For ‘Jane‘ it was an easy way to block out the bad things going on. ‘Jane’ suffered from bullying at school and felt the drugs blocked it out. They both felt invincible at such a young age. No one could tell them of the dangers, it did not apply to them.

‘Jane’ was a straight A student before the drugs. She believes that the bullying at school was not tackled and this led her into seeking a way out and drugs did it for her. She was always the troublemaker and school did not support her. As an only child, she felt she had no one to confide in. ‘John’ was from a very large family and had many brothers and sisters yet his experience was that there was competition between him and his brothers. From using drugs ‘John’ found that dealing drugs gave him more money for his drug use. However, this led to problems in itself with dealers after him for the money he owed as he had used the drugs he should have sold. He became so paranoid he was afraid to leave his house. Even a beating did not stop the debt being on his head. ‘John’ believes that the dealers target young people to be another small-time dealer as they are younger and will not get done by the police as much as an adult would.

Both do not blame their parents for their drug use. They blame the environment around them. Whilst on drugs they both got the money any way possible including illegally. They found they did not respect anyone or anything whilst on drugs. They believe when you have drugs, everyone is your friend. They both feel it is difficult to warn young people of the dangers of drugs. If you try to talk to a 15 year old it is probably too late for them. Services need to talk to younger kids and get the message across.

Regarding help and services both agreed they did not feel the need for intervention by services. They were alright nothing could touch them. ‘John’ said that boys are even more difficult to engage with as it is seen as macho to be doing drugs and not cool to ask for help.

What changed? ‘John’ had got arrested so many times, was scared, and had to do something. Everything was muddled. He had been tagged, was with youth offending and his mum was upset about the whole situation. He felt guilty about what he had done to the family and needed to change. Despite bad times during the process where he went through the motions of saying what he thought the counsellors and youth offending team wanted to hear, he eventfully made the change and stopped using drugs.

‘Jane’ found that her mum was her main support and best friend. She found the best help for her was to be moved away to another area. This helped her a great deal as other times children’s homes locally had not, as she could run away back to her patch. It was a joint decision supported by her mum and her to deal with the situation. Both feel they have learnt through their experiences a lot about life and drugs.

Whilst not condoning their experiences, both feel it will help as they both wish to work in the substance misuse area of work. They felt many workers in this area do not fully understand the feelings and way things are in the drug world. Supported by Youth@Act both have worked through their own issues and are now confident to talk about it to groups of people. They have come tremendously far in the way they can talk about their own personal issues.

Consistency in support workers is one main point they both want to get across. It is vital that they saw a consistent worker as it gave them more confidence and a more settled atmosphere to be helped.

More should be done to engage young people to try to avoid drugs. There is a lack of things for young people to do, they both agreed. There should be more advertised youth activities such as competitions, dance, and other things young people are interested in. This may help engage the young people to avoid drugs as an escape.