I’m pleased to introduce Jeff Wolfsberg, who is a Drug Education Specialist, Recovery Coach, and author.
His book, Message in a Bottle has the answers to many of the questions parents of teens are asking, such as “If I discover my child is using drugs, what do I do?” or How do I support and encourage my child not to use alcohol and other drugs?”
I sat down with Jeff to ask him about his work and the current teen alcohol and drug trends.
Why did you decide to become a drug education specialist? What have been your biggest challenges and what have you enjoyed most about the job?
The title Drug Education Specialist is a title that I created. I can wear many hats depending on what I’m doing. I see the Drug Education Specialist role, not just going into the classroom and conducting seminars and hosting conversations with students, but working with the whole system.
This is not something you can become unless you get the endorsement of the students. Either you have that “thing”, and I can recognize it in somebody else when they are working with teens immediately, or you don’t. There is almost a real intrinsic quality to it that is already there.
My favorite part is always the students. Any time that I’m physically in front of students having conversations whether they are very informal like after class when they come up to me and say, “Hey, something you said during class really kind of triggered me.”
When I do the big assemblies, I call it psychoedutainment, which is a word I made up.
You have to entertain. You have to inform. You have to inspire.
It’s difficult to do all three, that is why there are very few people who can make a living doing it.
People forget that engagement is really the whole purpose of doing any drug education. It’s really about creating a youth-friendly environment, a youth-friendly space.
You are trying to create, to the best of your ability, a moment in the day where we can have a thoughtful, authentic connected conversation about the role substances and mental health are playing in their lives.
The kids are always extremely appreciative when you pull it off because they don’t feel that you are talking down to them.
They don’t feel like, “Here we go again.”
When I go to a new school you can have a lot of fun with their resistance, believe it or not. I walk in sit down, do a little chit chat and make them laugh. There is somewhat of a formula to it.
Depending on the situation, I start off with, “Tell me everything you hate about drug education. Tell me everything you hate about this topic.
It gives them a forum to complain.
“It’s the same old stuff we’ve talked about since sixth grade. It’s Don’t, Don’t, Don’t.”
I tell them, “I’m just going to avoid all that. Does that sound good to you guys? Hold me accountable if you think I’m doing any of these things, wrong. Let me know.
I’m not here to preach or moralize. I’m here because I’m really interested in where you are struggling. I’m interested in what is going on in your life. I wonder if a conversation about this stuff would be somewhat helpful.”
What are the three top things that parents should know with regards to teen substance abuse?
First, I work primarily with private, independent schools, so these are typically families that have financial means, that are well educated and do well.
The way I phrase it in a meeting is, “We used to prepare our children for the road, now we prepare the road for our children.”
When you remove obstacles, you remove opportunities for growth. You try and spare them pain and suffering. You are really sparing them the necessary scuffs and scrabbles of life that really are the best lessons.
Then they get out into the real world and the real world has no interest in treating them with entitlement.
The real world is rough. It’s unforgiving. It can be a harsh place. So many kids come out and they are not prepared.
I try to let parents know that it is OK to let their children fail. For different audiences, that resonates more than with the private school people. For them, failure becomes an extension of who they are as a parent. “If my kid screws up, then I’ve screwed up” and they can’t separate the two.
There was a great education that I took called Landmark Education. They used the word collapsing. When you collapse two things that aren’t necessarily related, you have a lot of problems.
The child’s failure collapses with any identity that the parent may have. My child’s failure is my failure. I try to get parent groups to understand is that it is OK to let your kids fail.
It’s not about you. And if it is, then you’ll figure it out. It’s not usually.
The second thing is that we know a lot more today about addiction and substance abuse. We have indicators that give us a sense of who is vulnerable and who is not. We’ve all heard the ones about genetics, family history, and low self-esteem.
Drinking and drug use is an equal opportunity type of thing. Regardless of how successful, bright, handsome, pretty, or socially savvy your child is, it doesn’t mean that they are immune to alcohol and other drug use and the potential problems associated with it.
Usually, the more intelligent the teenager, the more likely they are going to be to use. Intelligence actually becomes a risk factor for some students. They think they can outthink it, outthink everybody else, and it won’t happen to them.
I try to let parents know your perfect little boy has the potential of using it because he is still a human being. He still has neurology that is set by drug use that produces pleasure.
He is also still a social being, so he has the same needs regardless of intelligence, to be accepted, to be welcomed in by a peer group, to do things that are really stupid, but give him some kind of reward with peers, so those are all factors that matter.
Make room for the idea that your child can be using. I think that is why my middle school work resonates a lot with parents because the 7th and 8th-grade parents are right on the cusp of having to realign their image of their child.
Sometimes the parents of an 8th-grade girl or 8th-grade boy hold on to that image of their baby a little too long into high school, and it can be hurtful. It can be dangerous to not make room for the social climate that has changed dramatically.
There’s a social world out there. It’s complicated. Kids are in it, no matter what they do at school and how nice they are, they are susceptible to it.
Third, Parents underestimate self-care and the need for self-care. It’s true for the basic average family that is not struggling with any problems at this point. Parental self-care is a priority.
Nurturing their relationship with their partner, that is essential. They are nurturing a relationship with themselves.
Taking care of yourself and taking care of your relationship with your partner, those two things breed the type of love that you need to be a good parent.
There are really two times of the day that you need to say, I love you to everybody in the family, and that is at the beginning of the day and at the end of the day.
Bookend your days with I love you.
When you wake up in the morning, there is an opportunity to say I love you and there is always an opportunity to say I love you when the day is over. Not nurturing your relationship with your partner is easy to do when you are in the throes of the family.
One of my favorite books is The 5 Love Languages, by Gary Chapmen. The premise of the book is that everyone has a way in which they interpret being loved and the five love languages are Words of Affirmation, Acts of Service, Affection, Quality Time and Gifts.
We probably have a little bit of all of them, but there is one or two that are primary. Kids have them as well. Parents and partners have them, and it is essential that people know the love languages of their children as well as their partner, so they can always be in a state of love or enter a state of lovingness more easily when they know what their love language is.
What are the current drug trends that you have noticed as you travel to different school environments?
Almost every school that I go to where there is sharing, I hear “There was a big party and this happened.”
It’s always usually vodka.
People spend a lot of time documenting overdoses and drug driving crashes and those are things to look at. There is this myriad of other things that go wrong in communities that are alcohol-related that never get measured because they are almost unmeasurable. They leave what I call a shame scar.
They are much more regular and pervasive in a community. Vandalism, broken property, arguments between boyfriend and girlfriend, alcohol-induced fights between two boys, a prom that is ruined by alcohol because seven kids came drunk and they had to shut the prom down early. It’s all those types of things that happen a lot.
Alcohol is always my enemy in a community.
Drug trends come. Drug trends go. I’ll categorize a group that worries me the most, and that’s called the Synthetics. That would include your spices (Synthetic marijuana which goes under a lot of different names.) and your bath salts.
The body doesn’t recognize synthetics as a natural substance and the damage to the body is often permanent and unrecoverable. I’m not saying this is a good thing, but with marijuana, cocaine, and heroin, (the last two can have foreign substances in them), the body can get them out of your system.
Cocaine can cause psychosis. I’ve gone through that personally, so I know what that’s like. After months of detoxing and clearing out your system, for the most part, you return to normal.
That is not the case with the synthetics sometimes. My worry is that synthetics become more and more prevalent.
Every year there is something that gets on the radar and scares the hell out of people.
Molly was the big thing last year. That is a combination of ecstasy and heroin. The symptoms of what happens when you are on it is that your body heats up and sometimes people dehydrate and die.
Marijuana has such widespread acceptability that you have to have a different conversation in class with kids about marijuana. You can’t make up stuff about marijuana like maybe those who were educated did years ago. So many kids are using now, and so many kids are managing it.
Everybody has been worried about and continues to be worried about opiates. Those are just terrible drugs. They really are.
Once you become dependent, the physical need to resupply the body becomes intolerable, so you get into a lifestyle where you are just waking up every morning and have to get your fix. That has its own set of horrors attached to it.
What inspired you to write your book, Message in a Bottle?
Message in a Bottle is a very practical book. I just sat down and said what are the twenty or thirty questions that parents ask me most often at parent meetings and each one of those questions turned into a chapter.
It was practical because people were leaving my talks at night and saying, “This is great and I just wish I could remember what you said.”
I no longer do the intense travel that I used to do, and I only have a handful of schools that I work with, so I just wanted to capture everything I thought and felt and about these questions in some form before I moved on.
I wrote the book from the standpoint of a person who spends all of his time in schools.
I spend my time in a class every single day of a school year, so I felt like this was from a person speaking from the front line. It’s just a different perspective.
Jeff has generously offered a copy of his book to one of our readers. Leave a comment to be in the running to receive Jeff’s book!
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Congratulations to Dawn for winning a copy of Message in a Bottle!
Hi Cathy,
Nice to learn more about Jeff and his wonderful book. I’m sure it’s going to be a great resource for teens, their parents, and all those dealing with the problem of drug abuse and other such problems.
Thanks for sharing more of it with us. Have a nice weekend 🙂
Hi Harleena,
I believe the book will be helpful to families who are concerned about these issues and want to protect their children from getting too involved with drugs and alcohol. It is a book that can really be helpful to families. Take care.
Hi Cathy,
Thank you for sharing this interview with Jeff. Knowledge is power. I am determined to learn as much as I can about
addiction since it has destroyed my family.
Lisa
Hi Lisa,
Welome and thanks for stopping by. Knowledge is power and educating yourself can make a difference. I’m so sorry to hear about your family. That is tough. Don’t lose hope and do take care of yourself. Take care.
Great interview Cathy. Jeff sounds like a really wonderful and kid-savvy guy! I love the words he makes up but most if all I love what he said about “book end your days with love.” I’m getting ready for my 13 year old grandson’s summer visit and I will remember that!
Hey Becky,
I agree. He seems to have the insight into connecting with the teens and knowing how to engage them. That is a great comment that I will remember as well. Enjoy your grandson – sounds fun!
I very much appreciate not only the brief summary of this book, but the work he is doing in local communities with kids and parents at an influential stage of their lives. More people need to hear this message.
Thank you,
Hi Bob,
Welcome! More do need to hear this message. We have such a captive audience at the high schools. If programs, such as Jeff’s were more widespread, it could make such a difference with families. Take care and thanks for stopping by.
I have a long list of addicts within my family (12 at present time, one being my son) Three lives have been taken due to addiction. Within my family and my sister is hanging on by a thread. I have tried so hard to keep this monster out of my own home but to no avail it found it way in. I would love to read Jeff’s book for further insight. It seems my hope for my child’s recovery is thinning day by day.
Hi Dawn,
I’m so sorry to hear about your family situation. It is a disease that can cause such destruction in a family. Don’t lose hope for your child. There are many things that can be helpful in these situation. My best to you and my hope is that your son seeks recovery! One of the best things you can do is to help yourself. Take care and best of luck to you!
Thanks for sharing this with us Cathy. Jeff book sounds great for helping parents.
I have wondered if kids are having more of a problem with drugs, etc. because as parents we are putting so much stress on kids.
They have to always be busy doing something. Homework in school now starts right away. The minute they walk through those school doors.
Anyway thanks for sharing Jeff with us and his wisdom.
Hi Debbie,
There are so many reasons why children start abusing drugs or alcohol. Stress certainly plays a role. It is a way for them to feel better about themselves. I love the movie, The Race to Nowhere which talks about this very topic.
Thanks for sharing this post . I love hearing about more people helping educate our children.
Karen
Hi Karen,
It is wonderful to know that there are people out there making a difference for our kids and helping with prevention. Take care.
Great interview, Cathy and Jeff. You have presented so much important information and some excellent approaches parents can follow to prevent and confront a child’s drinking and drug use/abuse/addiction. Your book is terrific, as well, Jeff!
Thanks Lisa! Glad you enjoyed the interview and the book!
I know what you mean here. When I do the big assemblies, I call it psychoedutainment, which is a word I made up.
It’s more difficult than ever to keep kid’s attention as a speaker. You have a gift!
Hi Tess,
Jeff had also mentioned that kids have so much on their mind and so many things to think about regarding school, so it is a challenge to get and keep their attention. Nice to know there are people that have this gift. Take care.
Jeff, your work inspires me! Are you teaching any psychoedutainment courses for other adult leaders working with tweens and teens? Once one’s kids grow up, it get harder to be “in the know”. For instance, I’d not heard of Molly. I’m curious if one can be as easily addicted to Molly as heroin alone?
I could go on about your interview with Cathy, but I’ll stop with how great it is that you start your assemblies by asking the kids what they hate about drug education. Genius! Thank you both for this piece.
Hi Shelley,
Good question! I’ll pass your question on. I feel that is a great approach as well. It puts the kids at ease and lowers their defenses. I can see from the interview with Jeff the different dynamics of these types of presentations. Thanks for stopping by!
Great interview Cathy and Jeff, This book sounds exactly what’s needed for parents with kids…of any age. Be informed, be available and get the information from someone who’s done it.
Thank you both for this practical resource.
e-hugs
Elle
Hey Elle,
It is a great book for parents of teens. Jeff answers so many of the questions that parents are asking. Great way to get some of the help that these parents might want and need. Take care.
Great interview Cathy! I love that Jeff draws from his Landmark Education experience. Having gone through Landmark myself, I have a high value for the principles they teach.
My son, now 17, is currently in a peer group program because of a binge drinking episode that landed him in the hospital with a BAL of .25. Parents believe because their kids are smart, popular, and seem emotionally mature, that they’re not using drugs or alcohol. I had no idea that my son had been using since he was 14 years old. In our parent support group I’ve heard this from every single parent.
My ex-husband believes it’s unrealistic to think that our son won’t drink after the program (dad has chosen not to participate). He actually allows our son to drink and smoke pot when they’re on vacation together. Our son has stayed clean when he’s been supported by a peer group, drug and alcohol tested, and his sobriety is supported.
I will recommend Jeff’s book to our parent support group. The parents are hungry for good books with solid information.
Thanks so much for all you both do to help our kids.
Glad you liked the interview. So many kids are in the same situation, and I agree that parents are very eager for practical information. That is a challenge if your husband lets him drink and smoke on vacation. Hopefully your son will see the value in making healthy choices as he matures and how it will make a difference in his life. That is great that he is supported by a peer group. Communication with others in the same situation is the key! Take care and best of luck to you with your son. You’ve given him some good tools that will help him in the future.
Cathy, thank you for introducing us to Jeff!
Jeff, what an amazing approach you take when speaking with young people. “What do you hate about drug education?” Brilliant. You’re doing an amazing thing!
Your book is on my to-read list. Keep up your inspiring outreach to young people and parents!
Hey Jody,
I agree that this is a novel approach that would have great buy in for kids. We definitely need more work in this area. Jeff is a great example of what can be accomplished! Take care,
Thank you, Cathy, for such an informative interview! I always enjoy hearing from experts who understand how to connect with our youth. I really appreciated how Jeff addressed this issue of “allowing our children to fail” so that they can learn from their mistakes and be better prepared to navigate in this incredibly tough world. And although there are many conscientious parents who are a bit over-involved in their children’s lives, there are many more who are incredibly detached from their chidren’s off-line and online relationships/worlds. With addiction as well as other social issues and challenges, I think there needs to be a ‘call to action” for parents to ‘hit the reset button’ on their parenting and become more involved in their chidren’s lives.
Hi Holli,
Being more involved and continued communication is the key to helping our youth make better choices and stay healthy. It is refreshing to hear about what Jeff is doing and the impact he is making at the schools where he works with the students. Take care and thanks for stopping by.
I have a son who is a young adult. He is an alcoholic and a user of dextromathorpen. He is seeing a counselor and a Dr. He is scheduled to go out of town to attend university and I am afraid of what will happen to him away from his home and family… Would like to read your book for insights into addiction.
Hi Sylvia,
My heart goes out to you. I know it is so stressful for parents when their children are suffering with alcoholism and substance abuse. It is an additional challenge when we know our kids are going to be out of state. Does he have in place a support system at the university that he is attending? Would it be possible to have a family meeting with the doctor and/or counselor to discuss your concerns. They could give you insights in to how well he may be doing and if they recommend that he attend the university at this time. My ebook, 101 Natural Highs for an Amazing Drug Free Life will be free on Amazon, July 4-6th, so if you would like to, you can pick it up there. Another book I would recommend is Get Your Loved One Sober: Alternatives to Nagging, Pleading, and Threatening, By Robert J Meyers Ph.D. My other ebook, 7 Ways to Find Parental Recovery When Your Child is Addicted is free when you subscribe the newsletter. Best of luck to you. Know that there is hope for your son and that you are not alone.
Looks like a great resource for parents. Can’t wait to read it. Thanks for letting us know about it, Cathy!