Week Ten Post Two

While reading chapter sixteen I grew a strong interest in the section on drug use and abuse. Many adolescence tend to try psychoactive drugs like cigarettes, alcohol, and many prescription medicines that are as addictive and damaging as illegal drugs like marijuana, cocaine, and heroin. It is proven that prevalence and incidence of drug use increases from about age 10 to 25 and then decrease with use before age 18 being the best predictor of later abuse.  A lot of younger adolescents tend to use inhalants, such as fumes from aerosol containers and cleaning fluid, because they are easy to purchase. I find this section so interesting because it kind of baffles me. I find it bizarre that young adolescents use inhalants, when I was younger I would never even think about doing that or even hear about it. I also found it crazy that some kids begin drugs at ten years of age. I don’t understand how kids can even get their hands on drugs at that age. I really assumed most people wouldn’t really try drugs until their college years which is when they’re away from their parents. Most teenagers think that adults exaggerate the problems of drug use. It has been proven that addiction and brain damage are the deleterious consequences of drug use; it is also linked to brain maturation. Few adolescents even notice when they move past the experimenting use of drugs to abusing drugs and then to addiction. I think drug use is usually most common during adolescent years because kids want to rebel against their parents and their rules.