Addiction is a learned behaviour

Most human behaviour is learned and that includes addiction as well. The psychological factors can be personal and family related. People with low self-esteem depend on drugs to feel good about themselves. They relieve stress through drugs as they lack coping skills in meeting the demands of family or academics. Adolescents who are not good in socialising are easily trapped by addicts and they become the member in the group.

Sometimes, adolescents get in to drugs to explore new experiences. Teenagers with poor academic performance due to reasons like low IQ or learning disabilities are prone to drug use.

Family structure and parenting skills play a vital role in preventing adolescents from drug abuse. Most of the parents feel that if they give their child whatever they want they are good parents. They never try to find out what the child is doing at school, about his/her friends and their problem with academics; never spend time with the child to understand the changes in their behaviour.

Consequently, the drug use slowly turns to be abuse. Single parents cannot control the child or at times they feel that the child should not feel the absence of the other parent so they give unrestricted freedom.

A few symptoms to identify the children with drug use are adolescent wishes to be aloof, never responds properly to parents, maintains secrets, not willing to share mobile or laptop and talking to friends in code words, change in regular behaviour, change in sleep and appetite and easy irritability (The writer is Clinical Psychologist at Citizens Specialty Hospitals, Hyderabad.)

By Anitha Are