Your self-esteem starts to develop starting as a child. As you grow up you get fed compliment after compliment saying: “you’re so beautiful” or “you’re so smart.” Giving children a false ego and teaching them to think of themselves as amazing and that they don’t need to put in any effort to do great. This process is okay until the children start to get older. When children grow up all the pressures of society start to fall on their backs, like everything that you were told as a child was completely voided and you start to realize that living takes a lot of hard work. As the child ages into a teen, the school gets harder and the parent’s expectations get higher, making teens feel that they’re ‘not smart enough’,’not good enough’ or that nobody feels the same way that they do. These types of toxic thoughts can lead to stress, anxiety and even depression. Problems like this can be some of the reasons why a young person would resort to drugs or alcohol to help relieve them of their problems.

I personally have gone through and had to deal with some of the problems that other young people have to deal with. When I was young my parents got divorced and things like this can be traumatising and it is especially hard to deal with when you are a teenager. If you don’t know how to properly cope with your feelings then drugs or alcohol might be an escape for some people, but it shouldn’t be. Most teenagers have friends that they can trust to help them deal with certain situations but sometimes their friends ‘advice’ is to turn to a type of alcohol or drug. This idea gets young people to try different substances because their friends pressured them into it so that they will be ‘cool’. Some of these kids trying drugs or alcohol don’t always try them because they have been pressured into it. In some cases, these kids are struggling with finding themselves and figuring out who they are and how they identify which can be a very long and agonising process which can be hard to deal with thus leading a teenager down the path of new substances. Every single one of these given examples is a different reason why a young person would try drugs or alcohol and possibly become substance abusers. The things that can help change or avoid these situations are support from friends and family instead of peer pressure and stress put on teenagers.