Adolescent Addicts. How do adolescents drift into drug Addiction?

How do adolescents drift into drug Addiction? This problem has prompted many studies all of which indicate that many adolescent addicts are heavily involved by the age of fifteen. As for why, each had his or her own reasons. But in the accounts of their enter into the drug subculture, two themes do tend to recur. The first is peer pressure--the desire to be part of a group or gang.:

• I got into drugs when I was twelve or thirteen years old by trying to be like the older dudes in the neighbourhood. I would look up to those fellows of sixteen or seventeen who had the slickest clothes and all the girls. If they used drugs, then I wanted to use drugs.
• Trying to get in with the crowd in order to have friends was (one)reason for drugs, probably the most important reason. I began to go steady with this boy I met in high school. He was into shooting speed. At first I was afraid to fool around with it, even by popping pills. But then when I got in with my boyfriend's crowd of people, I felt I had to do what they were doing.
• I got into drugs, I guess...because of things that happened to me like, you know, the way I felt about myself. I was a very very skinny, ugly little kid. And it made me feel even worse that the only kids I could hang out with, that would accept me, were the kids who did crazy wild things--like taking drugs. So you can say I started fooling around drugs... when I was about ten. I stared by sniffing glue.
• I took drugs because of the great need I had to be accepted. And dope fiends very easily accept anyone who's on drugs or living on the street, no matter what drugs they're on, whether it's heroin or speed, or anything. 

The second major theme in these young people's accounts of how they began using hard drugs is "problem solving." Like forty-year olds, fourteen-year olds take drugs in order to forget their troubles.

• What got me started on heroin was being so disgusted with life. I had left this really dad neighbourhood, where nobody would give you a chance, and came all the way to Vancouver. And nobody would give me a chance here either. I just couldn't get a job. They always said they wanted somebody with some experience. Well, how could I get some experience if nobody would hire me for my fist job? So I said, "I don't care. I'm just going to forget about everybody else."  I started "working the streets" and then, when I was fourteen or fifteen, I got a job as a stripper.I'm a natural blond so shortly after that I had a black baby. And for as long as I was on heroin I forgot about everybody else. I really worked, you know.
• It was after I'd gotten out of the unwed mother's home and given my second baby for adoption that I went from using acid to heroin. I just didn't see any future for myself. First I started sniffing, and then I started shooting it in my arms.
• I guess one of the reasons I felt this big need for drugs was because I had a big hang-up about chicks. I was so skinny and ugly, no girl would go for me. Even if we were in a group she wouldn't go for me. She'd go over to somebody else even if he already had a girl, and hang around with the two of them rather than be alone with me.

The third theme theme was parental indifference or lack there of.
These three factors, peer influence, the need to forget one's troubles, and lack of parenting, combined with a startling availability of most illegal drugs--on the streets, in junior high and grade schools, and especially in youth group or detention centres in detention centres--make drug abuse appear an easy "solution" for teenagers with a greater-than-average share of adolescent woes.