Over the Counter Drug Abuse

In decades past parents had, by today's standards, little to worry about with what substances their kids may be experimenting.

In the world wars era it was only really alcohol and cigarettes, the latter being commonly used by virtually the whole population.

Then came the hippy era with a focus on marijuana and other mind altering, hallucinogenic drugs like LSD, upping the ante as to what drugs parents needed to be aware of.

Cocaine hit the market in the seventies and became popular in the eighties; around the dawn of the new millennium new drugs like ecstasy and meth burst into the main stream.

While all of these drugs are still being used, they are still all illegal, expensive (to varying degrees), can be somewhat difficult to acquire, and are all harmful in one way or another.

Today, however, young adults are becoming more resourceful with what drug they experiment with and through the decades have begun experimenting at younger ages.

Today, parents need to not only worry about what drugs are on the street, but, also, what drugs are in their medicine cabinets.

In the United States, around 3.1 million youth and young adults ages 12 to 25, or five percent of that age group, have experimented with an over-the-counter cough and cold medication to get high at one point or another, a U.S. government survey said.

According to data from SAMHSA's 2005 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, among youth who had not used alcohol or an illicit drug previously, those with a major depressive episode were about twice as likely to start using alcohol or an illicit drug as youth who had not experienced a major depressive episode in the past year.

Today's young people are abusing cold pills and cough syrups in significant doses to experience hallucinations, "out-of-body" events and other trips, officials said.

The survey, released in 2006, gave a glimpse into the abuse of these OTC drugs among young adults, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, or SAMHSA, said in a report. The survey was conducted through almost 45,000 interviews with people ages 12 to 25.

The results of the survey should be a cautionary notice to parents to mind what they keep in their medicine cabinets and what measures they will take to prevent their child from misusing over-the-counter drugs.

Also, young adults, themselves, should be aware of what effects over-the-counter drug abuse can have on their mental and physical functioning.

Based on SAMHSA's National Household Survey,  in 2001 more than 6 million children lived with at least one parent who abused or was dependent on alcohol or an illicit drug during the past year.  This involved about 10 percent of children aged 5 or younger, 8 percent of children aged 6 to 11, and 9 percent of youths aged 12 to 17.

Adolescents and young adults are thought to have the highest rates of abuse of such medications, the officials said. Nearly 1 million -- or 1.7 percent of them -- had done so in the past year, according to the survey.

Abuse of over-the-counter medicines, like cough syrups, has long been known, but the number of young adults experimenting with them wasn't well quantified until this survey.

The survey results, however, do not conclude whether this kind of substance abuse is increasing, decreasing, or remaining constant.

As revealed in a national U.S. study, the prevalence of current alcohol use in 2001 increased with increasing age for youths, from 2.6 percent at age 12 to a peak of 67.5 percent for persons 21 years old. Unlike prevalence patterns observed for cigarettes and illicit drugs, current alcohol use remained steady among older age groups.

NyQuil, Robitussin, and Coricidin products were the top three OTC of choice for young adults. The chemical that is present in cold and cough medicines that induces the high sought after by the youths is dextromethorphan, also known as DXM.

This cough suppressant is prevalent in over 140 cough and cold brand products that are available in the United States without a prescription.

DXM is considered safe when used in the suggested doses. Too much of DXM, however, results in hallucinations or out-of-body trips similar to those experienced when using PCP and Ketamine.

An overdose can cause uncontrollable muscle spasms, vomiting, delirium, irregular heartbeat, and sometimes death.