Adolescent Substance Use: How and When to Talk to Your Teen

Written By: Kenzie Bohnsack, Clinical PhD Trainee at ACS, Adolescent Substance Abuse Treatment Program as children emerge into their teenage years, parents may begin to worry about their adolescent’s use of substances, such as alcohol, marijuana, tobacco, and other drugs. Substance use is often initiated and quite common during adolescence. Alcohol, marijuana, and tobacco are […]

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Why Do Our Teens Use Cannabis (and What Can We Do About It)?

Written By: Ingrid Ammondson, PhD, Program Director, ACS’ Adolescent Substance Abuse Treatment Program Any of you who have attended parent education seminars at your school or at Adolescent Counseling Services already know that adolescence is an exciting (and sometimes dangerous) time of physiological, psychological, and spiritual growth. So much so that we might imagine placing […]

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Do sports protect teens from abusing painkillers or enable it?

Reported By: Alexandria Hein, FoxNews.com Health As communities nationwide battle a growing opioid and heroin use epidemic, researchers and public health officials are scrambling to identify how abuse may begin. One of those sources, research suggests, could be high school athletics. But studies conducted thus far have produced conflicting results regarding whether participation in sports encourage […]

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How Parents Can Help Their Underage Kids Resist Alcohol

Reported By: Aimee Cunningham, NPR Health News    “Parental monitoring and warmth are a protective device against kids’ binge drinking.”   While a sense of inevitability often surrounds the topic of teen drinking, adults can play an important role in preventing underage alcohol use. Two recent studies provide guidance for parents. One finds that parents […]

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Marijuana use and abuse rates decline among US teens

By: Sam Levin, The Guardian  Rates  of adolescent marijuana use and abuse have declined across the US, according to an unprecedented study that casts doubts on one of the central arguments against legalizing weed. Researchers from the Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis surveyed 216,852 teenagers from all 50 states and found that […]

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Substance Use Among Teens Is Never Benign

By: Kathleen Meyers, Ph.D., YouthToday.org Kathleen Meyers, Ph.D., is a senior investigator with the Treatment Research Institute and a recognized leader in the assessment and treatment of adolescent substance use disorders, delinquency and co-morbidity. Meyers is the author of the Comprehensive Adolescent Severity Inventory, a multidimensional assessment instrument for youth with co-morbidity, which is widely […]

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Teens’ overall substance use declining, but marijuana use rising

Image: Torbin Hansen, Marijuana Joint Reported by: EurekAlert!, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)   Marijuana use in teenagers is on the rise, while cigarette and alcohol use are stable or declining, according to health statistics researchers. In particular, black teens are using more marijuana than in recent decades. “Our analysis shows […]

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Concentrates: When Marijuana Doesn’t Look Like Marijuana

Image: Brad Bethell  By Evan Sahn ACS’ Outpatient Counseling Intern As a substance abuse counselor, one of my many responsibilities is to assist adolescents and families in achieving reduction in substance use, resolve internal family conflicts, resolve psychological issues that drive substance use, and eventually achieve sobriety.  That being said, we do spend some of […]

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National trends for substance use among adolescents parallels local youth opinions

image: Shay “Cigarettes and Alcohol” By: Monica Ippolito ACS Outpatient Counseling Services Intern Recently the National Institute on Drug Abuse released a study that the University of Michigan conducted in their Monitoring the Future Study on what trends are popular among middle and high school students across the country. The study looked at usage of […]

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Co-Occurring Disorders: Treatment

By: JoAnn Kukulus, M.S. Clinical Psychology BBS Registered Intern at Adolescent Counseling Services Part II of blog series on Co-Occurring Disorders Read Part I: Co-Occurring Disorders: Diagnosis Regardless of which issue presented first, mental health or alcohol/substance abuse, recovery depends on acknowledging and treating both the alcohol/substance abuse and the mental health issue. The most […]

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