The 6 Most Important Decisions You'll Ever Make: A Guide for Teens

by Sean Covey

  “So, it looks like you’re the only one who survived this whole ordeal,” I said.

  “Well, sort of. My doctor told me that because of the drugs I have the heart and lungs of a 37-year-old, even though I’m only 17. He said it’d be really surprising if I make it to 50. How am I supposed to tell my mom that she gets to bury me? I made a lot of stupid choices. So, I’ve pretty much devoted the rest of my high school career to helping other kids stay off drugs.”

  What a sad story! Five teens who got hooked on drinking and drugs. Five terrible outcomes. Who knows what they could have made of their lives. Perhaps Tom could have become everyone’s favorite high school teacher. Maybe Emma might have matured into a gifted musician. And Jay-Jay could have grown up to be a great dad to his kids—kids that he will never get to take fishing or read books to. That is what drugs do. They destroy dreams.

  THE ANATOMY OF AN ADDICTION

  At this point you may be thinking, “Yeah, but these are extreme stories, Sean. I haven’t run away from home and I’m not into hard-core drugs. I just wanna have a little fun. It’s not like I’m going to get addicted or anything. I know kids who drink and get high from time to time and they’re just fine.”

  You’re right. Many teens that drink, smoke, and do drugs won’t become addicts. But a high percentage will. You see, everyone responds a little differently to addictive substances. While one teen can take a drink and be fine, another can get hooked after just one shot. Besides, even if you never become an addict, drugs can do immense damage to your body and brain, even after just one try. So why take the chance?

  Most substance-abuse problems start with the gateway drugs of tobacco, alcohol, and marijuana. These substances are dangerous in and of themselves and, more often than not, lead to more dangerous drugs. Almost imperceptibly, addiction sets in. My friend Phil calls it the wedge of addiction. It starts so small—a drink, a cigarette, a joint. You want more. You want harder stuff. And that wedge keeps going deeper and getting wider until it breaks you in half.

  You can always tell an addict. Just watch for these three signs:

  • They will deny they have an addiction and claim, “I can quit anytime I want.”

  • They will knit a tapestry of lies to cover up their problem.

  • They will center their lives on their addiction, always living for the next high.

  There’s no getting around it. The realities of addiction are brutal.

  The Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing but________

  I believe that if you know the truth you’ll make smarter choices. So below, I’ve put together key facts you really should know about the most common drugs today. Most of this information is adapted from http://www.samhsa.gov/, a reliable source on teens and drugs.

  The Truth About ALCOHOL

  a.k.a. (also known as)—booze, sauce, brews, brewskis, hooch, hard stuff, juice

  Did You Know?

  Alcohol messes with your brain. Alcohol leads to a loss of coordination, poor judgment, slowed reflexes, distorted vision, memory lapses, and even blackouts. Mixing alcohol with medications or drugs is especially dangerous and can be fatal.

  Alcohol kills. The three leading causes of death among teens are motor vehicle crashes, homicides, and suicides. Alcohol is a major factor in each. In fact, alcohol kills many more teenagers than all the other illegal drugs combined.

  Alcohol is a contributing factor in over 75 percent of all date rapes. Dating and drinking don’t mix well. Duh!

  Alcohol makes you do stupid things. When I was in high school, I was recruited by Stanford University to play football. One weekend I was invited to visit their campus in Palo Alto, California. My host was a big, 240-pound Stanford football player. His job was to show me a good time so I’d want to go to school and play football there. Although he knew I didn’t drink, the first thing he did when I arrived was take me to a frat party where everyone was getting wasted. I drank a lot of soda. Afterward, he and his friends took me to see a midnight showing of the cult film The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

  During the movie, my host became incoherent and passed out, having downed too many bottles. He then began to vomit uncontrollably in this passed-out state. I thought he was going to die. After calling an ambulance, his friends and I carried his massive body to the ambulance outside the theater. He spent the night in the hospital. His job was to show me a good time but he only made a fool of himself and turned me off completely.

  I once read this funny commentary on drinking which was attributed to snidelyworld.com.

  • Consumption of alcohol is a major factor in dancing like a moron.

  • Consumption of alcohol can cause awakening in bed with a person whose identity you are unable to recall and whose physical appearance you discover to be aesthetically repulsive when sober.

  • Consumption of alcohol may cause you to thay shings thike lisss.

  FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions)

  Q: Aren’t beer and wine safer than liquor?

  A: No. One 12-ounce beer has about as much alcohol as a 1.5-ounce shot of liquor or a 5-ounce glass of wine. And beware of ciders and wine coolers in particular—they are deliberately oversweetened to mask the taste of alcohol and win over younger drinkers. Even more dangerous are combinations of energy drinks and alcohol—the caffeine can keep you awake, and drinking, long after you would have passed out otherwise.

  Q: Why can’t teens drink if their parents can?

  A: Teens’ bodies are still developing and alcohol has a greater impact on their minds and bodies. People who begin drinking before age 15 are four times more likely to develop alcoholism than those who begin at age 21.

  The Truth About TOBACCO

  a.k.a.—smokes, cigs, butts, chew, dip, snuff

  Did You Know?

  Tobacco is addictive. Cigarettes contain nicotine—a powerfully addictive substance. Three-fourths of young people who use tobacco daily continue to do so because they find it hard to quit.

  Nicotine is poisonous. Nicotine is the tobacco plant’s natural protection from being eaten by insects. Drop for drop it’s three times deadlier than arsenic. Within eight seconds of the first puff, nicotine hits the brain and begins the addictive process.

  Tobacco kills. Smoking is the most common cause of lung cancer and is also a leading cause of cancer of the mouth, throat, bladder, pancreas, and kidney. Smokeless tobacco can cause mouth cancer, tooth loss, and other health problems. And while so-called vaping doesn’t send smoke into your lungs like cigarettes do, early research has already linked e-cigarettes to possible health effects. Meanwhile, nicotine alone causes birth defects in developing fetuses. Because your body is still growing, smoking is especially bad for teens. And shockingly, roughly one-third of teens who become regular smokers when under age 18 will eventually die from a tobacco-related disease. Yikes!

  Ashley, a 14-year-old, watched her grandfather die from lung cancer.

  “It’s a horrible thing to see,” she says. “The cancer just took over his body.”

  Her grandfather began smoking as a teenager in the Navy. Ashley understands how a teen in the 1940s might have been tricked into taking up cigarettes. But she can’t see how today’s teens fall for it.

  “With all the information that’s out there, with all the people who have died from smoking, it just puzzles me that kids keep doing it,” she says. “You know that if you put that cigarette in your mouth, it might kill you. But you do it anyway. That just doesn’t make sense.”

  FAQs

  Q: Isn’t smokeless tobacco safer to use than cigarettes?

  A: No. There is no safe form of tobacco. Smokeless tobacco can cause mouth, cheek, throat, and stomach cancer. Smokeless tobacco users are 50 times more likely to get oral cancer than nonusers.

  Q: Isn’t smoking sexy?

  A: Only if you think bad breath, smelly hair, yellow fingers, and coughing are sexy. Ads portray smoking as sophisticated, but think carefully about who created the ads and why the tobacco industry
spends $1.2 million in advertising per hour trying to get you hooked.

  The Truth About MARIJUANA

  a.k.a.—weed, pot, grass, reefer, ganja, Mary Jane, blunt, joint, roach, nail

  While marijuana legalization has been spreading, that doesn’t mean its use is any less damaging to your body and mind. Alcohol has been legal in the U.S. since Prohibition ended in 1933, and it’s hard to imagine the damage it’s caused as a legal substance in the decades since.

  I appreciate Garrett’s courage in sharing his story.

  I had a rough time growing up as my brothers were taken away from our parents because of their drug use. I should have learned from their mistakes, but instead I too began to abuse drugs and alcohol.

  On a hot summer night, my best friend Hannah came over to my house and we started smoking marijuana. Around midnight, we left the house with a few other friends to get some alcohol. All of us were too drunk and high to drive but I thought I could handle it.

  Driving home, I thought I saw something in the road and turned sharply to avoid it. I overcorrected and the car flipped over and over. Passengers were thrown all over.

  Everyone was seriously injured. One girl went into a coma for three weeks, the owner of the car had to go to a rehabilitation center but, the worst thing of all, my best friend Hannah died that horrible night. I can never see her again, and her family has lost a daughter because of me. Even to this day I still remember hearing the desperate sounds of my friends moaning and crying in that mangled vehicle. I have to live with that for the rest of my life.

  I was charged with manslaughter, and now I am committed to a state youth correction facility where I will live for years, but at least I have a chance after I’m released to start again. Hannah never will. I have sworn never to drink or do drugs again in her memory.

  Did You Know?

  Marijuana drains motivation and harms babies. Marijuana is known to drain your motivation. In men, it can lower sperm counts and cause impotence; in women, it can mean an increased risk of miscarriage and can cause developmental problems for a child whose mother smoked pot while she was pregnant.

  Marijuana is not always what it seems. Marijuana can be laced with other dangerous drugs without your knowledge. Blunts—hollowed-out cigars filled with marijuana—sometimes have substances such as crack cocaine, PCP, or embalming fluid added.

  Synthetic marijuana is even worse. Some disreputable companies sell chemicals that are similar to the active ingredient in marijuana. They market them as “herbal” products “not intended for human consumption.” Wink. Regulators have cracked down, so manufacturers continue to change the formulas and the packaging so that they can keep selling them in gas stations, drug paraphernalia stores, and over the internet. Don’t fall for it. These products are even more harmful than marijuana itself.

  FAQs

  Q: Isn’t smoking marijuana less dangerous than smoking cigarettes?

  A: No. It’s even worse. One joint affects the lungs as much as four cigarettes.

  Q: Is the marijuana used today stronger than when my parents were teens?

  A: Yes. The marijuana smoked today is much stronger than when the drug became popular in the 1960s. On top of that, in the old days, they smoked joints, just a little bit rolled up. Today, they’re smoking blunts or bowls (pipes) and consuming a lot more of the drug.

  The Truth About METHAMPHETAMINES

  a.k.a.—speed, meth, crystal, crank, tweak, go-fast, ice, glass, uppers, black beauties

  In an article in the San Francisco Chronicle, Christopher Heredia tells the story of a teen named Sam who liked to write poetry and listen to music. Sam’s family lived a typical suburban life and she seemed to be happy. Until she did meth, that is.

  “When Sam first tried crystal meth with her Walnut Creek high school friends last year, she was scared. But she liked it. She did it again. And again.

  “Sam had always hated her body, and now she was losing weight. She finally belonged. She’d been depressed, and the meth was holding that at bay.

  “Yet not much later, she started fighting with her parents and her friends. Sometimes she spent days on end in her room, fearful that the police were about to knock at her door. She was sure they were coming to get her. She couldn’t sleep. She weighed only 100 pounds—down from 145.

  Over the next several years, Sam battled an addiction to meth and continually fought with her parents. Eventually, she was placed in a family treatment center where she made various pacts with herself and her family, “Today is my last day using speed.”

  She relapsed two more times. But today she has been clean for almost a year. Says Sam,

  “I thought meth was fun. In reality, it was not fun…I have goals and plans and deadlines and clean days to keep track of. I can’t use. I could die. Things will be the same if I use again.”

  Did You Know?

  Meth is totally unpredictable. Because of the many different recipes for making crystal meth you can never know how the drug will affect you from use to use. While one time you may experience no adverse side effects, the next time may kill you. There is no standard way of making crystal meth.

  Meth affects your brain. In the short term, meth causes mind and mood changes such as anxiety, euphoria, and depression. Long-term effects can include chronic fatigue, paranoid or delusional thinking, and permanent psychological damage.

  Meth affects your body. Over-amping on any type of speed is pretty risky. Creating a false sense of energy, these drugs push the body faster and further than it’s meant to go. It increases the heart rate, blood pressure, and risk of stroke.

  Meth is addictive. Meth is a powerfully addictive drug that can cause aggression and violent or psychotic behavior. Nearly half of first-time crystal meth users and more than three-quarters of second-time crystal meth users report addiction-like cravings.

  FAQs

  Q: Isn’t methamphetamine less harmful than crack, cocaine, or heroin?

  A: No. It’s more dangerous. Some users get hooked the first time they snort, smoke, or inject meth. Because it can be made from lethal ingredients like battery acid, drain cleaner, lantern fuel, and antifreeze, there is a greater chance of suffering a heart attack, stroke, or serious brain damage with this drug than with others.

  Q: Isn’t using crystal meth like using diet pills?

  A: No. Although crystal meth is known to cause extreme weight loss the effects are not permanent. Many regular meth users experience adaptation—the weight loss stops as the body becomes used to the effects of the drug. When this happens users may even start to gain weight.

  The Truth About PRESCRIPTION DRUGS

  a.k.a.—(OxyContin, Percocet, Lortab): 80s, OC, hillbilly heroin, Percs, juice (Valium, Xanax, Ativan): barbs, candy, downers, roofies, tranks (Adderall, Concerta, Ritalin): JIF, skippy, smarties, bennies, black beauties

  “I started using Lortab for a legitimate medical problem,” said Lee. “I was sent to a doctor who prescribed it legally. I had enough pills for 30 days. They made me feel better and got rid of the pain. After 30 days, I wanted more. The doctor prescribed more without even a checkup. This went on for six months. I was hooked. Finally, that doctor would not give me any more so I found someone who would, illegally. They were super expensive but I needed them. Soon, I needed a bigger high, so I switched to OxyContin and Ambien. I wanted to stop but couldn’t. I went to my parents and they took me to our family doctor.

  “I stayed off for three months, then went back. I got so bad financially and mentally that my dad knew I was out of control. He took the week off work and took me to a clinic. It was a five-day program. I couldn’t see anybody. When my mom called to make sure I was okay, I cried and begged her to come get me and take me home. And I’m 18 years old!

  “I will be dealing with this the rest of my life. And I will always live with the knowledge that I drained my folks’ savings in just one short week—and I know we’re not done! One addiction leads to another. I struggle with wanting alcohol
and still crave the feeling of wanting more OC. I never thought this would happen to me.”

   It starts so innocently. It seems so harmless. But as Lee discovered, addiction can suck you in faster than you can blink.

  Did You Know?

  America faces an epidemic of painkiller abuse. Opiate painkiller abuse is rampant in the United States. It’s an opidemic. Almost half of all Americans personally know someone addicted to prescription painkillers, and tens of thousands die from overdoses each year.

  Painkillers and heroin are close cousins. Heroin, one of the most dangerous and addictive street drugs, contains similar ingredients to prescription painkillers. Both are opiates and both are treacherous.

  Prescription drug abuse can be life threatening. The abuse of prescription drugs is known to cause all sorts of problems, including respiratory depression, fatal seizures, irregular heart rate, cardiovascular system failure, high body temperature, hostility, feelings of paranoia, or worst of all, constipation.

  FAQs

  Q: Aren’t prescription drugs safer than street drugs?

  A: No. Many teens think prescription drugs are safe because they have legitimate uses and come in nice bottles, but taking them without a prescription to get high or self-medicate can be as dangerous and addictive as street drugs.