How to help teens with alcohol and drugs?: FINAL REFLECTION

After weeks of researching about teens that do drugs and drink alcohol I still never found the complete answer to my question. If you forgot what my essential question was its "What can we do to help teenagers who do drugs and drink alcohol?".

Even though I never answered my question completely I still found a lot of good information on the topic. I never answered my question because there is no way that we can do to stop teens from doing drugs and drink alcohol. But I did find some programs that try to help. One of the programs that are out there to help is called "Teens Using Drugs: What To Know and What To Do". The program is free it is for parents, family members, teens, and people who work with teens and families. It is designed to provide education on how to understand, identify and address adolescent alcohol/drug problems, create a positive attitude towards obtaining help for adolescents with alcohol/drug problems, and increase participants' readiness and ability to address adolescent alcohol/drug problems. I think that this program is a very good program because it is run by Ronald E. Harrison, SW. Ron is a social worker with over 35 years of experience working in diverse settings with substance-involved teens and their families. I think the program is successful because it is run by someone who has experience with teens and alcohol and drugs.

I learned some stuff by doing this research, but I all ready knew a lot of the things I found in my research because I am a teen and I know and understand what teens go threw. But I was surprised by some of the stats I found out during this project. I never knew so many teens started as young as 12 years old. I expected that most started around the age of 14 or 15 because thats when they enter high school. I did learn some ways that I could use to help people I know that have trouble with alcohol and drugs. But I think there is NO! way at all we can prevent people from doing it. The only way I think we could do that is if you are around the person 24/7. But everyone knows that would be impossible. So we have to find more ways on doing so.

Yahoo and Google helped me a lot in my research. It was very helpful because all I had to do was type in what I was looking for and a whole bunch of links would come up about it. I think I could have done this project with just my knowledge but then again I wouldn't have found out all the stats I did discover. And this was a research project so I guess I couldn't have done it on my own.

I think a good way I could pass the information on that I found would to make a short video explaining all the risks that comes with drugs and alcohol. I also thought of finding out a real life situation about a teen that had trouble with drugs or alcohol so people can see that alcohol and drugs are a real problem and not just something they talk about.