Substance abuse spiked among teens after Sandy

Medical researcher presents sobering stats on youth addiction

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The chances that a young person will become addicted to alcohol or drugs are less than 1 percent –– if use of a substance begins after the frontal lobe of the brain is fully developed, which happens around age 22. But the chances of addiction increase substantially, to 40 percent, for a 15-year-old who regularly consumes alcohol.

That’s according to Dr. Stephen Dewey, director of the Laboratory for Behavioral and Molecular Neuroimaging at the North Shore LIJ Feinstein Institute for Medical Research in Manhasset.

Dewey spoke to parents and students at Long Beach High School about the detrimental effects of substance abuse and addiction on the teenage brain on Nov. 17. Judi Vining, executive director of Long Beach Aware, a nonprofit group committed to fighting drug addiction among young people, coordinated the event. Roughly 60 people attended.

According to Aware statistics from last December, released in May, hundreds of local students are not waiting to use drugs or alcohol. About 45 percent of 11th- and 12th-graders in the Long Beach School District admitted to recent binge drinking –– consuming more than five drinks in a sitting in the prior two weeks.

Across Nassau County, 27.4 percent of high school juniors and seniors have done so, and the rate is 23.9 percent for New York state.

Underage drinking increased in the traumatic aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, Vining said, because of the emotional toll it took on the city. She had anticipated an increase in alcohol use in the months — and years — after the storm, and said that much of the progress that had been made in the fight against drinking among young people before Sandy hit was set back by the storm.

Dewey displayed colorful images of body scans on a large screen in the high school auditorium to vividly illustrate how drugs affect the teenage brain and cause addiction. Teenagers are more likely than adults to try drugs –– and become addicted –– because their frontal lobe, the section of the brain responsible for reasoning and decision-making, has not fully developed, Dewey explained. That means they are more likely to engage in risky behavior that is potentially harmful to their health, including substance abuse.

Dopamine is a chemical that regulates movement and emotions. Drug use increases the level of dopamine in the body, which in turn increases feelings of pleasure, which causes addiction, Dewey said.

The point of the presentation, Vining said, was “to hear the science, not the judgment. Given [Dewey’s] medical and scientific background, we take it out of the realm of opinion. It’s what the facts and the research and the science tell us.”

Dewey and Vining emphasized a need to eliminate the stigma surrounding addiction. Too often it is seen only as a matter of poor judgment, when, in fact, they said, it is a disease. “We have to accept addiction as a disease rather than moral weakness,” Vining said.

About three-quarters of people who are addicted to substances are self-medicating an underlying, pre-existing mental illness, according to Dewey. In men it’s most commonly depression, and in women it’s most often anxiety.

And the problem is a big one. “There are more people suffering from addiction in the United States than all the people in the United States with cancer,” Dewey said. “That’s how big the disease has become.”

Young people who have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, have abnormally low dopamine levels in their brains. “When you have low dopamine, you can’t focus as well,” Dewey explained. “We treat them with Adderall, Ritalin — we elevate brain dopamine.”

Those medications, he said, carry less of a risk for addiction. “Drugs that raise dopamine levels in a matter of days are not addictive,” Dewey said. “It’s drugs that raise dopamine in seconds that become addictive. If the drugs are taken according to the script, we don’t have to worry about their addictive viability.” The problem, he added, is that some 34 percent of ADHD drugs are diverted and abused.

“I think [Dewey] should come back and speak” to all students at Long Beach High School, parent Janet Soren said. “He was so unassuming. Everyone felt like they could ask him anything, and his responses were just so technical, yet understandable.”

Vining said the event was intended to encourage parents to talk with their teenage children about the dangers of substance abuse. “We wanted them to have conversations around what they heard,” she said.

She also said that she and her colleagues at Long Beach Aware receive plenty of support from the Long Beach School District. It was a founding member of the coalition in 2000, and has at least one representative at every monthly coalition meeting.