Author Spotlight
Sophie Henschel
Finger over the carb. Light the bowl. Inhale. Release finger. Repeat.
Junior Lucy Johnson* practices the same routine every morning before a remote school day, as thoughtless as a cup of coffee or a quick breakfast. She rolls over in her bed at 7:38 a.m., logs into her English class and immediately turns off her camera — giving her the opportunity to pack her first bowl of weed for the day.
As students navigate high school largely unsupervised, many have noticed the rates of drinking, smoking and drug use among peers during school hours for students at East has grown rapidly — seemingly stemming from increased anxiety and depression for many. According to an Instagram poll of 287 students, 209 believe they have seen this increase since the school year began — a problem virtually unknown to teachers on the other side of the screen.
Prairie Village pediatrician Dr. Amanda Hostetler has seen the number of students with anxiety and depression in her office skyrocket. Hostetler says many of the kids dealing with these issues turn to self medication through substances, which can quickly lead to misuse. She believes much of this anxiety and depression has stemmed from isolation without school, leaving students stripped of their social groups and support systems.
Having frequently smoked socially in the past, it seemed like an easy outlet for Johnson when her missing assignment list totaled to 43 within the first month of online school. She decided that she would only smoke one or two times a week to eliminate stress. Then it was three times, four, and soon enough every day. It became three to four times a day, over the span of two months — smoking two to three bowls each time she picked up her pipe.
The smoking stemmed from a mental health decline throughout the first leg of remote learning. For Johnson, the deeper she got into the online semester, the more depressed and isolated she felt and the longer her missing assignment list grew — her anxiety kept getting worse. With these emotions growing exponentially, all she knew to turn to was weed.
“I used to…do it in moderation and never had any sort of issues with it and it helped with my anxiety and depression, but it’s to the point where I need it all the time now,” Johnson said.
“I used to…do it in moderation and never had any sort of issues with it and it helped with my anxiety and depression, but it’s to the point where I need it all the time now,” Johnson said. “I think it’s just online school that’s making me depressed because I’m sitting there not getting anything done, frustrated, wondering why I’m not getting anything done, and then the only thing I can do is go smoke.”
According to Kansas City psychotherapist and ADHD specialist Tom Scott, the apparent growth in teenage substance misuse is due to a growth in teenage mental health disorders since the pandemic and remote schooling began. Scott feels there are much better ways for teens to cope with hardships than lighting a blunt or cracking open a cold beer, especially when teenagers become reliant on the substance to get themselves through each day.
When a student is struggling with substance abuse, Scott’s advice is always to ask themselves: what are you lacking in your life that is making you feel the need to abuse substances, and what are you getting too much of in your life than you need at the time? He believes that if they find those answers, students won’t have to continually bring something from the outside to make the inside feel better.
With privacy accessible through a simple click of Webex’s “stop video” button, there were no notable consequences to smoking during class for Johnson. But when her laid-back lifestyle caught up to her, she realized the only way to improve her five failing classes was to spend all her time doing school. Grinding out her giant pile of missing work would take months, or she could take a deep breath, crack open her window nad smoke a bowl.
She chose the latter.
Scott firmly believes that teenagers, especially during a pandemic, should find self-compassion and realize that this is everyone’s new normal rather than relying on a substance to get them through the day, week or semester.
“On the inside, I would suggest [learning] a little about the neuroscience of anxiety and stress and being able to be as sad or as mad as you really are,” Scott said. “If you need to cry, cry. If you need to get mad, get mad… opposed to hav[ing] the past rear ending itself with every thought, feeling and such one after another like cars on an icy highway.”
But pulling yourself out of an addiction is easier said than done for students. For junior Nathan Rodgers*, drinking during or before the school day is nothing new. Waking up, taking a shot or two and smoking with breakfast has been incorporated into his everyday morning routine since his first day of high school — so it doesn’t surprise him that he downs about five beers during online school days.
Since Rodgers has never had a teacher, even during in-person school, catch on to the fact that he’s shown up tipsy or high, it’s no surprise to him that teachers aren’t realizing what’s going on behind the scenes now that all they see is a muted grey screen with his initials.
“It’s way easier [to get away with],” Rodgers said. “The kids who didn’t go to school high before are coming to school — or I guess, sitting at home doing school — high now.”
According to Associate Principal Britton Haney, although it’s rare with online schooling and yet to happen at East, if students are somehow caught during the school day with alcohol or marijuana usage, they will follow their usual protocols — an out-of-school suspension and the requirement for students to fill out an alternate disposition agreement.
East has yet to issue an out-of-school suspension, though Haney does not yet know what that would look like due to COVID-19 circumstances.
Not only have Rodgers’ consumption rates shot up, but he says nearly all of his close friends’ have as well — not just since online school began, but beginning as far back as the lockdown in March. He advises any student who may be debating the use of substances during the school day never to make it a habit.
Drinking nearly every day for the past nine months, Rodgers feels the repercussions of addiction — constantly fatigued, throwing up often and suffering through a lack of energy.
He’s tried confronting the issue of drinking before or during school throughout the years, but had no motivation to actually fix it because the physical toll and repercussions hadn’t fully caught up with him. Now, Rodgers is cutting drinking out of his daily routine with a tolerance break — a pause from any substance in which one is struggling with addiction. However, Rogers plans to continue smoking, saying he just isn’t ready to get through the stress and boredom of a school day sober.
“We’ve seen kids that don’t know when to stop,” Scott said. “We see kids that can’t stop. We see kids that are afraid to get off pot and sometimes alcohol in the same almost panicky manner in which someone would take their phone.”
“We’ve seen kids that don’t know when to stop,” Scott said. “We see kids that can’t stop. We see kids that are afraid to get off pot and sometimes alcohol in the same almost panicky manner in which someone would take their phone. It’s like a lifeline to the world, it’s like a lifeline to yourself.”
Scott’s words ring true for Johnson, whose addiction leaves her with little room to avoid substances — even if she wanted to. According to her 15-year-old sister, if Johnson runs out of marijuana and her dealer can’t meet her that day, she stays in her bed all day. Johnson has reached such a deep point in addiction that she feels she cannot function day-to-day without her weed, and has no motivation to break the cycle.
“All of your days just kind of blend together and it just puts you deeper and deeper in the hole,” Johnson said. “And you’re just like, ‘Well, I don’t have the energy to get out.’ I wish it never happened like that, I wish we never went online, but we had to.”
Even for those who say their drinking during the school day isn’t an addiction, drinking during the lunch break or smoking during a “passing period” is much easier with no parents or teachers around.
According to East psychology teacher Brett Kramer, it’s shocking to hear about this reality. He doesn’t think about students being drunk or high when brainstorming ways to keep his kids on track during remote schooling.
Although he understands how different this school year has been for teenagers, Kramer believes that whether it be marijuana, alcohol or any sort of hard drug, substance use is never a healthy coping mechanism. It’s clear to him that teenagers participate in these actions just for fun or to have a story to tell, and they have to remember it’s illegal. But those who have taken this up as a coping mechanism are those who Kramer is really worried about.
“I guarantee you will wake up one day and say to yourself, ‘If I could have it back I would never have stepped foot on that slippery slope, it is dangerous,” Kramer said.
“I guarantee you will wake up one day and say to yourself, ‘If I could have it back I would never have stepped foot on that slippery slope, it is dangerous,” Kramer said. “Kids think they’re invincible. You’ve got to be careful because with the notion that ‘bad things will not happen to me’ is proven wrong all the time.”
If given the chance to hand one student a piece of advice regarding what to do if they’re about to step foot on this “slippery slope,” he would say don’t even think about it.
For Johnson, and many other East students, the chance to avoid this is long gone.
“Once I stop, I feel sort of a mental withdrawal,” Johnson said. “It’s like I’m just drowning because I am surrounded by a school setting that has completely destroyed my mental health and there’s nothing I can do but drown. The weed just helps me tolerate it for the time being… Using weed for fun and using weed to cope are very different.”
According to East social worker Emily MacNaughton, it’s apparent that the 2020 school year is especially stressful with a new form of learning and complete isolation. If a student is struggling with substance misuse, the best thing MacNaughton believes students can do is turn to a trusted adult or caregiver, and if they need help getting there, or even feel like they just need someone to tell, to contact one of the East social workers.
Students who contact the social workers will not be reported and all conversations will be confidential, unless the situation becomes threatening of their life.
Beginning by picking apart the problem and getting through why, emotionally, the student chose to turn to substances, MacNaughton would identify what it was they were trying to manage. After talking through the emotions, although she cannot force help upon them, MacNaughton would guide students in the right direction of going to an adult, and help find the next step for them to get better. This ensures that the student remains in control of what happens to them at all times — even if events like a pandemic that control externally.
But Johnson isn’t convinced that the option itself for students to seek help will solve a problem that looms this large.
“As a teen, hearing, ‘Go to a trusted adult’ means nothing,” Johnson said. “I advise you to work on yourself. Start planning out your days and making a schedule for yourself. Tell yourself that your grades will go up and it will get better. I believe that everyone can pull themselves out of the hole that they dug, they just have to want to. Wanting to is what’s hard.”
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