Teen Oxycontin Treatment

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Table of Contents
Having a Tough Conversation
Treatment Types
The Role of Drugs
Helping in Recovery

According to an article published by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, prescription medications are commonly abused by teenagers. Over seven percent of teens ages 12 to 17 reported using prescription medications for recreation within the previous year. For many of these teens, OxyContin remains the drug of choice. The drug is commonly prescribed for pain control, and manufacturers have designed the medication to provide pain relief for 12 hours at a constant dose. Teens tend to crush the pills in order to strip the medication away from its time-release component, and then snort the powder to feel all of the 12 hours of pain relief at once.

OxyContin is a Schedule II drug, meaning that it is tightly regulated by doctors and pharmacists, but teens find it surprisingly easy to obtain. They might:

• Raid the home medicine cabinet
• Buy the drugs online
• Purchase the drugs from friends or dealers
• Fake injuries to get valid prescriptions

Some teens may experiment with OxyContin on a periodic basis, and consider the "high" the drug produces to be exciting and enticing. Other teens may find OxyContin simply too wonderful to resist, and they may develop an addiction to the drug. According to an article published in Psychiatric Annals, adolescents with mental illnesses may be at particular risk for addiction. They might be using the medications to suppress mental health problems. Even teens without a mental illness can fall prey to addiction, however. The drug is simply addictive, and young people may become hooked on the drug incredibly quickly.

Having a Tough Conversation

It might sound obvious, but parents have a significant role to play in teen addiction treatment. Where an adult addict might face a loss of a job, divorce or home foreclosure as the result of an addiction, a teen is often living a slightly protected life. The teen's grades might suffer or the teen might lose friendships as the result of an addiction, but the teen is unlikely to face a serious negative life problem due to OxyContin abuse. It can be difficult for teens to truly understand that the addiction is a problem and that something must be done about it. Parents can provide this background in a conversation known as an intervention.

In an intervention, the parent, child and other important people in the child’s life have an open and honest discussion about addiction. The parent strives to be clear and firm, but avoids placing blame at all costs. The parent might use phrases such as:

• "I'm worried you're doing something that's unsafe."
• "I want to help you."
• "I don't plan to punish you."
• "My job is to keep you safe and healthy."

The parent outlines specific instances when the child was under the influence and what can happen if the child continues to abuse drugs. At the end of the intervention, the parent presents available treatment programs for the child. Often, the parent takes the child to a treatment specialist as soon as the intervention is over so treatment can begin right away.

Holding an intervention with an addicted teen is rarely easy. Parents may not like the idea of approaching the teen with a litany of complaints and concerns, and parents might worry that teens will bring up the parents' behavior as a justification for their own drug use. According to The Partnership for a Drug-Free America, the best way to handle these fears is to prepare for them. Parents can role-play and determine what answers they'll give to nasty teen responses.

Treatment Types

There are multiple forms of treatments available to assist teens with OxyContin addiction. An approach that works with one teen may not work with another teen, so it's important to keep an open mind and let an addiction treatment specialist design a program that is right for your child. A tailored approach will provide you with the best chance of success.

Teens who struggle with addiction and a mental illness often need intensive therapies, and sometimes, they need to live in facilities away from their parents while they're receiving treatments. This is the sort of therapy we provide at Newport Academy. We believe that both the mental illness and the addiction must be treated at the same time, so both conditions can be relieved. This often means that the teen receives medications to help ease the mental illness, and also receives counseling about the mental illness and the addiction.

Teens with strong family ties and a deep wish to be sober may not require this sort of intensive therapy, and they may be able to receive help while they continue to live at home. These outpatient therapies may be intensive at first, requiring the teen to spend most of each day attending counseling sessions and meetings with other addicted teens, but then the sessions may taper and the teen may only attend meetings a few times per week.

The Role of Drugs

According to an article in the Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, teens who have been through one addiction counseling program and relapsed into drug use at the end of that program often need to be treated with medications. These teens may also benefit from counseling, of course, but medications may help ease withdrawal symptoms and allow the teens to participate in counseling sessions more fully. Some experts also provide medications to teens who have been taking OxyContin at high doses, so they will not struggle with the painful withdrawal symptoms that are common with high drug doses.

There are many drugs available that can help OxyContin addicts improve, including:

• Naloxone. When addicts take too much OxyContin and begin to overdose, Naloxone can block the body from picking up the drug from the bloodstream. This can stop an overdose from progressing.
• Naltrexone. This medication also blocks the body from picking up the drug from the bloodstream and it can last for hours. This medication isn't often used for teen addicts, but some do find it helpful.
• Buprenorphine. This medication keeps withdrawal symptoms at bay, and doesn't provide users with a significant high. Teens can receive the medication in tablet form, and often, it's combined with other medications that kick in if the tablet is crushed or dissolved. This makes the drug almost impossible to abuse. It simply won't work when it's taken out of the tablet form.
• Methadone. This drug has been given to heroin addicts for decades, and it's designed to reduce withdrawal symptoms and keep the addicted person from returning to street drugs.

Some teens recovering from OxyContin addiction receive some form of medication during their first few weeks of recovery, and then they stop medication therapies altogether. Others receive medications for several weeks, in smaller and smaller doses, until they taper down to nothing. Some addicts need to take the medications for months or even years in order to ensure that they're not tempted to return to OxyContin use.

Addiction specialists and doctors often place recovering addicts in strict monitoring programs, requiring them to submit to urine tests before they pick up their next dose of maintenance medications. Then, if the addict tests positive for drug use, the team can require the addict to work through a treatment program again, or the medical professionals can adjust the medication dose to keep the addict from taking other drugs. This sort of approach was studied in the Journal of Adolescent Psychiatry, and the authors found that many teens needed long-term drug therapies and very close monitoring in order to avoid relapse. It might make parents uncomfortable to think about their children taking drugs for years, but it might be the best way to truly ensure that the child kicks their OxyContin addiction for good.

Helping in Recovery

While your child is going through addiction therapies, there are things you must do to keep your home a safe and sober place for the teen to live. According to an article published by the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Temple University School of Pharmacy, some drug manufacturers are looking at ways to develop an abuse-resistant form of OxyContin. Perhaps if the drug couldn't be crushed, snorted or otherwise revised the abuse rates would drop. While this might sound promising, it may take manufacturers years to develop a system that is truly foolproof, and it's not something parents should rely upon. Instead, it's best to keep all OxyContin away from your child. If you take the medication to help cut your own pain, put the pills in a locked cabinet and keep the key with you at all times. When you're done taking the medication, ask your pharmacist where you can take unused pills for safe disposal.

Many family members find it beneficial to participate in group counseling sessions with their children. Here, they learn more about the addiction process and how to spot the stresses that urge their children to use. Listening to your child talk about why he or she uses drugs might be difficult, but it can help you learn to help buffer your child against these stresses in the future.