No one is immune to the disease ofaddiction,” warns Katherine Ketcham, the coauthor of thirteen books, including Teens Under the Influence: The Truth About Kids, Alcohol, and Other Drugs – How to Recognize the Problem and What to Do About It and the bestselling classic Under the Influence: A Guide to the Myths and Realities of Alcoholism. For the last eight years she has worked with addicted youth and families at the Juvenile Justice Center in Walla Walla, Washington. She is also the mother of three children.* “I have extreme empathy for any parent who is dealing with this in their family.” Katherine understands the difficulties families go through when dealing with addiction firsthand. “Although I’ve written nine books on addiction, I didn’t know my own son was smoking marijuana until I found the pipe wrapped up in his gym clothes. I suspected it, but didn’t have proof, and I wanted to believe he was not involved with alcohol or other drugs. I knew it, but ignored it because I couldn’t imagine he’d do that.” After going through an inpatient treatment program, her son is currently in recovery. During a wide-ranging interview, Katherine spoke to us about teen marijuana use and drug addiction, and told us how parents can read the signs and get some help for their kids—and themselves.
“Chances are, if you think that your child has been smoking pot, he or she probably has.”—Katherine Ketcham
Tell us about what’s going on with kids and pot right now. How has the scene changed in the last 20 to 30 years? It’s said that marijuana is more potent now, for example. How is that affecting young people who smoke it?
This is why marijuana is so dangerous: the research holds that of the adolescents who enter treatment these days, the majority list marijuana—or weed, as the kids call it, as their drug of choice. Marijuana is a much more subtle drug than, say, alcohol. It gets them into the culture of the drug world, which is a perilous step because it can lead down the path to drug addiction.
Related: When your loved one has a substance abuse problem.
One of the dangers of marijuana is that it’s much stronger than it was twenty years ago. Although some people say it’s 20 times higher than it was two decades ago, that’s not true. Back then, pot, as we used to call it, contained four percent THC, now it’s about eight and a half percent—which is still a significant increase.* We also know from the research that it’s a physiologically addicting drug. Once a child gets hooked on marijuana and combines it with other drugs, the chances of getting addicted, particularly if they start using at an early age, are very high. And the age that kids first start smoking it is going down. In the eight years since I’ve worked at Juvenile Justice Center, the age of the first high was 13 and 14. Now I’d say it’s 11 and 12, and I see kids who are starting in the fourth or fifth grade. The perception that it’s not dangerous is widespread. Even most kids will agree that marijuana is a so-called “gateway drug” because their tolerance increases, leading them to move on to other drugs. Because they are using an illicit drug, they are often exposed to harder drugs and to drug dealers.
And it’s rare for young people to use marijuana by itself. Most kids, in my experience, combine marijuana and alcohol—“the regulars,” as they call them. And combining drugs can exponentially increase the risk of addiction.
Why is marijuana so popular with kids?
Marijuana is easily available, relatively cheap, and kids say that it relaxes them, it’s effective for stress, and gets rid of their anxiety. Anxiety is huge. In fact, by conservative estimates, half of young people who are addicted to chemicals—alcohol, marijuana or other drugs—also have a co-occurring mental health disorder. The research is clear as a bell on the intimate connection between chemical dependency and mental health problems, although it’s often very difficult to tell which comes first:* the drug use or the anxiety and depression.
A lot of kids who I work with at the Juvenile Justice Center tell me that they “wake and bake,” and use marijuana daily. I have a son who is in recovery, and in his case, marijuana was also his drug of choice. I’m not sure that the reasons for smoking marijuana have changed all that much, but the motivation or desire to use seems to be intensifying. Kids are telling me that their lives are out of control. They feel extremely stressed out and anxious, and I think their problems are very,*veryreal. When I grew up, I didn’t have images of kids walking into school with guns, I didn’t see two airplanes flying into the Twin Towers. Movies, video games, music—I believe it all intensifies their stress levels. I think growing up today, unless you’re in some kind of protected environment, you’re going to see bullying at school, pressure to use, and in many cases a lack of parental oversight because in so many families both parents are working, leaving kids on their own a lot. We also can’t discount the pressure we’re putting on our children to succeed in the form of academic performance and athletics. Kids today experience enormous stress, and they crave, as we all do, peace and serenity. Drugs may promise that, at least the first few times a person uses, but in the long run they destroy any hope of peace and serenity.
