Teen and young adult drug use is a growing epidemic and the way we have thought about teen drug use and when to refer to treatment certainly needs to be rethought. The view from many professionals working in law enforcement, school systems, health systems, mental health systems and even parents is flawed and outdated with regard to understanding the illness of teen drug use and when to refer to treatment. Many of these systems have views that are overly minimizing and hold prejudice about the severity of consequences which occur from one drug to the next. In addition, the magnitude and intensity of drug use that must be exceeded before these systems makes a referral to counseling is held far too high to allow for a more effective intervention; a paradigm shift has to occur.
I remember when my friend, one of my mentors and colleagues talked about educating therapists in the 80’s that teen drug users needed to be drug tested. He was scorned by the industry yet had the courage to push on with his clinical truth. He was shifting their paradigm. What David Gust was offering in his talks was not the norm and certainly felt uncomfortable for all too even think about getting on board with it. His argument was that teen drug users lie, it is their way to keep the relationship to intoxication undetected and ongoing. Clinicians thought that drug testing would create an injury to the therapeutic relationship and the parent/ child relationship. David’s implicit point was that when a teen is actively using then their primary relationship is to intoxication and not to therapists and parents. Further, people with a relationship to intoxication lie, con and manipulate to protect and cover up their relationship to intoxication as it just goes with the illness. However, drug testing does not lie when drug testing protocol is done properly. Today, drug testing is the norm, however, the practice and implementation of this tool started as an uncomfortable leap in the mindset of many.
[For more of this story go to http://www.recoveryhappens.com...-paradigm-shift.html]
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