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Ask a psychotherapist

April 25, 2013   ·   0 Comments

Question: While I understand that hard drugs are harmful, I guess I don’t see the big deal about kids experimenting with alcohol and marijuana. I did my share of partying when I was a teen and I never got addicted. Why so much concern now?

Answer: You’re right that hard drugs are dangerous. What you may not realize is that even drugs like alcohol and pot can do significant harm to adolescents’ developing brains.  Until recently, we lacked the information that neuroscience has provided about brain development. We now know that human brains take between 24 and 26 years to reach full maturity.  Drugs, including alcohol, can interfere with the developmental process, delaying it or in some cases, derailing it.

As if this fact were not alarming enough, the marijuana sold to today’s kids is significantly different in chemical make-up from the substance available in the 60’s. It has been genetically altered by growers to contain more of the active ingredient, THC. This has resulted in a product that can be significantly more harmful to the teenage brain than older forms of the drug. Research has demonstrated that depression, bi-polar disorder (formerly known as manic-depression) and even schizophrenia can be triggered by THC in adolescent brains.  For those wanting further information on this topic, I  recommend viewing the documentary “The Downside of High” which originally aired on the Nature of Things; it can be accessed by going to the CBC website.

Teens in the current generation have come up with an especially harmful way of using pot in the form of “poppers”.  These are a combination of cigarettes and marijuana, the smoke from which is inhaled rapidly into the lungs for an instant head rush or buzz. “Popper kids” tend to use more pot than regular joint smokers as they repeatedly chase that high.  Additionally, it has been reported that some locally available marijuana has been “dusted” with crystal meth by dealers.

Alison Kerr, Ph.D., Psychotherapist can be reached at 905 936-2400 or at allikerr@rogers.com

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