The Lubbock County Medical Examiner called the “non-natural” deaths of young people in the region to be “a bit staggering.”
“[Young people are] going to use it in a way that they are novelty seeking, they are looking for the latest, greatest high,” said Dr. George Comiskey, of The Center for Collegiate Recovery Communities at Texas Tech University.
Lubbock County M.E., Dr. Sridhar Natarajan said that over the past 15 years, people, particularly in this same age range, turn to a “cocktail” of drugs, rather than one or two. Comiskey agreed with that analysis.
“The cocktail element of it is that people can’t get their hands on a lot of any one substance,” he added. “What they do is go drug seeking and they’ll go through a friend and go through their medicine cabinet. They’ll talk to another friend here and they’ll get them a little bit. So that’s why they are getting all of these different medications. And they’re all doing different things for them. Some get you up, some get you down, help you hallucinate.”
“If a friend of mine is handing me a handful of pills, I don’t know where all those came from, I don’t know how many of them are somebody else’s prescription, and even that is dangerous, because it’s not prescribed for me,” he explained. “My weight, my metabolism, how everything works in my system, if I get something off the street or out of somebody’s cabinet, either way, it’s a dangerous thing for me because my body is not set up for that chemical.”
Teresa Alvarado, Community Coalition Program Director at StarCare, said high schoolers and college students are more inclined to try new substances when they see friends and family use them.
“When the perception of risk for any drug goes down it makes our children, our young people, think that it’s ok for them to do drugs,” Alvarado stated. “There is a very low perception of risk when it comes to prescription drugs because they believe that because a doctor prescribed it’s not a dangerous as other illicit drugs.”
Alvarado maintained that people ought to be more conscious of what they are ingesting.
“A lot of young people don’t understand that if they are on a highly potent prescription drug and then they mix it with alcohol or they mix it with any other illicit drug that it can cause them to die,” she said.
Comiskey added that the sphere of influence is larger than just the young person.
“I think a lot of times, parents don’t see their part that they play in stressing how important it is not to give their kids anyone’s medication,” he explained. “So, one child gets sick and you give them the other child’s medication. So really be boundary setting around that.”
Experts said one way to dispose of old medication safely, in order to prevent others from abusing them, is to drop them off at a box outside to the Lubbock Police Department Property Room located at 816 Texas Avenue.
