Teen drug use during the summer often goes unnoticed. It’s when school starts and students nod off in class, exchange pills in the restrooms, and fail tests that the problem becomes visible.
Some teens view Xanax as a safer alternative to prescription opioids and heroin with almost the same euphoric effects.
The pills kids take, often found in their parents’ or grandparents’ bedrooms, can be just as deadly as opioids such as heroin, especially when mixed with other drugs or alcohol.
Like opioids prescribed for pain, benzodiazepines prescribed for anxiety eventually stop working, forcing users to take higher and higher doses to get the same effect.
There are three FDA-approved medicines are available to treat the symptoms of opioid addiction: buprenorphine (Suboxone), methadone, and Vivitrol, a long-acting injectable drug that blocks the euphoric effects of opioids and alcohol.
But no medicines exist to blunt the withdrawal symptoms and cravings caused by benzodiazepine addiction. Instead, patients typically enter residential treatment, where a specialist gradually tapers them off the medication, so benzodiazepine withdrawal doesn’t result in seizures and death.
As more adults are prescribed Xanax, Valium, Ativan, and other benzodiazepines to calm their nerves and fight insomnia, these pills are more available for teenagers.
Some of them claim that heroin and Xanax are made for each other. Xanax’s high lasts longer than the dope’s (heroin), hence its increasing popularity. Fentanyl today is replacing much of the street heroin and is a problem in itself. Learn more about our Fentanyl rehab.