hello everyone and welcome to two thousand and ten my name is joan kaylor and welcome to relax with jan i used shows that i've taped previously have been a little bit on the lighthearted side and this time i want to start the year on a rather serious subject and go back to my roots which is counseling as you all may or may not know i'm a licensed professional counsellor and i do all types of counseling individual family work with children the one type of counseling that i don't do however is addictions counseling to alcohol and substances so i have asked a representative m from gateway rehabilitation to join me today to talk about drug and alcohol abuse paul thank you so much for joining me on the show today i really appreciate you being here absolutely  interested in talking about this subject because it affects all ages obviously and i know that you are an expert in the outreach of education of particularly teens in drug and alcohol abuse so i want to start out the show by asking you a basic question which is what exactly is a drug and alcohol abuse well that's the big question and you're going to get a lot of different answers depending on who you're talking to whatever i'm talking to parent groups or talking to teens i think it's really important to emphasize that there is a difference between having a drug and alcohol problem and having an addiction a lot of people don't really know what those differences are they interchange the two quite simply if you use drugs and alcohol you might have problems a calm as a result of that first thing that happens when you use is that basically it affects that part of your brain that wear your judgment so it's and also the place in your brain where you make decisions about things so the first thing that go right off the bat is you're not using this good judgment is normally would and your impulse control isn't what it normally would be and so it's not unusual for someone who uses to get into trouble or to have problems either with a lot with their family at school or at work you don't have to be an addict to have a problem as a result of drug and alcohol use that can happen just because it happens about thirty five percent of americans are going to have a serious problem at some point time their life as a direct result of their drug and alcohol use when we're talking about addiction we're talking about something that's much more specific than that and we're actually talking about the brain disease of addiction and what we know scientifically through a lot of things that we've learned over the last you know decade or so with brain imaging and with a lot of other science it's been put into this is that there is a very strong physical brain component of addiction and what separates an addict from someone who's just using and having problems is how their brain is actually taking these chemicals and what actually happens in that person's brain people who do brain imaging can look at a person's brain and can see how that addicks brain actually functions differently from somebody who's not in that act and even when that person is not using their brain it still functions differently which backs up a lot of things that people may have been saying for decades which is that once you're an addict you're an addict and science is showing that once your brain has actually made that change made that switch it does not go back to the way that it used to function i see a lot of people in my practice that have depression and anxiety  it's kind of like which came first the chicken or the egg but if they're actively using or actively addicted to a substance i refer them to gateway because i don't treat that right off the bat i want to do a little bit of explanation or i need your help to tell our viewers what does gateway rehabilitation offer especially fourteenth well one of the things that is nice about working kate ways that we're the only provider of full spectrum services for adolescents so from one of the of the spectrum which is prevention services going into schools and doing classes and doing groups with people who haven't had problems or who are maybe in the middle of having problems helping them sort their way through that and then we have all sorts of different treatment programs intensive outpatient partial programs including going all the way up to now equip a central or center township is where we have our inpatient facilities and we also have an adolescent halfway house that i believe that we're the only one in pennsylvania that has an adolescent half way and so these are all different levels of care and support and have different levels of care because not everybody come the treatment has the same problem and you know that's one of the things that's really nice is that once you get into the drug and alcohol treatment system the gateway to pay you know what your needs are you can have more intensive services or less intensive services and move up and down depending on what it is that you actually need what i want to let our viewers know right off the bat to i'm sure they'll be putting up a slide eventually but if they want to contact gateway the website is  gateway rehab dot org and the phone number that i have on your card is for one two six zero four eight nine zero zero so i want our viewers to have that information right off the bat in case they are interested in contacting gateway at any point now here's a question that i get asked frequently and i don't know the answer to it which is what should a parent do if their teen resists treatment that's a really good question you know one of the things that happens that's important understand first of all is that most people with drug and alcohol problems or drug and alcohol addictions by definition they don't think they have a problem they feel completely in control for most people they feel that using drugs and alcohol is an improvement on their life so when caring parent or teacher or friend says i am where you have a problem that's a laughable idea to them even though for someone on the outside it's very obvious and there's ample evidence that that person is hurting themselves and hurting people around them the person with the problem is not going to see it so it's not unusual for a parent to have this problem first of all it's important to use whatever way that you can to help the child get help or an adult get help the first step for that is having them come in and have an evaluation if someone is absolutely refusing to get treatment and then they're under eighteen we have what's called act fifty three and this is a very important thing that can be used through the legal system where you can actually petition allegheny county to say the miner who is living in my home has a drug and alcohol problem they will do an evaluation through the court to determine if that person has an alcohol problem or not or drug problem or not and then the court actually has the power to say that this person must go to treatment and so it's no longer an issue of a parent saying this is what you've got to do it becomes a legal issue for that person to follow through with and i think it's really important to note also that there's a big difference between your child getting caught by the police being in the legal system for something that they did versus using the legal system as a tool to have someone get help and i think that's an excellent point right no matter how it works out it's always better to be seeking the help and there's far fewer consequences that go along with that well i didn't realize that all those services were available on those different pathwa treatment or available so that's terrific one of the things i thought was so interesting paul when we first met was that you mentioned some really interesting questions and i just wanted to start on those two that i think our viewers would be interested to learn about one of the questions that you posed was and i'm going to ask this if our viewers and then just pick a number and then we'll see what the facts are what percentage of americans are addicted to drugs and alcohol so you all out there you think it's ten percent do you think it's thirty percent do you think it's fifty percent so if you have a number in your head let's see what the facts are through paul these are the questions that often i use when i'm going to talk to health classes or again talking with parent groups or even doing trainings for teachers or businesses and i think that they're important because if we're going to talk about the problem the drugs and alcohol are we have to know how big a problem is this and the answer to that surprisingly is ten percent a lot of people think it's much higher than the but again the thing that i want to warn people with that is that that's having the brain disease of addiction ok and so one out of ten people you put i those terms as one out of ten of us sitting here doing this program today either have an addiction which is going to be a chronic progressive illness we're going to deal with our in our entire lives or we will develop that some point in time but one out of three of us again about thirty five percent of us will have a major problem in our life as a result of drug and alcohol use losing our kids losing our family losing a job getting kicked out of school having serious legal consequences so again there is a distinction  don't have to be an addict to have this visit you in a very serious way and sneezing ten percent ok now the next question that i want to pose to our viewers is more people it's kind like we're taking an online survey right now more people die from what substance than from murder suicide or cancer so i feel like jeopardy a little bit ok now whatever thought comes into your mind let's see what the facts are here ok paul so more people die from what substance than from those oh horrible situation other horrible situations tobacco and then back oh i'm looking into the camera right now tobacco i'll pay all you smokers out there help is available ok thank you ok continue paul yeah tobacco is for most people you've probably heard the term gateway drugs and for most people that's kind of a rite of passage trying a cigarette or something and a lot of adults say this is something that's very harmless but we know that half a million people die every year in this country as a direct result of their tobacco use and it's important to understand the every single person who's dying this year had full knowledge that if they use tobacco properly it was going to kill them and it was going to take ten to fifteen years off their life and it's been the last few months or lives and then out of hospitals basically feeling miserable but no thirteen year old thinks that's going to happen to them you know fifteen year know seventeen year old and it's important understand that for every adult that you see who's going through this they felt exactly the same way that your average teenager feels today which is that's not a big deal i'm not going to become addicted to it and if i do that's ok because i'll be smart enough to quit and i was asked this question of people because i think that it really points to how powerful addiction is yes there's not a single person our society who doesn't know that back it was a waste of money and a waste of their health and yet people still do this it's not rational it's not logical and for every person who's tried to quit and gone back they realize how powerful woman diction is and i thank you very defeating to somebody well i know that i work with a lot of adults to help them quit smoking and when i was a duquesne i took one class in addictions and i professor said that tobacco was the most addictive substance there was even above heroin or cocaine or any of the other chemical substances i was really amazed at that point and i do really feel for people struggling with a cigarette or tobacco addiction because boy i'll tell you what that is a hard thing to get through part of what i've learned to is if you correct me if i'm wrong but that many people smoke because it relieves anxiety it's like a stress relief i'll be at not a healthy stress reliever but stress reliever nevertheless so well one of the things that's important understand about that too is a kind of creates its own cycle because for someone who is a smoker just like an addict who's not using if they haven't used in a while they start feeling uncomfortable their brain is sending out signals to them telling them gets mixed up with the power your brain that tells you it's time to sleep it's time to eat these drives that are very imperative and you can't ignore that's the kind of drive that an addiction has in somebody and so that creates part of the problem to maybe initially help them with their anxiety maybe initially it helped them but now they're using just to take away the effects of not using and that's why people continue to smoke why they continued to drink and do drugs very often because if they don't they're just not functioning as well so you stick is that why and then i'll move on to another subject but cigarette smoking is so very important to me or quitting that addiction is that why many people who are trying to are in treatment for alcoholism and attending a meanings it seems that they smoke or they have sugar cravings even if they're not touching alcohol yeah i think it's very similar and this is something that we've seen as kind of controversial actually in our field because there is a body that against that suggests when you quit it's best to quit everything because using tobacco will continue to activate that part of your brain that you're trying to deal with addictions and then there are people who have been working this field for years who say nonsense it's hard enough you know let's do one addiction of the time and take it from there basically and this is the hardest thing to explain to people you never have to worry about an addiction if you don't use you will never have to worry about getting tobacco i love that i point you never have to worry about an addiction if you don't use in the first place absolutely wow and the thing is that you've got to understand with brain chemistry is you don't know how your brain is going to react to a specific chemical till you use it so you're really playing russian roulette hoping that you're not going to be that person who becomes addicted to it because you honestly don't know how your brain is wired and how it's going to respond to these chemicals so in a perfect world even with alcohol one hopes that one wouldn't even try to put the first taste of alcohol into their mouths until the age of twenty one one would hope talk to us a little bit paul about what happens and i know this happens in our community at some point in time who's liable say a parent is having a party and they think oh it's safe stand school couple years ago while we were having an assembly to talk to the seniors around problem time and it was a local policeman who stood up and talked to the students and let them know that if their house was busted in other words if there was a party going on at their house and the police came by and there was underage drinking going on the owners of that house would be fined a thousand dollars for every under age person that was there i don't know how much that affects teenagers but as a parent i was adding that up really quickly in my head wow if this was a big party that could be my entire year salary just because of this that is a big deal number one from a parent point of view and from the legal point of view you know one thing that always stuck with me is one of our regional directors at gateway and i was with him when he was addressing a group of parents one time and he made a very good point saying that when it comes to underage drinking allowing your kids to smoke weed at home with the idea that this is going to be safe you have to understand number one that you're telling your kids it's ok for them to decide which laws are ok to break and which laws are not ok and if you make that conscious decision to let your children know that you don't have the right to be surprised when they decide to break other laws or break your laws you've given them permission to do that but now looking at it from just the brain in the drug and alcohol point of view you gotta understand that people don't become addicted because they're irresponsible or because they're stupid or because they weren't taught the right way in which to drink this is one of the myths that our society has if you teach a kid to drink the right way they're not going to become an alcoholic they're not going to have other problems and that really is ridiculous when you look throughout the world no matter what the law says about how old you have to be or what substances are legal or illegal it's the same rate of addiction in every country so that tells me that it's not something that has to do with what i'm taught to think about it or how i'm taught to do it has a do with how my brain responds to it and so if i have ten kids in my basement i've taken away their keys i might want to pat myself on the back for being a good parent like i see many parents in this community do but that's not the end of it they might not a car tonight but at least three of those ten kids are going to have a serious problem at some point in time their life as a direct result of their drug and alcohol use one of them is going to have a lifelong problem with addiction and you're patting them on the back and saying that this is ok and giving them that false sense of confidence that this is something that i can control i think this is such important information for everyone out there so i'm so glad that you joined me today i want to go on to the next question for our viewers to think about which is more let's say the drug that causes the most dangerous withdrawal symptoms is so what do you all think the drug ok the drug that causes the most dangerous withdrawal symptom is what do you think that that stories watch v h one behind the music and they know about rock stars going through here and withdrawal and how horrible that is and it is a horrible thing to go through the night i don't want to minimize that at all the biggest physical risk that someone has of going through heroin withdrawal that their parent had a grand mal seizure while going through alcohol you can die it is a medically significant situation when someone's going to have alcohol withdrawal they need medical attention there's a known ifs ands or buts even if a person survives they might have to survive a dress or a life without kidney function or without liver function or with this a serious stroke and i bring this up just to make the point that in our field again there's a big gap between how i hear drug and alcohol issues talked about in the community and how we view them working in this field and one of those big gaps is when it comes to drugs and alcohol that distinction really has no use really in our field because a person who is addicted whether it's alcohol or heroin or marijuana or coke it's the same thing that's going on in the brain it's the same problems it's caused in their life and so they're having to deal with the same issue just because alcohol is legal it lends to the idea that somehow this is a more controllable safer drug when in fact it really has some of the worst consequences so again some people will never experience that this as a result of their alcohol use and but it's important or stan that for some people this is going to be what kills them well that's interesting that you bring that up as well because i'm always the may end mazed at the legal substances that we have cigarettes and alcohol just because they're legal doesn't make them safe so that's a message that i want to communicate to everyone out there  i want to go on to another question i think is really interesting which is compared to other countries the drug and alcohol addiction rate in the united states is what we think out there would you think it's higher than average lower than average average or all of the above it's kind of like we're taking a survey today on the show but i think it's important to really get the facts about all of this so you can make better decisions healthier decisions for both the teens that are watching and their parents so well compared to other countries what is the rate of drug a happy drug and alcohol addiction in the united states well this question will show how well they've been paying attention so he slipped the answer out there earlier ok and it's actually the same rate of addiction in every country wherever there's rewrites of alcohol available one out of ten people become addicted to them and again this is important to keep in mind that no matter what a culture thinks about one substance versus another substance of one is legal or illegal the brain is going to do the same thing with these substances a lot of times when i talk to people that want to discuss legalizing marijuana and you know i don't don't i think that it would do this or that and my answer simply is that whether marijuana is legal or illegal has no bearing whatsoever on how it's going to affect your brain your brain's  respond to this chemical the same way it doesn't matter now it could affect other things such as the population of people in our prisons such as accessibility to drug and alcohol treatment those are all other issues but as far as addiction and people abusing it it does the exact same thing whether it's legal or illegal amazing another question i think is very interesting is comparing the number of cancer causing chemicals into back go to marijuana so tobacco versus marijuana the number of cancer causing chemicals do you think tobacco was more cancerous do you think they are equally as cancerous do you think marijuana is more cancerous or all of the above i just think this is such interesting information so paul what is the answer to that question well this is where it really starts getting interesting discussions because what i found is people don't like hearing bad things about marijuana adults don't like it adolescents don't like it this is where people start to me out because what i've learned is that tobacco has forty nine cancer causing chemicals marijuana has over one hundred ten cancer causing chemicals almost three times the number of cancer causing chemicals this is something that most people don't know most people have never heard before it's well it's easily researched people can look it up at a reliable website and find this information most people don't know another thing they don't know is that the actual tar that gets into your lungs when you're smoking if you were to package marijuana the same way you packaged back and take equal amounts of it the tar that you would get from smoking marijuana is i think thirty times greater than the amount of tar that gets put in your lungs from tobacco however again this that tar has three times the number of cancer causing chemicals i've never seen this talked about in new york times i've never seen it on sixty minutes and yet people who work here we are lax with joan saying  think this is really interesting because there are a lot of intelligent people out there who don't know the facts of marijuana that they're living in myths of things that they heard from the woodstock generation and how this is just as good for you as anything else  and when you really look into it there's a lot of deception that's purposely going on from people who have the money to determine what we hear and what we don't hear paul i want to give the number out again for gateway rehab you all have a one eight hundred number should i just get the number on your time i didn't for one two six zero four eight nine zero zero is the number for intake we have about five minutes left and i want to quickly go over the process what happens if someone makes a call say a parent says ok we need help here what should i do they place the call and then what's the process from there first thing that happens when you call that number and you want to make an appointment need to make an appointment for an evaluation when someone has a drug and alcohol problem it's it's an incredibly important sit down with an evaluator someone who is a professional who can weed out what are all the different problems going on this person's life to figure out is this a drug and alcohol problem this is an addiction is this something that is actually a mental health problem but we're just seeing the drug and alcohol problems with it so we need to make a referral somewhere else there's a lot that goes on an and so initially you'll be talking to someone on the phone who want to know some basic insurance information and want to know some basic information about where this person lives so they can schedule a place to come in we have twelve different sites throughout the greater pittsburgh area so there's one within about twelve miles of virtually any place that you live in this area we can set up that appointment you do that over the phone we'll give you a time and place to come and for an adolescent we always want to parent to come along as well so that we can get corroborating information from parents and then typically they'll be placed if there is a drug or alcohol problem or addiction and intensive outpatient which is treatment that happens three times a week in the evening so whether it's an adult or an adolescent we have separate programs are still going to school still going to work in the from the treatment in the evening and that's and then there's other more intensive treatment options that go on from there that's the most typical entry what i want to thank you so very much for coming on the show today i hope all of you out there have some new information to consider when making choices both for the teams that are watching and the parents i hope everyone in the community will think seriously about what all this means and start to put the facts together about the real dangers versus what's legal and what's not legal so paul i want to thank you for being on the show today you've been a tremendous help to the community i