Is Your Child Addicted to YOUR Prescription Medications?
By: Dr. Charles Majors

Children today are using dangerous narcotics like cocaine, heroin, and ecstasy less than children did twenty years ago. This is due to the availability of new ways to get high, such as abusing painkillers and other prescription drugs. "Generation Rx" has begun to flock to this new high in record levels, hinting a deadly problem growing within our nation.

As reported by the Partnership for a Drug Free America's annual tracking study1: • 1 in 5 teens has abused a prescription pain medication

• 1 in 5 report abusing prescription stimulants and tranquilizers

• 1 in 10 has abused cough medication

Many parents and officials are wondering how the pharmaceutical industry has become our greatest enemy in the fight against drugs. Aside from the obvious physical implications prescription medications have on people, overconsumption of drugs is also psychological.

Let's take a look at "Johnny," a two-year-old bouncing baby boy. One day his mother hears him cough, so she gives him children's cough syrup to make him feel better. As he gets older, Johnny is taken to the doctor and given some magical drug every time he feels ill. Yet, as he progresses into early adulthood, children's cough syrup does not work as well. Soon, much stronger and more severe medications are needed to treat Johnny's illnesses. Almost immediately he begins to associate feeling better with the drugs dispensed to him as a child by his doctor and his parents. Now, Johnny is thirteen years old and his school girlfriend has left him. He begins to feel the negative affects of depression and soon remembers the positive affects that prescription drugs give him. These drugs now become a way to mask the pain that Johnny feels.

Without realizing it, this is ultimately how we have trained our children. Due to this fact, children have found stealing drugs from parents or grandparents is a cheap and effective way to feel better and get high. For the first time in history, today's teenagers are more likely to abuse prescription drugs than any other illicit drug due to the social training and the illusion that these drugs are safe.

Turning on our televisions, we see numerous ads for every type of prescription drug. This is due to the notion that the use of these drugs to "treat" (i.e. mask) illnesses is more effective than with more natural and health conscious methods. Have you ever listened to the side effects of these dangerous drugs? Every prescription drug has numerous dangerous side effects that commonly are worse than the problem you are treating. The most basic of examples is the recent discovery of common medicines like aspirin, Tylenol or stronger prescription versions to have drastically fatal affects on our liver. With the ready availability of these drugs, people assume that they must be safe. Yet, overconsumption could lead to suicide or accidental fatality. If a full bottle of pills can kill you, what precisely does just one pill do? Steady use of medications such as these will slowly deteriorate your liver or esophagus, and may cause other serious illnesses that eventually lead to death.

What can you do to help prevent your child or loved one from prescription drug abuse?

1. Teach your children about the deadly consequences of all prescription drugs.

2. Keep your children healthy! Early use of medication to treat common illnesses that can otherwise be treated naturally will result in a tolerance and immunity to prescription medication, furthering the need for stronger, more destructive pills later on. The more your child associates medication with health, the more they will undoubtedly continue use later in life.

3. Focus on YOUR health! Remaining healthy without the use of dangerous drugs and pills will teach your child the right ways to promote health and immunity.

4. Find a Maximized Living Doctor who can immediately begin to teach you how to live by The 5 Essentials.

Children under the Maximized Living program are instilled with the knowledge that they were born destined for health, and armed with The 5 Essentials of Maximized Living. With this knowledge, they can grow up happy, healthy, and with no harmful medications. Children who participate in the Maximized Living program are drastically less likely to abuse prescription drugs due to the education they receive at home and with the help of our doctors.