But kids are smart and are finding new ways to get high from a practice of which their parents might not yet be aware. Looking for drugs in their dresser drawers and closets and smelling their breath or clothing will not likely help to find this newer practice. The Choking Game, also known as Pass Out, the Fainting Game, and Space Monkey, is when a person cuts off the supply of blood and oxygen to the brain to induce a high sensation.

According to a Texas university study, 1 in 7 college students have played the Choking Game in order to get high. Unfortunately, those who play this game sometimes accidentally kill themselves or their friends.

Easy to Play, Easy to Lose

It’s easy to play the Choking Game, but the losses are tragic. There are no monetary costs for drugs, no illegal purchases. Game "pieces" include simple things like rope, string, ties, or plastic bags.

A person can play the game alone or with others. Players tie ropes, neck ties, or whatever they can around their neck and tighten it until the person loses consciousness. Other players place plastic bags over their heads to cut off their supply of oxygen.

Researchers from Sam Houston State University’s Crime Victims’ Institute conducted a survey on the practice of "Choking." Out of 837 students, they found these statistics:

• First-time players’ average age was 14
• More males played it than females
• 16 percent had played the game at least once, three-fourths twice or more
• Most students began playing it in a group

It’s Not Suicide

Children and young adults who play these games are often unaware of the tragic dangers of this game. At an age where they sometimes feel invincible to death, these kids are shocked when a friend or sibling dies from accidental strangulation.

Child psychologist, Dr. Lawrence Shapiro, believes that some of these fatalities may have previously been misidentified as suicides. Because children use ropes, ties, and other objects to strangle themselves into unconsciousness, it looks as though they were attempting to take their own lives.

Prevention

Awareness of this problem is key in helping parents and teachers educate youth about the dangers of this game. A survey revealed that 90 percent of parents believe that school health classes should educate students about the dangers of this game.

Parents can watch for these warning signs in their child:

• Bruises or marks on child’s neck
• Frequent headaches
• Bloodshot eyes
• Collecting ropes or plastic bags

One mother whose child died from choking has started her own website for prevention. She noticed that there were hardly any Internet sites that talk about this dangerous game. She hopes her website will help educate parents about choking and help them identify warning signs so they can prevent any tragedies in their own family.

This is also the age when most young adults will have their first experience in relation to drugs or alcohol. They might see friends using substances and decide to engage or not engage. It is a challenging time of making the best decisions they can for their mind and body.

Couple this with the fact that researchers have found that a teen’s decision-making part of the brain may be compromised once they begin using these drugs. The part of their young brains associated with rewards makes them more susceptible to forming an addiction than it does an adult.

Professor of neuroscience in Pitt University’s Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences, Bita Moghaddam, led the study that was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. She was aided by coauthor David Sturman, a MD/PhD student in Pitt’s Medical Scientist Training Program.

Moghaddam and Sturman studied brain activity related to reward, motivation, forming habits, and decision-making in adult and adolescent rats. Using a method named "behavioral clamping", the researchers implanted electrodes into the brains of both adolescent and adult and rats to study whether neuron activity would cause the subjects to process identical behavior differently.

When anticipating a reward, adolescent rats had increased activity in a part of the brain called the dorsal striatum (DS). The DS in the adult rats was not increased. This distinction between adolescent and adult brain reactions is crucial in the different ways adults and youth may react to addiction because of the significance of the role of the DS. The DS is an area associated with forming habits, making decisions, and motivated learning.

Researchers reported that adults and adolescents had similar brain reactions in the nucleus accumbens, the part of the brain most often associated with reward and motivation. Moghaddam is anxious to continue research on how adolescent brains are motivated by rewards, form decisions, and influence the formation of habits.

Moghaddam is concerned about the implications from Pitt’s findings. If adolescents’ brains are more sensitive to reward anticipation than in adults, then this anticipation can directly affect the part of the brain responsible for making decisions and forming habits.

Moghaddam stresses that more research needs to be done to help adolescents avoid addiction to stimulants. His team plans to continue their research and hopes to develop prevention strategies for young adults based on their studies.

In the article, Cardoso highlights his belief that the best interests of children should be the primary consideration of all the policies affecting them. The former president adds that the current approaches have failed at trying to protect children from drug harms and drug use. He calls for several issues to be debated such as how controlling drugs and legal regulations would affect children. Cardoso remains convinced the recommendations of such policies from the Global Commission would have important benefits for young people.

However, Cardoso does urge caution when it comes to business dealings in the future concerning illicit drugs. It has been his experience in dealing with corporations for tobacco and alcohol that their priorities are in maximizing profits and not public health. He emphasizes the need to protect our children stating that we cannot let drugs carry over into the criminal market or to an unregulated market.

Cardoso’s article is a challenge to activists, politicians and researchers and is no doubt controversial. He believes the current policies have caused children harm due to disregard, negligence and carelessness on the part of policy makers. Cardoso added that the policies affecting children, as shown in the Rights of the Child from the UN Convention, should focus on children being at the forefront of the policy discussions on drugs.

Cardoso, along with Professor Gerry Stimson of the International Journal of Drug Policy, believe an open environment should be created to safely discuss these issues in order to best serve the children.

According to the CDC researchers, many teenagers are affected by chronic sleep deprivation due to several variable factors, including employment, academics, social, economic, and recreational pressure, as well as biological and family issues. Additionally, sleep deprivation is a common symptom in several mental health conditions, such as major depression and suicidal ideation. In their study, published in the scientific journal Preventive Medicine, lead research Lela McKnight-Eily and colleagues evaluated the prevalence of sleep deprivation among high school students and its correlations to other significant health-risk factors.

Using the 2007 national Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS), the researchers analyzed the responses of 12,154 public and private high school students from across the nation regarding their personal health and behaviors. Based on the report’s findings, the researchers discovered that the majority of high school students (nearly 70%) are not receiving the recommended eight hours of sleep per school night. These sleep-deprived students were also more likely than those who reported sufficient sleep to engage in multiple risky behaviors. Students with insufficient sleep reported higher rates of current alcohol use, current cigarette use, current marijuana use, current sexual activity, experiencing serious suicidal thoughts, experiencing sad or hopeless feelings, and getting into one or more physical fights per year. In addition, sleep-deprived students reported higher rates of physical inactivity and unhealthy eating habits.

According to McKnight-Eily and her team, sleep-deprived students have a higher propensity toward risky behaviors due to a decreased ability to comprehend the consequences of negative behaviors as well as an increased receptiveness to peer pressure. Likewise, the combination of sleep deprivation and substance use can significantly hinder motor skills like concentration, alertness, and coordination. This negative combination puts these adolescents at greater risk of further risky behaviors, including heightened recklessness, sexual activity, and injury.

Based on the study’s results and the prevalence of insufficient sleep among teenagers, the researchers assert that more awareness needs to be placed on adolescents’ healthy sleeping habits in order to encourage healthier lifestyles during their crucial developmental years.

The first study from Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health in New York found that you more than double your risk of an automobile accident if you use marijuana before driving a car. Professor Guohua Li and his colleagues went through information from nine previous studies in six different countries that tracked both marijuana and motor vehicle accidents. Some of the people in the study had used marijuana within an hour before driving, and others within a year or more. The study found that marijuana use affected driving skills for up to three to four hours, and the risk of a crash was 2.7 times higher among marijuana users then non-users.

Writing in the journal Epidemiologic Reviews, Dr. Li emphasized that the risk of an automobile crash in terms of marijuana use was related to the dose, the frequency of use, the strength of the drug, and how it was taken. Marijuana may interfere with muscular coordination and reaction times, he speculated.

Some critics say that the study does not actually prove that marijuana increases the risk of an automobile crash by two or three times.

"Most of these studies point to a very strong bad effect of marijuana and driving, but there are studies out there that actually go the other way," said Chuck Farmer, director of statistics at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

The second study, this time from Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands, found that smoking marijuana increases the risk of depression in young people who have genetic predispositions to that mental disorder. The research team analyzed data collected over five years from 428 families with two teenagers each, and found a strong association between marijuana use and increased depressive symptoms among those with the genetic predisposition. The Dutch researchers concluded that the teenagers were not using marijuana as a form of self medication, but that marijuana itself increased depressive symptoms in young people with that specific genotype.

"The effect is robust. It still remains, even if you take into account a series of other variables that cause the effect, such as smoking, alcohol use, upbringing, personality, and socio-economic status," the research team wrote in the journal Addiction Biology.

Sixteen states have legalized marijuana for medical uses only, although these new state policies are in conflict with a federal law that classifies marijuana as illegal to use for any reason.

You know prescription and over-the-counter medication abuse is a serious problem, but how much do you really know about the nation’s fastest growing drug problem?

True or False? Prescription medications are among the top three most commonly abused drugs among teenagers.

True. According to the 2009 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), alcohol and marijuana are the drugs most often abused by adolescents, followed by prescription medications (particularly opiates like Vicodin and OxyContin). Government studies show that more than six million teens and adults have abused a prescription drug and nearly 2.5 million children have gotten high by abusing cough medicine.

True or False? Most teenagers get their prescription drugs from family or friends.

True. Multiple surveys show that the majority of people who abuse prescription drugs obtain them from family and friends. Some find the medications in the family medicine cabinet or at a friend’s house while others may buy or steal drugs from the people closest to them.

True or False? Medicines can be safely disposed of by flushing them down the toilet or throwing them in the trash.

False. Flushing medications down the toilet or tossing them in the garbage can pollute the water and soil and become a safety hazard. LockTheCabinet.com, a prescription drug abuse awareness campaign, recommends that families put locks on their medicine cabinets or store prescription and over-the-counter medications in a lockbox.

If there are unused and unwanted medications lying around the house, bring them to a designated drop-off location during one of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s National Prescription Drug Take Back events. If you decide to throw medications in the garbage, be sure to follow the guidelines for proper prescription drug disposal.

True of False? Teens learn everything they need to know about the dangers of prescription drugs at school.

False. Adolescents gain only a basic knowledge of the dangers of prescription drug abuse at school. In fact, without parental involvement, teens are more likely to get their facts – which are often inaccurate – from their friends.

True or False? Overdose is only a risk for people who abuse street drugs like heroin or cocaine.

False. Prescription drugs pose a severe overdose risk, particularly when taken in large doses or mixed with other drugs. In 2009, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that prescription drug overdoses were the leading cause of preventable death in the U.S., moving ahead of car accidents for the first time in history.

True of False? Parents should educate their teens about the risks of medicine abuse, but friends end up having more influence.

False. During adolescence, young people are strongly influenced by their peers, but studies show that parents remain the most powerful force in a teen’s life. Studies show that teens who learn about the risks of drugs from their parents are 50 percent less likely to use drugs.

You know to keep OTC and prescription medications out of reach. LockTheCabinet.com also recommends taking the following steps to safeguard your family:

• Educate yourself about OTC and prescription drug abuse.
• Talk openly and often with your teens about the risks of abusing medications.
• Maintain an active presence in your child’s life.
• Promote positive self-esteem by providing unconditional love and support.
• Get to know your teen’s friends and their parents.
• Be a strong role model by using medications responsibly.

The message of National Medicine Abuse Awareness Month is that OTC and prescription medication abuse can have serious consequences. Although many teenagers believe prescription drugs are safer than street drugs, when taken other than as prescribed, the results can be fatal. Be part of the solution by getting educated about the prevalence of medicine abuse and its associated dangers, and sharing that knowledge with your children, family and friends.

So who is your teen friends with – and why does it matter? Whereas a positive peer group can influence your teen to excel in school, join a sports team or pick up a hobby, a negative peer group can take your teen on a fast downward spiral. Here are a few signs your teen’s friends may be putting them at risk.

Having Too Many Friends

When it comes to the size of your teen’s social network, less may be more. According to researchers from the University of Wisconsin, Madison School of Medicine and Public Health, adolescents with lots of friends are more likely to start drinking alcohol (even if those friends don’t drink) than teens who have just a few close friends.

The same study suggests that being “in” with the in-crowd is overrated. The researchers found that the more popular people in a teen’s social network, the greater the risk that the teen would start drinking.

Researchers believe too much time spent maintaining a social network means less time bonding with family. Future research may help determine whether the same results hold true with social networking websites like Facebook.

Having Older Friends

Having older friends can increase the chances that your teen will get involved in substance abuse, unprotected sex and other risky behaviors. The size of the age gap – for example, one or two years versus three or four years – makes a difference, as does the age of your child and trustworthiness of the friend. A 17-year-old hanging out with a well-adjusted 18-year-old may not be cause for concern, but a 13-year-old buddying up with a 16-year-old rebel may be a red flag.

Having Friends of the Opposite Gender

Studies indicate that during early adolescence boys can be friends with girls, but girls can’t be friends with boys. Research published in the Journal of Research on Adolescence suggests that girls who make friends with boys in early adolescence are more likely to develop substance abuse problems than those who hold off on co-ed friendships. Boys, on the other hand, can become friends with girls in early adolescence without facing these risks.
The same study also showed that girls with male friends were more likely to struggle with antisocial behavior and early puberty. They were also more likely to be friends with older males, which further increases the risk of substance abuse and risky sexual behavior. As boys and girls mature, and co-ed relationships become the norm, these risks lessen.

Having Friends Who Misbehave

The number, age and gender of your teen’s friends may be less significant than whether or not they are positive influences. A study published in the Journal of Early Adolescence shows that teens whose friends were prone to misbehave performed worse in school than those whose friends are socially engaged in positive ways, such as completing assignments on time or joining a team sport at school.

Alcohol-Abusing Friends of a Love Interest

It’s not only your teen’s friends that have an influence on their behavior. The friends of your teen’s boyfriend or girlfriend can also impact your teen’s decision to drink alcohol or not, according to research published in the journal American Sociological Review.

If a love interest’s friends drink alcohol heavily or frequently, your teen is more likely to follow suit, even if their own friends and romantic partner do not drink. In fact, if friends of friends are heavy drinkers, your teen is more than twice as likely to binge drink as teenagers with friends or romantic partners who are heavy drinkers, the researchers said.

The good news is that the effect works the opposite way as well. If a love interest’s friends do not drink, your teen is less likely to abuse alcohol. Teens may believe that behaving more like their date’s friends will strengthen their relationship.

Parents Reign Supreme

Teenagers are in the process of figuring out who they want to be. They need some latitude to explore new friendships, but that doesn’t mean you’ll be forced to sit on the sidelines. Your teen’s friends matter, but you matter more. Stay involved in your teen’s life, get to know their friends and be sure to make family a priority. As important as friends are, research shows that teens benefit most when time with the family comes first.

A new study from Pennsylvania State University indicates that if your child is dating someone, you might find warning signs of alcohol use by looking at the new boyfriend or girlfriends’ friends. Study researcher Derek Kreager says that a new dating situation introduces a potential group of friends that may bring in new acceptable norms. Kreager is an associate professor of crime, law and justice at the university.

The results of the study showed that teens are more affected by the alcohol-related habits of their romantic interests’ friends than by those of their own friends or even their romantic partners. One specific finding indicated that if the friends of a romantic partner are heavy drinkers, the odds more than doubled that the teen would participate in binge drinking.

Kreager and colleagues accessed information from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health to analyze data on 449 heterosexual couples (a total of 898 students) gathered in 1994, before the individuals had begun dating, as well as data from 1996, after the individuals had become couples. The teens were in grades 7 through 12 when the first round of information was gathered.

The analysis showed that before the couple was dating, there were few friends shared between the individuals and the teens tended to have friends of their own gender. However, the researchers found that the teens were motivated to imitate the habits of their partner’s friends in order to cement the bond with their romantic partner.

The authors note that the influence can also be a positive factor in a teen’s decisions. If a teen starts dating a person whose friends are non-drinkers, they are more likely to refrain from drinking, too. It is the same effect, but in the opposite direction.

The study’s findings highlight the new experiences and norms that a teen is exposed to when they begin dating which can influence their behaviors and choices. Dating also provides more opportunities to form friendships with individuals of the opposite gender.

The researchers note that parents should not discount the habits of their child’s own friends, however. While the drinking habits are revealed to be more influential than those of the teen’s own friends, the friends and partner of the teen still have major impact on their decisions.

The study’s findings are published in the October edition of the journal American Sociological Review.

Belief vs. Reality

A recent study found that this is not the case for many parents. The C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital Poll on Children’s Health at the University of Michigan found a great discrepancy between the number of teens that say that they use marijuana or alcohol and the number of parents who believe that their child may have tried one of the substances.

The report revealed that of parents polled, 10 percent believe that their children, between 13 and 17 years old, have consumed alcohol in the last 12 months, and only 5 percent believe that their teens have smoked marijuana over the same time period. However, the most recent Monitoring the Future study reported that 52 percent of tenth graders reported consuming alcohol in the past year and 28 percent of tenth graders reported smoking marijuana in the same time period.

Bernard Biermann, M.D., Ph.D., Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan’s Department of Psychiatry and Medical Director of the Child/Adolescent Inpatient Unit, explains that the results reflect a "mismatch" between what parents believe their children’s behavior is and what teenagers report about themselves.

The Importance of Open Communication

The results indicate that it is necessary to increase awareness among parents and work on communication between parents and teens. If parents are more aware, says Biermann, it opens them up to the idea that their teen may possibly be engaged in marijuana- or alcohol-related behaviors and they are more likely to initiate a conversation with their children about it.

One interesting finding of the analysis was that parents of teens believed that at least 40 percent of tenth graders used marijuana in the last year and that 60 percent of tenth graders drank alcohol in the last year. This shows that parents are more able to believe marijuana and alcohol are used by other teenagers, but don’t believe that their children are likely to use the drugs.

The findings show that there is great potential for developing campaigns for education of the general public in order to raise awareness among not only teens, but also their parents and adults in the community. Efforts such as these are often successful at raising awareness and increasing communication.

For parents who need some guidelines in talking with their teens about drug and alcohol use, Biermann suggests having the conversation in a non-threatening way, but also closely monitoring teens when they arrive home for signs of substance use. In addition, parents should not get overly upset if they learn of an isolated occurrence of substance use, but instead keep communication open, acting as a buffer for their kids when peer pressure becomes difficult.

Biermann also suggests that parents keep communication open with other parents and the teens that their children spend time with. Parents can also find information to increase understanding and awareness at the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

What Parents Need to Know About Kratom

The newest drug gaining popularity among teens is kratom. Kratom is an herbal drug derived from a plant found in southeast Asia. Although it has been used for a variety of medicinal purposes in other countries, in the U.S. it has no established medical use. Kratom is sold in the form of leaves, powder, extract or capsules, and can be swallowed, drank as a tea or snorted as a powder.

Kratom is not controlled by the Drug Enforcement Agency (though it did make the “watch list”) and is easily accessible in head shops or on the Internet, often under the names Thom, Kakuam, Biak, Thang or Ketum.

Effects of Kratom

The effects of kratom vary depending on the dose. In low doses, kratom has stimulating effects; in high doses, it produces euphoria and sedation. These effects kick in within minutes after use and typically last two to five hours.

The stimulant effects of kratom typically include insomnia, alertness, weight loss, increased energy and sexual desire, and sociability. The depressive effects include itchiness, nausea, constipation, dry mouth, sweating and reduced sensitivity to pain.

Kratom Is Addictive

Users report a relatively mild high from kratom abuse. However, the drug is addictive and prolonged use can lead to kratom addiction. Once a tolerance to the drug develops, users who stop taking kratom may experience withdrawal symptoms such as cold-like symptoms, depression, diarrhea and insomnia. In an effort to cope with these withdrawal symptoms or to amplify the high, users may begin using harder drugs or mixing kratom with alcohol or other drugs.

You may not have heard of kratom, but drug rehab centers have. More and more teens are being admitted into kratom rehab to address the drug’s effects as well as the underlying causes of their addiction. Kratom rehab typically begins with detox, followed by 12-Step involvement, intensive therapy and relapse prevention planning.

Kratom is herbal, legal and readily accessible, but that doesn’t mean it’s safe. Talk to your teen about all of the drugs that pose a threat to their health and well-being – not only marijuana and alcohol, but also this new group of drugs that includes kratom, bath salts, Spice and others. If your teen shows signs of kratom abuse, get help. Kratom rehab centers understand this drug and its dangers, and can get your teen back on track.