MENTAL HEALTH
TEEN ADDICTION WRITTEN BY ADRIENNE WEBSTER
Parenting is a challenge no matter how old your kids are. Remember when they were babies and you didn’t sleep much for a year? There were so many decisions to make and so much new information to consider; breastfeed or bottlefeed, co-sleep or sleep train, stay home or go back to work, etc. Just as you start to figure it out, they become toddlers. Toddlers really are too cute and their voices… oh, those little munchkin voices. Their cuteness is only rivaled by their irrationality. We have all seen the memes of toddlers screamcrying because they are not allowed to eat the dogfood, climb out of the second-floor window, sleep with a pair of scissors, (insert any ridiculous scenario here and it’s happened to some tired parent). Toddlers are feisty little angels, who sometimes bite and throw things and may or may not make a scene at the grocery store. But they smell so good and they are the best snugglers ever. After all of that comes what I consider to be one of the sweet spots of childhood, from around the ages of 6 or 7 until about 11. They’re old enough that you feel happy and confident about going out in public with them and also old enough to have funny, sweet, thoughtful conversations – all before puberty overtakes them. Until around the late 1990s, the vast majority of neurological research was directed toward infant and early childhood development, as well as understanding brain diseases that happen much later in life, like Alzheimer’s. It was generally thought that the brain was mostly developed by about age 5 or 6, and that the child’s brain was similar to the adult’s brain; just a little newer. As imaging technology has advanced, so has scientists’ understanding of the brain. While the brain is mostly developed in terms of size by the 22
MAY 2021
age of 5 or 6, it is not remotely developed in terms of function. Adolescence is a unique stage of wiring and configurations in the brain. Teen brains are still very much under construction. 1 According to “Teenage Brains,” an article in National Geographic by David Dobbs, imaging work done on adolescent brains shows that “physical changes in the brain move in a slow wave from the brain’s rear to its front.” This is important to note because the rear part of the brain, close to the brain stem, controls things like vision and movement but the front of the brain, the part that develops last, controls things like emotion, behavioral control and decision making. As the brain goes through these changes, some brain functions form at different rates of speed than others. The pleasure center of a teenager’s brain develops faster than the part of the brain that deals with judgement and risk analysis. 2 This is, in part, what makes teens more susceptible to addiction. Addiction is complex and has many contributing factors. For the sake of time, I will only briefly touch on a couple of things… First, our brains are programmed to seek pleasure. Many people have heard of dopamine, sometimes referred to as a “feel-good chemical” in our brain, although that’s not exactly what it is. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter, essentially a chemical messenger that helps brain cells called neurons transmit information to one another. It’s not dopamine itself that is directly responsible for our feelings of pleasure. Dopamine contributes to our experience of pleasure by reinforcing enjoyable behaviors and connecting things that make you feel good with the desire to do them again. 3
Lots of things can naturally provide a release of dopamine like eating a great meal, laughing, exercise, even solving a puzzle. The problem is that drugs and alcohol provide a much faster and more intense release of dopamine in our bodies. Drugs and alcohol very quickly engage the pleasure center of the brain, which is especially dangerous to teens whose rational brain is less developed and therefore less able to regulate the desire for immediate gratification. After sustained use of substances that cause unnatural levels of dopamine, the brain essentially becomes exhausted to the point that it either stops producing dopamine on its own, or it reduces its amount of dopamine receptors. At that point a tolerance has developed, where a person needs more of the substance to achieve the same feeling from it. 4 The lack of development in the area of the brain that deals with reasoning, coupled with the need for acceptance, especially by their peers at this age, is a dangerous combination. Social connection is a vital part of our lives, perhaps more so during adolescence than just about any other time. Just like a meal with family or friends is a social connector, so can a drink or a hit serve as a marker of acceptance and community for teens. The perceived social benefits of “fitting in” can potentially outweigh the negative effects of substance use. Another reason teens are more susceptible to the effects of drugs and alcohol has to do with the fact that the protective myelin that covers our brain cells is not yet developed in the adolescent brain. Myelin helps transmit information between nerve cells more quickly and efficiently and is an important part of the maturation process. In adults, brain cells are well insulated with myelin, but the process of myelination is still developing during adolescence. As a result, brain cells send more intense, “louder” messages to one another.
