How Do I Get My Teen to Give Up Weed?

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Reena Ninan:
Episode 203. How Do I Get My Teen to Give Up Weed?
I know we talk about this every year, but it’s like, give me advice on how you get through winter. It’s like this Florida girl. I know I deal with this every year, but I just don’t want to get out of bed. I think I have, what is that called? Seasonal?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Seasonal affective disorder.

Reena Ninan:
Yeah.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Well, I’m not sure you have seasonal affective disorder. You’re functioning like a superhero, as usual, but it’s hard, right? It’s hard when the days are short and it’s hard in the morning when it’s cold and dark. I mean, we’re talking about only certain parts of the country, but certainly where we are, it is cold and dark in the morning.

Reena Ninan:
I’m feeling all of the people out there who need a little extra something to get through because it is hard and I acknowledge it.
So we’re going to talk about weed. This is a great topic. I want to read you this letter, Lisa.
Dear Dr. Lisa, I have a 16-year-old daughter who I’ve discovered has been smoking marijuana for the past several years. The majority of my daughter’s friends and many friends’, parents smoke weed and she’s seen no ill effects. She believes that since it’s “natural”, it must be better than prescribed medications and wholeheartedly feels it’s helpful to her mental and physical health. Nothing I say nor any facts that I can present can sway her from her predetermined beliefs. I strive to not be overreactive, to be sensitive to her beliefs and feelings and to maintain open lines of honest communication. I’ve even restricted her from driving unless she passes drug tests. But as much as she wants her freedom in driving, that’s not been enough to keep her from using weed. My main concern is the effect it’s having on her brain development. She has anxiety but refuses to seek or receive other resources for help as she maintains that weed is the only thing that helps and that I simply don’t understand. I have made doctor’s appointments for her, but she either refuses to go or will not discuss these matters when there, I feel helpless and overwhelmed with guilt that I seem to have no power to control her decisions and actions and cannot protect her from the damage that she’s doing to herself. I don’t know what to do. Can you help?
Is this a common thing where kids think weed is natural and better than something else that’s medicated?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Yes. Yes.

Reena Ninan:
You’re seeing this?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
I am seeing this, I’m hearing this, and they also just feel like it’s not a big deal. It’s just not a big deal.

Reena Ninan:
Are they right? Is weed harmless? It’s a natural substance.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Is it harmless? Okay, that’s a great place to start. The first divide we want to make here is between under age 24 or 25 and over age 24 or 25 because the brain is growing and developing until about 24 or 25, and we have lots of science, making it clear that marijuana plus a growing developing brain is a bad combination. Regular use, daily use. I’m not going to say using it one time is going to turn your brain to jello, but regular use or daily use is very clearly for people in adolescence, very clearly associated with memory problems, learning problems, attention problems, focus problems.

Reena Ninan:
But I don’t understand how if I am a teen and I’m just like it’s natural, weed is just a natural substance. How can it be so harmful to my health? How do you make that case?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Lots of things are natural that are bad for us, right? I mean, hemlocks natural, it’ll take you out. So I know that this is what kids say and I know that there can often be sort of this earthy culture that grows up around the idea of marijuana, but something being natural and something being safe. I mean, this is why we don’t have poinsettias where dogs can eat them. Those are two different things. And so just to say natural and safe are not the same thing in the same way that legal and safe are not the same thing, right? Weed is legal in lots of places that doesn’t make it safe. Tanning beds are legal in lots of places. Those aren’t safe. So I think as we’re trying to think this through with teenagers, we need to actually stand for reality that natural doesn’t mean safe. Legal doesn’t mean safe,

Reena Ninan:
But could weed potentially be a good cure for anxiety because it can mellow you out. It can calm you down.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Okay, so this is where it gets interesting. I mean, it’s all fascinating and I’m really glad this parent wrote in because I think there’s a lot of families who are having conversations like this. I also think the situation is actually pretty serious. I think my reaction to the severity of this may be stronger than people would normally expect. I take a lot in stride with teenagers, but in terms of the question about anxiety, the first thing I will say is this is hard for us to study, right? Because our gold standard on studies, our case control things. So we bring kids into labs, we give them tons of weed, we see what happens to their anxiety. We can’t do that ethically. And so if you go to the research literature, which frankly a lot of very clever teenagers will do, you get this kind of like we don’t really know response.
And that’s because the researchers are being disciplined about what they can and can’t say based on the studies we have. Alright, here’s some stuff we kind of do feel we know though, in terms of just like we don’t know nothing. Small doses of weed will reduce anxiety. You’re totally right, Reena, right? I mean that is why people smoke weed sometimes. It just mellow them out. Large doses of weed will cause this is what sends people to the ER, panic attacks, desperate anxiety, incredible discomfort. So yes, in small doses, weed can treat anxiety, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good treatment for anxiety.

Reena Ninan:
And how do you get teens to understand that?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Okay, so here’s the thing. Weed and alcohol are in many ways not that different. They’re both derived from natural sources. They both give you a high, they both take the edge off. And we have a much more common sense understanding I think about alcohol than we do about weed. So Reena, if I were to say to you, Reena, my anxiety is a little high. So before I go into meetings, I just drink a little. I have a glass of wine, 10 in the morning, anxiety provoking meeting. I just have a glass of wine. I feel way better on the way into the meeting or Reena, this podcast that we’re going to record in a couple of weeks. The topic makes me anxious. I’m just going to have a glass of wine before we record it.

Reena Ninan:
I would say, you have a problem.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Yes you would. This is the same. The fact that it reduces anxiety doesn’t mean it’s a good treatment for anxiety because you have the problem of now you’re impaired. And we do have medical treatments for anxiety that work for lots of people, but don’t simultaneously make you high or a little bit drunk.

Reena Ninan:
I am really interested when you talk about the brain development. I know you’ve said it before in the past, in previous podcasts that actually the brain doesn’t fully form until 24 25, which was an eyeopener for me. But talk to me about those teenage college years. What happens if you use pot excessively during those particular years? Is there research to back up what goes on in the brain?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
There is, and actually some of the most fascinating research comes from New Zealand, and it was research that was started in the seventies and it was in a small community called Dunedin, New Zealand. This study began in the seventies and they took this entire population and started measuring all the kids in this population, giving them IQ tests constantly every year. And then they followed them now for decades. And one of the things they were able to do with their findings was to go back and look at the IQ tests that they took at age 13 before anybody was smoking weed. Look at IQ through adolescence as some kids started to smoke weed and then look at IQ, this is incredible, in middle aged age, age 30 and plus in people who would either quit weed, never smoked weed, or were still smoking weed. So we have this extraordinary natural experiment with its own controls within it. And here’s what was found. So what they found is if you smoke marijuana regularly, if you’re using cannabis regularly through adolescents, it takes away cognitive functioning. It diminishes intelligence in the ways that we measure it. The piece that is so alarming is they had enough people who quit after adolescence, their IQs did not recover.

Reena Ninan:
So once the damage is done, it’s done.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
It’s done.
And that is, again, I’m not going to overstate this. I’m not going to say your kid tries one gummy and suddenly their IQ drops 20 points, but repeated use over time. We have enough data to be worried about this. And then Reena, here’s the critical thing. That’s 1970s weed we’re talking about. Today’s weed is six to seven times more concentrated.

Reena Ninan:
Wow.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
So that’s a totally different ballgame for people who are still developing neurologically. On the scientific side, there is nobody saying this is okay for kids.

Reena Ninan:
What if you’ve got a child in this letter? I want to go back to the letter actually where the mom’s like, look, I’ve decided to take away driving. Do you think that is a good move? Because I’m looking at the reaction here and the teen’s like, okay, take away driving.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
I think it was a brilliant first move. I am alarmed by the kids’ response.

Reena Ninan:
Really?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Yeah.

Reena Ninan:
What makes you so alarmed?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
So we are seeing the kids as a group are less interested in driving than we were. I mean, do you remember being six…

Reena Ninan:
My ticket out.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Yes.

Reena Ninan:
Ticket to independence.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Exactly. And counting the days. And did you go take your driver’s test on your 16th birthday?

Reena Ninan:
I sure did.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
I did too. I did too. I mean it was like you couldn’t have stopped me from doing it. Right. It’s natural to adolescent development that in the past at least kids were driving forward towards any sort of independence they could have. We are seeing that less in the population in general. Some of it honestly is that they can hang out with their friends without leaving their house thanks to social media or no thanks to social media. So there’s less of a need. Also teens are using Uber. I mean there’s other things that have come in.

Reena Ninan:
That’s a great point.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
But when I’m trying to assess do we have a drug problem here, what I start to ask is who’s in charge? The kid or the drugs? When I hear that a kid’s like, fine, I don’t need to drive. I’d rather smoke weed. That is for me like a giant flag of the drugs are calling the shots. The drugs are saying protect me and your ability to use me over the kinds of things teenagers usually want to do, like be able to drive.

Reena Ninan:
So that’s why it’s an alarm to you.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
It’s very concerning to me. But I think it’s a great first move because I think there’s a lot of kids where they would be like, okay, fine, I’ll stop smoking. I want to drive. And that’s a brilliant solution to the problem. And I actually think it was such a smart thing for this parent to think of to say, listen, if you’re smoking weed, you can’t be driving. And on this one, it’s not in the letter. But I want to underscore this point. We also have lots of evidence showing that for teenagers especially and teenage brains, there’s a pretty pronounced hangover effect from weed. Just because a kid didn’t smoke that day doesn’t mean that they are clearheaded the next day.

Reena Ninan:
So there’s a hangover with alcohol. You say there’s definitely a weed hangover.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
There’s just like it lingers. It lingers in this kind of, they stay very foggy. We measure this, this we have actually assessed. They are not as sharp, they’re not as focused. Their learning working memory isn’t as good that it’s not really acceptable for a kid to be like, well, I’ll only do it on the weekends and I’m fully crisp on Monday. That’s not true. So I think for a family who’s thinking about can we restrict driving, it’s not like, did you smoke weed today? I think that it’s a completely legit position to be like if you’re smoking weed on the regular, you cannot be driving a car.

Reena Ninan:
Lisa, what do you do when you see in this case that the teen, nothing is getting through. So what’s your advice?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
This is hard, Reena. I feel for this family, this is not a good situation. I think you have to pull out the stops here. And by that I mean I think this kid has to stop smoking weed. I think we need to treat this as what I see it to be, which is a full on substance use problem this kid is using all the time, does not see it as a big deal. Gives up driving to do it, won’t brook any discussion of this being a problem. If we subbed in alcohol for that, we would be like, this is not okay, and this kid’s 16 and this parent is right. There are neurological stakes here, things that cannot be undone.
There’s also, in addition to the intellectual development problems, which are real, there are emotional development problems here too, Reena, because one of the things, and I remember learning this in my training, people stop maturing when they start relying on substances to manage discomfort.

Reena Ninan:
Tell me more about that.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Okay, think about being 16 and think about how hard it is. I mean, I really feel for this kid too, right? Being 16 is not easy. You’ve got demands at school, crushes that aren’t working out, grownups who bug you. I mean these things are all happening. So say you are 16 and there’s a kid at school you’re having a hard time getting along with and you feel really nervous when you know you’ve got a class with them and your anxiety is just sort of percolating as that class is coming. If you’re like, well, you know what treats my anxiety is I’m going to go hit my dab pen in the bathroom, go to class, a little bit altered so that kid doesn’t bug me. That using finger quotes “solves the problem”. You haven’t learned or grown or figured anything out for yourself. If you don’t have the option of taking the edge off with a substance, you have to go to that class. You have to figure out what you can withstand in terms of discomfort about somebody who’s bugging you. Maybe you even have to resolve it with that kid.
Maybe you have to dig deep, maybe resolve it with that kid. Figure out how you can get to a place where you can move forward. All of those things, Reena, you’re growing all the time in doing the hard thing in coming up against painful emotions in reflecting on what did I do that I got myself in this bad jam with this kid, and how do I not do that thing Again? All of this discomfort is growth, growth, growth, growth. And it’s typically why we see so much growth in teenagers is that they’ve got so much going on and so much they have to navigate and so much they have to figure out. It’s super stressful for them. It’s super stressful for the adults around them, but they’re growing. And the minute you bring in a substance that saves you every time from your discomfort, growth halts. So this kid’s neurological growth is at stake. This kid’s emotional growth is at stake. Okay, so back to your question, can you ask me again?

Reena Ninan:
Yes, yes. Well, I just want to get back to what is it? If you know that the drugs have taken over, what can a parent do at this point?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Okay, so I think first you summon a ton of empathy for this kid. This kid has found a friend in weed that helps her feel better all the time, and you’re about to tell her to drop that friend. And in dropping that friend, she’s going to feel pretty lousy. She’s going to miss what she’s accustomed to using to feel better. She’s going to be at sea about how to manage herself. So it’s one of those things where you can’t just say always, you just need to stop, right? In the same way that if somebody were an alcoholic, we wouldn’t say, well, the answer is you just stop drinking. It is the answer, but it’s not so easy. So I think if I were the parent in these shoes, I would probably call up and find a substance abuse expert in my community and get a lot of guidance for them about what needs to be put in place to make it possible for a kid who’s using weed this much to stop. And it may be that they have good counselors who can support in terms of helping with better coping. It may be that there’s a psychiatrist who specializes in this who can say, I really hear you about your anxiety. We can work with you on that. We have prescription medications that will be effective. But really there’s a lot of research to be done about how you create conditions where this kid could stop.

Reena Ninan:
So are you talking about an intervention then, ultimately?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
We’re getting close to it. We’re getting close to it. So I think say the parent’s done this good research and they have a good sense of all the supports that can be put in place to help this kid break up with weed. I think step number one is you go to the kid and say, this is a non-negotiable. I love you and my job is to take care of you and you are not taking care of yourself. So it’s time for me to step in. I could not live with myself if you got to 30 and we could see that you had been entirely knocked off of your developmental trajectory, both in terms of your learning and your emotional growth because of something I let go down when you were 16, you need to stop smoking marijuana and here are all of the supports that we’re going to put in place to help you do it. That’s where I’d start.

Reena Ninan:
What if you get a kid who’s resistant not going to give it up, loves it too much? How do you counter that, Lisa? What more can a parent do at that point?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
This is where interventions happen. And I keep in my Rolodex Reena, a colleague in my community who is very, very skilled at this, who has dealt with very real and lasting substance concerns in teenagers, and I send families to consult with this colleague. This is something that experts do. This is something that professionals have training in, which is exactly what interventions with adults look like. You are not taking good care of yourself. You are not acting responsibly. We’re giving you every chance to make the good decision. You keep turning down every opportunity to do this. We love you too much to not pull out all the stops and do everything in our power to get you the help you need. So if I were the parent and you made the first pass and it didn’t work, maybe there’s a few more steps that a good substance abuse expert could help you try. I would talk to your pediatrician. I would make a lot of calls in the community and say, who are the pros? Who can help me get this kid to a substance misuse or substance abuse program to give him a fighting shot here?

Reena Ninan:
I’m going back to this letter and I want to read directly from it again. The parent says, I feel helpless and overwhelmed with guilt that I seem to have no power to control her decisions and actions and cannot protect her from the damage she’s doing to herself. What more can a parent do when they find themselves in this situation with substance abuse?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Reena, you know me. We have been talking for a long time. I don’t know that you’ve ever heard me be as interventionist as I am here and I’ll tell you where it’s coming from, which is I’ve cared for kids who dabble in drugs and not every kid who dabbles in drugs ends up in this spot. I mean, lots of kids don’t, but they scare me. They really scare me. What can happen, and I think it’s happening with this kid already, which is you are using a drug, it starts to interfere with your life. You have fewer friends, you’re not functioning well at school. Your family’s annoyed with you. You don’t feel good because you have fewer friends. You’re not functioning well at school. Your family’s annoyed with you, but you know what helps you feel better, the drug.
And so it is such a slippery slope and we haven’t even talked about the fact that it also, in today’s landscape, weed can also have fentanyl in it. I mean, any drug that is not coming through legal channels could be tainted. So the dangers are higher than they’ve ever been. It truly breaks my heart Reena to say, you may have to go toe to toe with your kid. You may have to push your relationship with your kid to the brink. I don’t know that I’ve ever said it before, but this is too risky. This is too risky. And we do have mechanisms. This is not the first child who’s gotten into trouble with substances. There is an entire universe of very skilled people who know how to help with exactly these situations. And there’s an entire professional world around this because this is so dangerous. I think that that’s what you do is you push it until it’s fixed. You do everything you can to try to fix it.

Reena Ninan:
There’s a lot here, but I think there’s just no guidance out there for parents that I have felt helps lay out the dangers for teens because it seems like I get it, it just a natural substance. It can’t really hurt that much. And if your parents are doing it too, how bad can it really be? Right? But I guess I didn’t realize how much more potent it’s become and the damage to the brain that can be permanent.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
And that this kid’s not given her any room. I mean, if this kid were like, okay, I hear you, or could we try this I mean? But there’s so much in this letter about how dug in this kid is about putting the weed ahead of everything else.

Reena Ninan:
And it’s a great flag that you’ve shown us that it’s the weed that’s in the driver’s seat and nothing else.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Yep.

Reena Ninan:
So Lisa, what do you have for us for Parenting to Go?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Okay, Reena, I don’t throw down like that very often. And I think in the landscape of stuff we worry about with teenagers, there’s just so much to choose from, right? We’ve got social media, we’ve got who they’re hanging out with. We’ve got how they keep their rooms. We’ve got all of these things that we can react to. One of the rules I love is because you can’t react to everything is like, well, will this matter when my kid’s 30? That’s a rule I sometimes use. If I don’t like where the shoes have been dumped in the house, despite having asked before, I’ll think, okay, but will this really matter when she’s 30? Can I let it go? And if I’m like, it’s not going to really matter, I can let it go. Drugs really matter. When kids are 30, a kid who’s in trouble with drugs, this is going to change their trajectory.

Reena Ninan:
I guess that’s the closing message. That’s the most important why this really matters in the end.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
No, this one can change the course of a life.

Reena Ninan:
Well, thank you, Lisa. Next week we are going to actually talk about how do you help your kid develop a work ethic, something that does matter when they’re 30?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Yes, it does.

Reena Ninan:
Great transition there. Well, I want to thank you, Lisa, and I will see you next week.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
I’ll see you next week.