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Forum in Middletown Examines Substance Abuse and the Effect on the Young Brain

Jeff Cohen
/
WNPR
Rebecca A. and Matt Eacott both shared their stories of addiction and recovery.
"I had this delusion that everyone smoked weed, and so if I stopped doing that...what would I be?"
Rebecca A.

Young human brains are delicate, developing things. A panel last week in Middletown focused on how the brain can be affected by drugs, alcohol, and technology. 

Rebecca A. spoke last week at Middlesex Community College for a discussion about substance abuse and the adolescent brain. She asked that her last name not be used, because she's applying to graduate school.

"The first time I smoked marijuana, I was in seventh grade, and I totally sought it out," she said. "No one brought it to me and said, 'Hey, let's try this.' I knew someone who did it, and I thought he was so cool, and I sought it out, and it was the best. It was the best. It was -- I'll never forget that day."

The forum drove home a few points. One is that adolescent substance abuse may harm brain development. Another is that some percentage of young people who try drugs will develop a disorder.

Rebecca said she often says this when she speaks at schools. "Just because someone smokes weed or drinks doesn't mean that they're going to end up with a heroin habit," she said. "Speaking at Middlesex Community College, that's just not realistic. But that is what happened for me. I had various narcotic habits up until the point I got into recovery, and every time I would get out of a treatment center -- when I was in one -- I would say, 'Yeah, yeah, heroin bad, cocaine bad, this stuff bad, but weed -- good. We're gonna keep doing that and we'll be fine. I had this delusion that everyone smoked weed, and so if I stopped doing that...what would I be? The last day of my use -- again, I was 16 -- I had dropped out of school. I was still smoking weed, and still drinking -- that stayed constant. I ended up living in a heroin dealer's closet, and I was shooting ten bags a day. And I was 16."

Credit Rushford.org
/
Rushford.org
Dr. Craig Allen.
"If you are under the age of 18, and you smoke marijuana, your chances of becoming addicted are 15 percent."
Dr. Craig Allen

Craig Allen, a physician who was at the forum, is the director of Rushford Center, and the director of the Division of Psychiatry at MidState Medical Center.

"If you are under the age of 18, and you smoke marijuana," he told the audience, "your chances of becoming addicted are 15 percent. If you're smoking every day, or nearly every day, then the percentages go up to 25 to 50."

Those numbers are from a study published in the journal Lancet. Allen said it's normal for young people to experiment, so the odds are high that they'll try drugs. "So, which are the highest risk?" he asked. "Maybe that's the group that we should be looking at to try and intervene with first."

That group would include people with a family history of substance abuse, or people living with things like depression or anxiety disorders.

Matt Eacott also told his story. "I'm 33 years old, I was born and raised on the mean streets of Avon," he said. "At 13, I can remember my friends introducing me to marijuana. At first, nothing special. I looked at everybody else, they were all giggling, laughing. But, for me, you know, nothing really. It smelled funny. It tasted funny. But I had this feeling of doing something different, doing something somewhat wrong, and I kind of liked it."

Eacott said it was always about pushing the limit. "First, it was having just regular old weed," he said. "Then it was, where can we get the good marijuana?, and then, where can we get the best marijuana? Unfortunately, my story includes all different substances. I think the only things I didn't do were probably roofies and huffing gas, or something, but I tried basically everything, and the constant throughout the whole thing was marijuana. So it's always, what can I add to the weed when the weed's not doing the trick?"

Within the first year of doing heroin, Eacott said he was snorting five bags a day. "At the end of the year, I was snorting 85 bags a day," he said. "So, me, a kid from Avon, going into Hartford every night -- selling drugs, doing drugs, to support my habit -- sooner or later, I stuck out like a sore thumb in some of the areas in Hartford, and started to get arrested more and more."

Eacott has been in more than a dozen treatment centers across the country. The thing that finally caught his attention was one time when he was high, he tried to kill himself. Since then, over time, Eacott said he's been able to get a handle on things. He's engaged to be married. This is the second longest period of sobriety that he's had. The first, he said, was from birth to 13.

The forum was sponsored by the Middlesex County Coalition on Community Wellness.

Jeff Cohen started in newspapers in 2001 and joined Connecticut Public in 2010, where he worked as a reporter and fill-in host. In 2017, he was named news director. Then, in 2022, he became a senior enterprise reporter.

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