Breaking the Cycles.com

Feb. 22, 2011

The following is a guest post by Leslie Botha, Marketing Director for Courage to Change Addiction Recovery Ranches, in which she uses excerpts from two of the Ranch’s client histories to illustrate her point that “[n]ow we have a first generation prescribed drugs from early developmental years now in recovery as adults with addictions.”

Teach your children well-
Their father’s hell did slowly go by-
And feed them on your dreams-
The one they picked – the one you’ll know by.
Crosby Stills Nash & Young 1971

Unfortunately, the dream that was picked is the one that afflicting the youth of today – as the first generation of children prescribed drugs at an early age is morphing into a generation of pharmaceutical drug addicts. I can remember sometime before my teen years, my father – a pharmaceutical packaging sales rep for a plant in New Jersey – would come home bearing stuffed animals and other gifts if my sister and I took “sample” drugs. It sounds absurd – but it is a memory and a question that still haunts me today. What did I take – and what were the side effects?