Lacking parental support, teens seek out peers and parties
May 1, 2010
Alexandra Posadzki
STAFF REPORTER
It was more than just drugs, strobe lights and thumping bass that drew Dana to party culture.
Now 20, Dana started partying when she was about 15, just before she moved out of her father’s house near Markham and spent a summer, homeless, in Toronto.
“Partying was a vacation — it helped me relax,” says Dana. “I would have been a hell of a lot more depressed if I didn’t have that break in the clouds. It reminded me that there was happiness out there.”
Dana spent much of her childhood in the care of nannies while her parents travelled. By age 6 or 7 she had developed an eating disorder that required her to be hospitalized and hooked up to an IV because she had lost so much weight.
“My parents were always fighting, they were never there,” she says. “I suppose it was my subconscious mind doing the one thing it could to have control, which is, I’m going to eat, or, I’m not going to eat.”
Her parents started sending her to psychiatrists at age 7 or 8 and she was diagnosed with clinical depression, that still comes and goes. By 14, Dana says she ``kicked and screamed’’ and refused to keep seeing psychiatrists, as she said they only upset her more.
It’s not unusual for kids who feel they lack parental support to seek it from their peers and sometimes this can lead them to self-medicate with drugs or alcohol, experts say. The support of friends can be helpful, but narcotics and intoxicants can lead to more serious problems.
“I don’t want to negate the importance of feeling connected to people,” says Joanne Schenfeld, manager of the Youth Addiction and Concurrent Disorders Service that is part of Child Youth Family Program.
“The central theme of adolescence is learning to connect to peers, creating close relationships to people outside of your family. The risk is of doing it in the context of activities that may ultimately cause more harm over the long term,” she says.
Dana’s parents split up when she was 9, and she stayed with her dad while her mom travelled the world and “kept in almost no contact.”
By age 17, Dana had tried to kill herself three times. Her parents turned a blind to these suicide attempts, she says, because they didn’t know how to deal with them.
After her stint of homelessness Dana moved in with her mother, who had settled in a small town outside of Orangeville. The transition from big city life to the dirt roads of a rural town was “almost oppressive” for Dana.
She found herself visiting Toronto every other weekend to party and to collect drugs such as ecstasy and the street version of an anaesthetic called ketamine to bring back home.
“Drugs helped preserve my sanity, as strange as it may seem to say that,” she says.
Despite the drugs and partying, she maintained honour roll grades and finished high school.
It was her friendships with other youth she met at raves that really helped her pull through.
“I had a lot of friends that I had met when I didn’t have anywhere to live, and they became my family,” says Dana.
“Everyone had this unity, because we were all there for one thing, and that was to have a good time. It wasn’t that we all wanted to do drugs and hear loud music. You could do that in your basement. Everyone just wanted to be together.”
Dana says she has always been “careful” with drugs, researching them thoroughly, and has never been dependent on substances.
“Drugs helped me see things from different points of view, which is key in my understanding the world and myself,” says Dana. “When you’re depressed it’s hard to think of anything except for the fact that you are depressed, why you’re depressed and being angry at the circumstances.”
Dr. Marshall Korenblum, the chief psychiatrist at the Hincks-Dellcrest Centre for Children, says that self-medicating is one of several reasons why young people experiment with illegal substances.
“There’s either anxiety or depression or some other feeling that they’re trying to get rid of by using the drugs,” says Korenblum.
One of the problems with self-medicating, says Korenblum, is that illegal drugs are not standardized or controlled.
“You never know what kind of a dosage you’re getting and you never know if it’s clean,” he says.
Shenfeld and Korenblum list brain damage, impaired judgment, exacerbation of existing psychological issues, problems at school and difficulties developing proper coping skills as some of the risks of adolescent drug use.
Korenblum also says that one of the dangers of self-medicating is that it can mask the problem, thus delaying diagnosis and treatment.
“I found that drugs helped me focus a lot more and, not mask my emotions, but organize them better,” says Dana, who has graduated from college and is on her own, making a living as an artist.
She attributes her improved mental state partly to taking antidepressants for about six to eight months, although she had bad withdrawal when she stopped, and partly to “growing as a person.” She still believes overall that prescription drugs are more dangerous than street drugs because people assume they’re safe.
Resources for youth
Central Toronto Youth Services is a community-based children’s mental health centre that provides a variety of services such as counselling and skill-building for at-risk youth. Contact: 416-924-2100, www.ctys.org
Kids Help Phone is a 24-hour phone line for children and youth across Canada who wish to talk anonymously with a counsellor. Contact: 1-800-668-6868, www.kidshelpphone.ca
The Hincks-Dellcrest Centre is a non-profit centre that delivers a range of mental health services such as counselling and early intervention programs to children, youth and their families. Contact: 416-633-0515 for Sheppard location; 416-924-1164 for Jarvis location. www.hincksdellcrest.org
The Evergreen branch of the Yonge St. Mission provides services and resources for street-involved youth such as meals, recreational activities, employment resources and health care.
416-977-7259 ext. 238
R.E.A.C.H. (Recovery and Education for Adolescents Choosing Health): The Youth Addiction Services at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) offers a day treatment program which enables clients to combine treatment, life skills and academic programming. Referrals are accepted throughout the year on an ongoing basis. This program is for youth between the ages 16-24 who are experiencing substance use problems with or without related mental health concerns and are willing to engage in treatment. Phone: 416 535-8501, ext. 1730