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Research shows that teens with a realistic view of the dangers of drug abuse and addiction are less likely than others to become drug users later in life. In other words, teens who know the truth about drugs tend to stay away from them.

If you’d met Miguel Flores when he was in junior high school, you’d have met a young man who listened to his mother and did well in school. If you’d met him in high school, you’d have met a different person – a teenager who missed classes, a son who screamed obscenities at his mom. Drugs changed him.

When we talked to Miguel, he was a resident at Odyssey House, a drug treatment program in New York City’s East Village. When Miguel started high school in Brooklyn, New York, he fell in with a new crowd – the wrong crowd. To make a long story short, he started smoking marijuana, drinking, and failing classes. Finally, he got arrested and spent a night in a crowded cell on Rikers Island, a New York City jail.

NOT READY TO STOP

Given a choice by a judge between jail and getting help, Miguel opted for a drug treatment program. In fact, it was during the time he was legally bound to this program that he began using cocaine.

Cocaine is a stimulant and a powerfully addictive drug. Derived from the leaves of the coca plant, it has many names on the street, including coke, C, snow, flake. Coke comes in the form of white powder and is generally inhaled.

Miguel joined only a small percentage of his peers when he inhaled the potentially deadly powder. According to a 2002 NIDA-funded study, only 3.6 percent of 8^th-graders, 6.1 percent of 10^th-graders, and 7.8 percent of 12^th-graders have ever tried cocaine.

“I wanted to see how it felt,” he said. “Cocaine makes you feel like you have a lot of power. It makes you feel invincible.” “Feelings of being powerful and invincible are not only typical, but were some of the earliest effects of cocaine,” says Dr. Steven Grant of the National Institute on Drug Abuse [NIDA]. But such feelings are short-lived.

For Miguel, they only lasted about 20 minutes and he began to feel like he was “nobody.” He vowed not to take cocaine again. He’d heard that cocaine could make him have a stroke. He’d also read articles about people dying of cocaine overdoses.

MOM’S TEARS

In other words, Miguel knew that cocaine was dangerous. But less than two months after he first snorted coke, and then he snorted the white powder again – and then again and again.

The stimulant took its toll. Miguel’s heart pumped hard. He was nervous and paranoid. He even became violent.

The most painful to Miguel than any side effect is the memory of seeing his mom cry when she discovered the truth about his cocaine use.

REAL STRENGTH

Drug users often must go through several treatment cycles before they are successful.

When we spoke, Miguel had been clean for 10 months. If you meet Miguel today, you see a young man who feels “strong,” but not because there’s cocaine in his body. He feels strong because he’s resisted drugs. You also see that the respect for his mother has returned. In fact, he credits her with his recovery. “I did it for my mom,” he says. Someday, perhaps he’ll realize that he really did it for himself.

3. Do the test.

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Correct the false sentences.	\|	Cocaine: What Do You Know?

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