Teens abusing drinking and alcohol

Do teens just do drugs to fit in? well the answer to that question is no. Adults often assume that teens start using drugs due to the social pressure from their peers. However, teens tend to do drugs to achieve happiness. Without knowing the consequences behind doing drugs and the effect it can take on your body and mental state. Drugs might help people achieve happiness, when it’s just a short term happiness not a long term happiness.

The behavior of a parent can highly influence their child choices and lead to drug use and addiction. Exposing their child to drugs is detrimental to the child's health and mental state.  According to this article on teens.drugabuse.gov teens tend to consume drugs or abuse them when thier are feeling down. This is a quote describing the effect drugs have on the human body “Drugs take control of the system, causing large amounts of dopamine to flood the system. This flood of dopamine is what causes the “high” or intense excitement and happiness (sometimes called euphoria) linked with drug use.” When some teens use drugs or drink alcohol they try to get a buzz or a high from it. This high is usually produced by a natural hormone called dopamine. So when people take drugs is that they get this rush of dopamine into their system causing an imbalance of dopamine. This imbalance causes this short term “high”, but once this high goes away their system can never reach that happiness again. This causes people to become depressed and rely on drugs to be happy because of the imbalance in their system.           

Teens around the world are highly influenced mostly by their environment when they are feeling down, also by their parents and friends. Either influence to succeed in life or abuse drugs/alcohol it all starts when they are having a rough time in life. According to this article published by  Drugfree.org, a study shows that teens are most influenced by their surroundings when they are depress. “They see their parents and other adults drinking alcohol, smoking, and, sometimes, abusing other substances.” Since the teens are being exposed to drugs and their parents drinking alcohol there are more likely to do it. Which can lead teens into thinking that drinking alcohol or doing drugs is the key to achieving happiness. When in reality it's only going to have them happiness for a short amount of time.

There are many drugs that can make people happy, but the question is does it really make them happy? Drugs like Prozac and other antidepressants helps control levels of chemicals in your brain called serotonin,which are usually used to treat patients with depression , and other disorders. These drugs are mostly used for psychological condition like anxiety and shyness.  In this article published by nytimes.com. The President council of Bioethics states “ that while antidepressants might make some people happier, they can also substitute for what can truly bring happiness: a sense of satisfaction with one's identity, accomplishments and relationships.” While antidepressants and other drugs might help people achieve happiness, it's not a long term happiness. This happiness is only temporary, because the purpose of this drug is to overflow your system with hormones that's already produced naturally. So once that dopamine gets out of the system the body will get back where it started from or maybe even worse. Although teens abusing drugs may only seem important to parents it should in fact concern anyone who cares about the well being of teens. Doing drugs does achieve happiness for people , but it does not achieve long term happiness. People who want short term happiness are most likely to do drugs. The only different is when taking drugs it causes people to have an imbalance that's unnatural that causes people to become happy for a short period. Also people can never reach that level of happiness on their own, only when on medication or on drugs. There are many drugs that might help people achieve happiness, but that happiness doesn't last forever and that's what most teens don’t consider when abusing such substance.

Work cited -

"Brain and Addiction." NIDA for Teens. National Institute on Drug Abuse, 08 Oct. 2015. Web. 12 Oct. 2015. <https://teens.drugabuse.gov/drug-facts/brain-and-addiction>

Pollack, Andrew. "Can Drugs Make Us Happier? Smarter?" The New York Times. The New York Times, 10 Nov. 2003. Web. 9 Nov. 2015. <http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/11/science/can-drugs-make-us-happier-smarter.html