Will your kids drink or smoke marijuana? Quite possibly. But don’t panic. In a world where binge drinking, recreational and prescription drug abuse, chronic overeating and anorexia, and internet gambling and pornography are all too common among teens, it’s time to rethink conventional wisdom about addiction. We clearly need something more than “just say no.” This book is the alternative. Read more . . .

Click here for an overview of the chapters. Read Chapter 1.

10 Provocative (but True) Points from Addiction-Proof Your Child

1. Parents – and schools – need a backup plan for “just say no” to drugs and alcohol.
More than half of high school seniors have used an illicit drug; 85 percent of 20-year olds in the United States have drunk alcohol. Providing safe rides is one way to protect them.

2. Since kids can abuse so many things – like food, Internet porn and gambling, and prescription drugs – parents must prepare kids to actively resist addiction.
The fastest growing drugs of abuse are drugs kids can get from medicine cabinets, leading drug czar John Walters to announce, “We are the drug dealers.”

3. Typical drug education programs (like DARE) don’t work.
Research shows DARE students do not take fewer drugs – several studies have found they take more than comparable students not exposed to DARE.

4. Parents are the most important influence on which kids become addicted.
No genes cause people to become addicted; none prevent it – yet distinct personality outlooks characterize the worst substance-abusing kids.

5. The best antidotes to addiction are values kids learn at home.
Kids who value achievement, care about themselves and others, and take responsibility for their actions are unlikely to abuse substances or to become addicts.

6. Let kids ride their bikes around the neighborhood and go downtown.
The worst substance abuse is called dependence – our kids are the most dependent in history because they lack practice at managing their own lives.

7. Even if your family members have abused substances, your kids are unlikely to.
Don’t saddle your children with the self-fulfilling prophecy that they are born addicts – the key for all children is to develop interests, confidence, and positive friends.

8. Teaching your kids to drink moderately at home is the best policy.
Adolescents who do not drink at home with their parents are three times more likely to binge drink (please note: this is different from hosting drinking parties for children).

9. The large majority of substance-abusing youths quit on their own.
Like Koren Zailckas, Author of Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood, did after drinking alcoholically for a decade from her early teens on.

10. AA is not for teenagers.
Teaching kids they are lifetime alcoholics or drug addicts is counterproductive – as Zailckas says, “the brand 'alcoholic' prevents a lot of young people from reevaluating their relationship with alcohol.”

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Other Books by Stanton Peele

"Addiction is a way of coping with life, of artificially attaining feelings and rewards people feel they cannot achieve in any other way. As such, it is no more a treatable medical problem than is unemployment, lack of coping skills, or degraded communities and despairing lives. The only remedy for addiction is for more people to have the resources, values and environments necessary for living productive lives. More treatment will not win our badly misguided war on drugs. It will only distract our attention from the real issues in addiction."