If you haven't
got time for your child's pain,
make the time;
You can pay (attention) now,
or you can pay (the consequences) later.

The final verdict on Heath Ledger's death is in. Death by accidental
overdose of prescribed medications. No it wasn't a suicide or some sordid
self-destructive act by an over-the-hill actor unable to deal with being
anybody after he had been somebody. That makes it all the more tragic.

Yet despite this not being an intentional act of self-destruction, it has
given me pause to think of what I am going to say below.

Perhaps we should be surprised that even more teenagers, young adults and adults do not
fall prey to drugs either from the street or in Ledger's case, prescribed. In
all likelihood, many more are under their spell, but they don't quite go over
the edge or are not famous enough to be "newsworthy."

What is the real appeal of heroin and cocaine, their
lesser evil counterparts, alcohol/marijuana and amphetamines/speed and in
Ledger's case of prescribed sedatives and pain killers. Are they
a way for teens and young adults to escape or merely cope with their
lives including their physical pain or endless days of insomnia, or is there something else going on?

When young children and pre-teens step out into the world
and fall on their face, they look
back to their parents to be
comforted by a mom and pumped up by a dad. If the
connection is done in the right way that is neither too overprotective/indulgent, critical/abusive, nor
absent/neglectful, but rather is guiding/supportive, that
child will internalize that response from what psychologists refer to as a "caring surround" and call upon it when they hit a wall later on in life. Often conjuring up the image
of that person(s) saying to you, for instance if you can't fall asleep (as my
dad once told me as a child plagued by insomnia): "It'll be okay, just
close your eyes, breathe slowly through your nose, and even if you don't fall
asleep, I think you can still rest your body and your mind enough to handle
tomorrow."

If that child
didn't have a supportive/guiding relationship with their
mom and dad and instead had either the
overprotective/indulgent, critical/abusive or absent/neglectful one because their parents were divorced,
self-involved, or so in need of the comforting and
pumping up themselves, the child has nothing to internalize to buttress its ego against the slings and arrows and raging hormones of everyday life as an adolescent or young adult.

What if you're an adolescent or a young adult stepping out into the
world without an internalized protective screen? (Think of it as
analogous to going out into a blazing hot sun without sunblock). What if in the midst of your uncertainty you discover uppers like cocaine
or prescribed stimulants that you can borrow from friends that make you feel
stronger and more confident than you actually feel? And what if like Icarus
you're flying too close to the sun on those uppers and
your wax wings begin to melt throwing you into a free falling panic and you
discover downers like heroin, alcohol, marijuana or prescribed downers like oxycodone, hydrocodone, diazepam, temazepam, alprazolam and
doxylamine
(what was found in Ledger's blood) to ease the fall or to just help you get to sleep?

When adolescents who may not have the optimal connections
with parents (I mean this in general without presuming to know
anything about Ledger's relationship with his) discover that they can medicate themselves and create
those "parent-like" connections with drugs to
pump them up at one end and soothe them at the other, they have suddenly created the emotional
family they never had. Initially they
feel they get to control those connections squeezing out dollops
of false confidence and false comfort from those drugs
upon demand, not unlike what they were able to do in the womb when their physiological wish was their mother's
command as she satisfied those needs across her placenta.

One reason the drug problem is so
difficult to solve is because children who have discovered this new
"family" where drugs take the
place of real comfort and encouragement and where they
get to feel "whole" are reluctant to go back to feeling like the emotional orphan they were when their pain was never responded to. Their lives feel complete as long as their drugs are
available. And when they can't get those drugs
they go into withdrawal and go from complete to brittle
in the blink of an eye.

How can we break the powerful attachment between teens,
young adults and drugs? That fit between distress and the drug that takes it away are very strong. It's an uphill
struggle fraught with frustration on both sides. The one
thing we can offer that drugs cannot is understanding the pain our children feel
and a willingness to feel it with them so they
don't feel so alone in it. We may not be able to remove the
intimidation of an overwhelming world, but we can reduce their
aloneness in it.

To these emotional orphans who have substituted drugs for the caring they
never had, we can offer understanding and hope. In order to do this, we need to
create the feeling in each addicted child's mind that
someone really cares. That there is real love and deep
concern for them from another human
being.

This will not be easy. Often what teens and even
so-called independent young adults need most, they want
least. We as parents
need to persevere and realize that "teens doth protest" too much
(young adults begin to be open to it in their twenties) when it comes to
receiving guidance from us. Parents need to pick those
moments when teens seek their input—and they
will—rather than forcing unsolicited advice down their throats when they least
want it. A caveat to keep in mind, the more you offer
unsolicited advice to pre-teens and teenagers, the less they will seek input from you when they
really need it. It's less important what you tell your children then
what they tell you. And they won't
tell you anything if they experience you as
everprimed to push unwanted input on them.

Patience and perseverance are not easy to find in a
too-busy-to-listen world, but the more parents
can summon it up in interacting with their children, the greater the protective benefit later
on.

And the benefit? One night when that child needs
comforting or boosting, maybe they'll call you or turn
inside and hear your comforting and encouraging voice instead of calling their drug dealer, their over-prescribing M.D. or rifling
through their medicine cabinent to collect and take pills that will offer
relief.

To read how you can feel so desperate to mis-take drugs see: A Day in the Life of a Marriage.

Visit Dr. Mark at: markgoulston.com.

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