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Conducting a Drug Evaluation
The Diagnosing Drug Use Page gave you the tools you need to detect drug use by way of your casual daily interactions. The Drug Testing Page taught you how to verify your suspicions by way of cheap, easy, private and reliable drug tests. These tests should always be your preferred method. But what if you don’t have a drug test in the home? What if your child seems a little “off“, but you’re not sure if its drug use or not? Teenage mood swings, abnormal sleep patterns and high levels of caffeine can sometimes produce strange behavior. Fortunately, there are ways to diagnose drug use under these circumstances. With some careful observation, you can even get an idea of what type of substance they may be using.
People take drugs because they want to alter the way in which their body works. These changes can cause pleasurable feelings in the user. They also cause changes in things that others can observe. Things like temperature, pulse and respiratory rate, blood pressure and muscle tone can be readily evaluated by lay people. Those observations can then be used to determine if, and what type of, a drug has been used.
To determine whether a person is fit to drive, police officers typically combine their in person observations, with a series of divided attention tests. The roadside process is over in minutes, but is often more than enough to reveal impairment. With just a little knowledge, you can use these similar techniques to reliably expose drug use in the home.
You don’t need to be a nurse to conduct an evaluation. The techniques are very basic. All we are doing is determining whether there is a deviation from the subject’s baseline characteristics. Remember, no one knows your child like you do. So it’s likely that you are actually the most qualified person to do this. This five minute process will give you the power to make credible relevant observations. If you see several factors that just aren’t right, you know that you’re on to something, and should progress to a drug test. As you are reading through the following steps, though, remind yourself that there are likely innocent causes for individual characteristics. Your goal is not to discover one factor that is out of whack, but to home in on a series of factors that infer drug use.
A thorough evaluation will include the four step process described below. Once you’ve taken this information in, your going to ask yourself two questions:
- Is my child acting normally?
- Is my child’s body acting normally?
After completing this process, you’ll have qualified and objective facts you need to make that call. And it’s not difficult. This information can be gathered in a matter of minutes. Of course, you’re not going to do a full evaluation every night. Once you know what to look for, though, you can work a lot of it into your nightly Hug routine. Just remember that light impairment can still sneak by you. A thorough prevention / detection plan will always include some form of random drug testing.
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Disposition: Your evaluation starts by simply noting the disposition of your subject. Are they acting normal? Do they seem unusually lethargic or energetic? Are they unusually mute or talkative? Are they eerily passive or irritable? Are they jittery, paranoid, or overly affectionate? Do they seem clumsy? Are they slurring their words? Oftentimes, these observations will be your first clue that something’s up. Take a moment to write them down. It may seem subtle now, but it will come in handy later.
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Physical Appearance: Make some notes about their physical appearance. Is their face flushed? Are their eyes red? Are their eyelids droopy? Is their jaw clenched tightly? Are they stiff and rigid, or do they slump like jello? Is there powder in their nostrils? What about residue around their mouth? Are their clothes, stained from spills, vomit or urine? What odors do you notice? Not just on their breath, but in their hair and on their clothes. Equally significant are signs that they’ve tried to conceal symptoms by using eye drops, gum, mouthwash or body spray. Write down your observations.
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Sobriety Tests: Now its time to evaluate your subject’s physical coordination and mental agility (sobriety). Most parents feel severely limited by their ability to detect impairment. Because of this, most kids can easily get away with being mildly drunk or high in front of their family. But parents don’t need to feel unqualified. Detecting impairment is not difficult. Simple tests, such as the One Leg Stand Test, the ABC’s, the Number Test and the Romberg Test are quick and easy to administer.
Here’s an example: With the Lack of Convergence Test, you simply instruct your subject to follow your index finger with their eyes as you circle it in front of their face. After their eyes begin to follow your finger, you draw one more circle in the air. Then you bring your finger in towards their face and stop it about two inches from the bridge of their nose. In a normal subject, their eyes will converge on your finger and they will go cross-eyed. If they’re under the influence of marijuana, inhalants, depressants or PCP, though, they will be unable to hold both eyes pointed inward.
Visit the Home Sobriety Tests page for a list of easy tests that you can use in your home. Or just click here to Download a PDF WorkSheet. Make sure you write down your results.
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Making Measurements: Lastly, we’re going to check their heart rate, pulse, blood pressure and pupil size. All of these are quite easy to do, even for lay people. Most drug stores sell battery operated blood pressure kits that do all of the work for you. They’ll even provide a pulse rate while they’re at it. For our purposes, a normal temperature range is anything between 97.3 and 100 degrees Fahrenheit. A normal blood pressure is 120-140 / 80-90. A normal resting pulse is between 60 and 80 and a normal pupil size is between 3 and 6.5 mm. You can have all of these measurements in three minutes, and the information they yield is very telling. Write it down.
Not everyone has a pupilometer, so we’ve made one that you can download from the Pupilometer page. Once you have your measurements, you’re going to compare them against the Drug Symptom Chart. Just click these words to get it.
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