Teenagers seem able to get drugs without a problem. How is that, you may wonder? Sometimes, it is simply as easy as opening up the medicine cabinet at home. Whether they are raiding grandma’s medicine cabinet, whisking away the entire bottle of cough syrup or dad’s blood pressure pills, kids are taking them and running the risk of harming themselves without realizing it.
The medicine cabinet is shared by family. Take a look at your own bathroom medicine cabinet. What do you see there? In ours is some Tylenol, NyQuil, DayQuil, toothpaste, Listerine, deodorant and some fragrant baby powder. Not all that harmful, right? Wrong.
Read the ingredients, read the warning label. Taking too much Tylenol or ibuprofen? It could cause liver damage. Taking a bottle of NyQuil, maybe because a teen thinks it tastes good or to make sure he or she gets some sleep, very risky. Depending on how the liquid reacts to the young person’s body, central nervous system, brain? He or she could be going to sleep permanently.
Then there are the little ones in grade school. With all the fruit flavored syrups around, a child might want to taste the cherry flavored syrup. It has long been an irony to some parents that child proof caps mean only children can open them at times. Oh, and how about those wonderful vitamins. As a child, this writer remembers sneaking several Flintstone vitamins because they tasted so good. Yet even vitamins can harm a child. All those delicious little cartoon characters could lead to an overdose of iron that can land a child in the hospital or yes, even in a funeral home.
The medicine cabinet can be filled with things you take for granted as just being part of the bathroom. However, look carefully at what you have and where you have placed it. Seriously consider either putting it into the master bathroom medicine cabinet or somewhere else up high out of the reach of younger children and where preteens and teens can not easily get their hands on it.
Unfortunately, over the counter medication is not treated like cigarettes and young people can buy it just like they would buy a loaf of bread or a candy bar. This does not seem very responsible on the part of adults but the truth is, teens can buy ibuprofen and cough syrup and many other medicines in just about any pharmacy or grocery store.
Check your medicine cabinet. Make some changes if there are children in the household. If they are not taking anything, they will not even notice. If they do comment on it, maybe it is time you take notice of some possibilities as well.