Great Barrington — In a county with a higher than national average rate of teen substance use, an increasing opioid problem, and high drinking rates all around, physicians and community groups are joining forces to get a handle on reaching young people before addiction strikes.
At a Wednesday, Nov. 2, presentation at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, “Alcohol, Marijuana and Opioids: What Parents Need to Know,” substance abuse and addiction specialist Dr. Jennifer Michaels of the Brien Center and Berkshire Health Systems gave parents and educators the lowdown on just how damaging drugs and alcohol are on developing brains.
“The critical period of development actually spans decades,” Michaels said. “It takes 25 years for a young person’s brain to fully wire for habits, likes, dislikes and skills. This is when those habits develop that will haunt us for the rest of our lives.”
Railroad Street Youth Project (RSYP), which presented the event, collects teen drug use statistics using high school data, and prevention efforts are central to its mission. RSYP board member Erik Bruun reminded everyone that the organization was started by “a bunch of 19-year-olds who had seen too many [overdose] deaths among their peers.”
RSYP Executive Director Ananda Timpane told the audience that more teens in Berkshire County are using marijuana and drinking than in the rest of the country. In South County, the numbers are elevated.
“I say all this not to scare you, but to show you the landscape,” Timpane said.
The panelists at “Alcohol, Marijuana and Opioids: What Parents Need to Know,” from left: Railroad Street Youth Project (RSYP) Executive Director Ananda Timpane, Mt. Everett Principal Glenn Devoti, Mt. Everett SADD (Students Against Destructive Decisions) President Gwendolyn Carpenter, Dr. Jennifer Michaels, Monument High Principal Marianne Young and Dr. Brenda Butler. Photo: Heather Bellow
The Berkshires likes to drink. “Drinking here is double the national rate,” she added, and later Michaels addressed the problem of parental attitudes and behaviors around drinking, and how they affect young people’s behavior.
Psychiatrist Brenda Butler of Berkshire Health Systems said parents had to “model good behavior” in this regard.
Michaels, who treats people with mental health and substance abuse problems, summed up the effect of substances on the young brain.
“We are what we do repeatedly,” she said, after explaining how drugs create unnatural dopamine responses that cause the brain to ignore natural ways of feeling good. As the neurotransmitter that makes you feel good, dopamine can be altered with drug use. So during the time brains are developing, this sets up a lifetime brain response.
“Addiction is a developmental disease — it starts young,” Michaels added. Use as a young person “wires your brain for future [addiction] disease.”
Substances, she said, “burn out dopamine receptors,” and with “chronic use, causes brain damage.”
She said if drinking or marijuana use is delayed until after the brain develops in the early 20s, the risk of addiction is lower.
Michaels says we can do away with the “myth that some drugs are good and some bad — the vast majority of drugs are derived from nature.”
Then there’s drinking. “Regular drinking shrinks the hippocampus in teens,” Michaels said, adding that this causes memory and performance reduction.
And hear this: “Binge drinking is way above the national average [in Berkshire County],” Michaels added.
Michaels also killed another familiar myth: that marijuana isn’t addictive. “There is marijuana addiction and withdrawal,” she said.
She had some harsh things to say about marijuana, which might be legalized for recreational use in Massachusetts come the Nov. 8 election. “It lowers the IQ if used regularly or excessively before 18.”
With the possibility of legalization of recreational marijuana in Massachusetts on Nov. 8, new opportunities for young people to use an increasingly more potent drug may arise.
Then she told us a horror story about a teen who went on a pot vacation to Colorado, where recreational marijuana is legal. He kept eating a pot cookie, not realizing it took time for the active ingredient THC (tetrahydrocannabinol) to hit his system. He became psychotic and jumped out a window to his death.
Michaels says marijuana has a significantly higher potency than it used to, and now, in states where it is legal, is being packaged like candy. There are even “Pot Tarts.”
The statistics will make you sit up. Basically, the more you smoke as a child or adolescent, the less successful you’ll be and the higher chance you will be on welfare someday.
Then there is that looming Death Star of drugs: opioids. “We’re in the middle of an epidemic,” Michaels said. “Last year, 40 people died in our community from overdoses.”
The county rate of overdoses and deaths has radically increased, and RSYP’s data show that 15 percent of South County high school seniors have used opioids recreationally (excluding heroin).
They’re not “skulking” around town buying it from drug dealers, Michaels said. For the most part, they’re getting it from friends, relatives or at home.
This is because doctors are overprescribing, leaving excess pills in medicine cabinets. It’s a national problem, as well. And once that addiction starts, that’s one road to heroin use.
“Use of other drugs ups your likelihood to becoming addicted to heroin,” Michaels added.
While rates of teenage alcohol and cigarette use have declined, drug use rates have not declined at a similar rate.
Michaels and Butler, along with a panel of educators and a student, turned to the problem of how to keep adolescents from harming their growing brains.
Michaels said to avoid threats or shaming, and to start talking to children while they’re young. “The average age of experimentation is around 12 years,” she said. Talking with young people about related safety, driving, legal and health issues was also a good idea, she added.
“Keep your kids so busy that they don’t have an opportunity,” Michaels said. “After school is the riskiest time.”
Both Mt. Everett Regional High School Principal Glenn Devoti and Monument Mountain Regional High School Principal Marianne Young said the schools are doing a lot of prevention education and after-school programming to keep kids busy.
“But drugs are a powerful force,” Young said.
Parents in the audience talked about ways to deal with peer pressure and suggestions for what kids can say when being offered drugs. “I’m deathly allergic,” said one parent, as a possible excuse.
“Peer pressure alone won’t necessarily be the turning point for a kid,” Butler said. “A lot of kids can stand up to it.” She said there should be a “social norms campaign” to do away with this idea that “everybody’s doing it — not everybody is.”
The vulnerability in adolescence is to “not feel popular,” she added.
Butler says one danger is that it takes years for the effects of adolescent drug use to set in, so young people “don’t feel the impact right away.”
Then there are the parents to deal with, Butler said, like the ones who come home and say, “Oh my God, I had a terrible day — I need a drink.”
Don’t do that in front of the kids.
Then there was a discussion about the impact of legal recreational marijuana and the message that will send, especially if parents are picking up their pot along with their cigarettes and milk.
Devoti had some advice, and an interesting observation. “Don’t tell war stories about your own youth — kids will try to top that or equate it as a license,” he said. “Kids used to experiment with a sense of invulnerability. Kids who are experimenting now are experimenting with a sense of hopelessness.”
“The tone of our society has become very chaotic and stressful for people,” Butler said. “Children are affected by that. I wish for comfort in all our lives so it can trickle into our children’s lives.”
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