The availability of prescription medicines in the home, is causing many teens and young adults to raid their own medicine cabinets for drugs, in place of soliciting a dealer on the street. Almost everyone has several partial left over prescriptions of drugs for pain or anxiety, such as Vicodin, Percocet, Demerol, or Xanax. Many grandmas take Oxycontin for relief of the pain of rheumatoid arthritis or fibromyalgia, and dentists are handing it out like candy, for pain relief after dental work. Recently, we had to explain to our 19 year old daughter, that she should use it very sparingly, after her wisdom teeth were removed. (She was under the impression that she needed to finish the whole bottle, like former prescription medicines that she had taken.) No one stops to think that prescription medicines can be just as deadly as street drugs. But it is a fact, that more people lose their lives, as a result of prescription medicine overdoses, than through the use of heroin or cocaine combined. Teenagers and young adults will often find all the drugs that they desire, right in the family medicine cabinet. Few people count their pills, or lock up their prescription medicine bottles, but if you want to spare a teen from drug addiction (or even death) you should consider locking up your potentially dangerous prescription medicines in a family safe. (Some teens also steal drugs, from the medicine cabinet at a friend's house.)
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