How do I talk to my kids about fentanyl?

I think that in order for us to effectively deliver messages about drugs, adults need education too. We need to equip parents to have these conversations with their teens. We need to help parents understand that the best way to approach their teen is from a place of curiosity and understanding, creating a safe space so that if a young person has been using substances, they feel like they can approach their parent about it, or that if they've got a friend who's struggling, they feel like they can let their parent know. That real life comes with real stress, and we have to, as a society, prepare ourselves for that. Just like exercising our physical health, if we exercise our mental health and be prepared for the stress before it comes, we're going to be much more successful in dealing with it. And it's going to be addressing these mental health problems that I think is going to keep many young people from turning to a pill. People take these drugs, you know, sometimes to self-medicate, but sometimes to party, and sometimes it's just curiosity. We have to acknowledge the subtle reasons why people are using. The best thing that parents can do is educate themselves about the dangers of drugs, and right now, not like what happened 20 years ago, what's going on right now. The worst thing you can do would be trying to get in there and pry it from them because then they're just going to want to do it more. You know, just talk to them, not like you're telling them what to do, but to help them understand that you care about them.

I think the power of these conversations is they open up doors for help-seeking, that when we have conversations about drugs that are non-judgmental, that are honest, that provide multiple pathways for staying safe, not just abstinence, then we invite the kids in who need help. And instead of them turning to their friends, the naive leading the naive, they can come to an adult setting. The stage is what's most important first, so that they know this is a safe space where they can ask questions and be open and be honest without fear of what's going to happen to them. Then, I need to spend time getting to know them, and I ask questions that are curious. Have they heard about fentanyl? What do they know about it? Do they know people who use substances or fake pills or pills that they think are real that might put them in harm's way? And then, when I educate about fentanyl and its potential harms, I need to do so in a way that's really fact-based, that really empowers the young person to get the information without me using scare tactics because we know that scare tactics can backfire. I think encouraging help-seeking behavior is really important, whether that's someone at school or someone at home. Sometimes, I think that my patients are afraid to talk to me and other doctors when they're struggling, but that's precisely the moment that I most want to see them because that's when I can be of most help.

The thing that I did was I got out of my comfort zone. I did things that made me feel uncomfortable, you know, talk to people, make connections with people, you know, actually ask for support. I think that's the biggest thing, is people think asking for help is a weakness, but it's actually a strength, and opening your mouth and letting people know that you are struggling, because I feel like that's a lot of the reason why people are ending up dying and we're losing people because they don't want to admit that they need help. None of us asked for this crisis, none of us asked to have people we love passing away due to a preventable cause, but that is the thing about it, it is entirely preventable, and every single one of us can do our part by being educated and carrying materials on us that have the capacity to save lives. I think our greatest and almost untapped resource in this crisis is young people themselves, and when we prepare young people beginning in 6th and 7th and 8th grade to be peer educators, to be leaders of public health in this space, we shift culture. And it's not drug education that prevents drug problems, it's culture that prevents drug problems, and young people are shapers of culture. We can stop these deaths from happening. We didn't start this problem, but we can be part of the solution.

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