Hello, uh, welcome to Dad Puzzle's podcast. So, uh, today I would like to cover, some very important topic that affects us as fathers. And today it will be about illicit drug use. So my name is Suleiman Ijani. I'm a physician, consultant, and, founder of Dad Puzzles.
I would like to clarify two things. Yes. I'm a physician, who graduated from St. Matthews University. This is a medical college, and I'm involved with, consulting where I educate different physicians in different health systems on how to deal with the revenue cycle and also the medical quality.
However, I am not representing, the health system that I'm working for, these ideas are, strictly my own. And that, if you do have a situation where you or your kids are struggling with drug use, then this video is most likely not for you. I would propose that you develop very close contact with your primary care physician or the pediatrician of your child, as much as possible.
This episode is just for folks that do not have that problem just so they can be aware of it, and not struggle with the issue of illicit drug use down the road.
So this is mostly for prevention. So we talk about the risk factors and also we'll be talking about things we can do to prevent them.
So, Illicit drug use, um, this is about 9% of the population in the United States that are involved with, Illicit drug use. So the most, important three risk factors that, uh, our kids can be involved with illicit drug use are number one- Friends. Number two – aggressive behavior, you know antisocial aggressive behavior. And number three is – the early use of alcohol and drugs. So those are the three risk factors that, uh, if they get controlled or fixed, then we won't have issues, with, illicit drug use.
So, what are the things that we can do to prevent these three risk factors? Uh, the first one is really to become friends with our kids because, the closer you are, the more likely you can give those good influences. Um, you know, you always have to get the history with them. You always take some time when they come from school, spend 15, or 20 minutes, no phones, no tv, just talking to them. How was your day? what did you do today? who are your classmates? Who's the bad kid in school? Uh, what does the teacher do with this kid? You know, you keep track of that. The more you know the better because then you know if there's anything abnormal, you can easily fix it. By is either contacting the teacher so you together can fix it or, working together with the pediatrician of the child so that we can address if it's something that you are not able to fix.
Last but not least, is really to have a strong bond with, pediatricians and the primary care physician that are involved because they are up to date with the literature and knows how to deal with the situation. So be very close to them so that together you have a bigger and stronger team to fight against the drug use side.
These are the four things that really we can do to fix the first issue that we mentioned, the risk factor of friendship.
The other risk factor was aggressiveness. With aggressiveness it was found to be, the more aggressive your child is, the more likely they will be using drugs.
And then the third part, the third risk factor that we can talk about, and what we can do to prevent it is about the early use of alcohol and drugs.
The studies find that, um, the earlier your child, drinks, alcohol and smokes tobacco, they're 65 times more likely to be using marijuana, as adolescence and the same study also found that, if the child is using marijuana, they're 104 times, more likely to use, cocaine. So. Think about that.
So, we have to pay attention to this and, protect our kids from the early use of alcohol and drugs. So we have to pay attention to their friends and the environment that they're in so that, they don't fall into this category where they're more likely to become users of marijuana and cocaine and, and that's it. We lose our child and, you know, God forbid.
Another thing that, I wanted to really inspire you why we talked about this, because, when we have all these protective factors covered, the one that I mentioned about being closer to your physician, developing good hobbies and sports and such, and the strong bond and communication, when you have all these protective factors, then you will build something called resilience.
Adolescent resilience is when the child is able to overcome the negative set of circumstances that are thrown at the child. So once you work with the child closely, then they'll be able to overcome all those bad things, the bad peer pressure, the use of drugs, et cetera. They can say no to the drugs, et cetera.
The study shows that adolescent, resilience is, uh, directly linked to high intelligence and also low novelty-seeking behaviors, and also avoidance of friendship with delinquent peers. So, you know, they will be avoiding friendship with, uh, bad peers and also they'll be very smart.
And last but not least, they'll have low novelty-seeking behavior. Because a lot of times as boys, they have high novelty-seeking behavior. So when you already educate them and they have all these good protective factors, then there's no big deal. They're not gonna try to show off or do bad things for the sake of it. They'll become the good kids that we will want them to be and become better fathers down the road. Thank you again. I look forward to discussing different topics with you in the next episode coming up soon. Thank you.