Adolescents, addicts, and us.

• Author: Puterbaugh, Dolores T.
• Position: PARTING THOUGHTS

ADOLESCENCE IS A magical time. Teenagers go from idealistic children to risk-taking know-it-alls, and, we hope, to responsible adults. In the process, a number of predictable phases will occur. Most are unpleasant and, if we are lucky, they are not fatal. The dopamine system in the brain, a primary source of the jolt of pleasure we get from everything from a baby's smile to sex, behaves differently for a while in the teen years. Dopamine, tellingly, is a critical factor in addictive behaviors from drug abuse to gambling. During most stages of life, we have graduated ups and downs of pleasure and apathy. Teenagers lose the ability, for a time, to experience very graduated ups and downs. They are, if you will excuse the slang, either flatlining or mainlining. Everything is either booooring or it's a rush. This explains their sometimes crazy risk-taking behavior--as well as the foolish, self-destructive behaviors of addicts.

Adolescents subscribe to the notion of their own specialness. Not that we all don't want to feel special somehow, but, for teens, their specialness also encompasses what seems so obvious to them: only others their age can understand them. Teenagers famously refuse to talk to most people about their troubles, preferring the Red Bull-and-Sympathy of friends over wisdom from those who also have been young, but no longer are. One of the great concerns when a young person dies is the dark and infectious nature of adolescent grief, which exhibits itself in death-defying behavior coupled with a narcissistic inversion into small tribes of teenage mourners who often bring out the worst in each other. Seances, copycat suicides, and cruel attacks on survivors of an accident that took another's life are not uncommon--and not helpful.

Addicts are notorious for similar patterns of behavior. Their dopamine system has taken over their free will, and, like teenagers, they subscribe aggressively to the notion that only another addict, even if in recovery, really can understand and help them. In a sense, it is not a surprise. Most addicts begin their journey into addiction in one way or another in adolescence. They numb pain through the addiction. Growing up hurts. Evolving from a boy to a man, from a girl to a woman, will bring discomfort. You must have a broken heart, scuffs on your soul, some humiliation and humble pie--and still pick yourself up and continue. Drugs and alcohol numb the pain and thereby make real maturation impossible, or...