The May 2013 issue of CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) showed that drugs, alcohol and tobacco abuse and dependence affect 1.7 million U.S. adolescents aged 12-17 years, two-thirds of this population had reported illicit drug use disorder in 2011.

Using data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), CDC found that alcohol use and abuse were highest among teens living in the West. During 2010 and 2011, more than 28 percent of adolescents aged 12-17 reported using alcohol during the past year.

Meanwhile, nearly 700,000 12 to 17-year-olds are addicted to tobaaco. Ruth Perou, PhD, CDC’s Child Development Studies Team Leader, told NBC News that this addiction doesn’t pertain to casual user or experimentation, but serious addiction.

“You are looking at something that is debilitating and really impairs their ability to function day to day,” Perou explains.

Aside from alcohol and tobacco products, the most commonly abused substances were marijuana, cocaine, heroin, inhalants, and prescription drugs.

Perou said CDC is working to help come up with more approaches that work in treatment all substance abuse and mental health disorders that are  killing the potentials of today’s youth. She invites parents and teachers to check CDC’s available information which can help in spotting risky behaviors in kids and teens.

Over the years, we have seen many high-profile music artists struggled with substance abuse — some of them met their deaths before turning 30. Let’s get to know who they were:

Amy Winehouse (27)
The Grammy Award-winning singer has had years of relationship with heroin, ecstasy, cocaine, and alcohol. In 2008, she reportedly checked into a rehabilitation facility for a two-week treatment program. In 2010, she revealed her intent of quitting drugs and alcohol. But come July 23, 2011, the world of music was rocked by news that Winehouse died due to alcohol intoxication.

Kurt Cobain (27)
Cobain’s first foray into drugs, through marijuana, began even before he became the lead vocalist of Nirvana. But the last years of his life was a struggle with heroin addiction, illness, and depression. He was found dead at his Seattle home on April 8, 1994  with a self-inflicted shotgun wound to the head.

Janis Joplin (27)
She was known as “The Queen of Rock and Roll” and “The Queen of Psychedelic Soul” at the height of her career. She had several hits to her name, but her heroin addiction eventually got the best of her. She died on October 4, 1970 from heroin overdose.

Jimi Hendrix (27)
He was one of the most influential guitarists of the 1960s. But he was also widely known to experiment with various illegal drugs, including marijuana, heroin, and amphetamines. On September 18, 1970, Hendrix died of  asphyxia while intoxicated with barbiturates.

Shannon Hoon (28)
He was the frontman and lead singer of the band Blind Melon. He died of cocaine overdose on October 21, 1995. According to the band’s manager Chris Jones, Hoon had “been battling drugs for some time,” putting him into rehab twice.

Below are some blogs and websites where you can leave comments and share ideas  on the different aspects of addiction recovery.

12 Steps Ahead – a user-friendly blog for recovering individuals who want to share their experience, strength and hope with others. It features recovery-based news, events, and videos. It provides access to real stories, daily reflections, and topics about sobriety, addiction treatment, substance abuse, and more. It also encourages you to submit recovery experience and thoughts.

The 12-Step Buddhist – this website is run by Darren Littlejohn, a recovering addict and practitioner of Zen and Tibetan Buddhism. It features how-to articles, podcast, discussion and commentary pages, videoblog, photoblog, book reviews, and retreat programs.

My Route to Help – a website that offers information on addiction, encouragement to people who want to get sober, advice on harm reduction, and other self-help services. You can read stories of people who have once been overpowered by substance abuse and eventually able to overcome their addiction. It also gives you an opportunity to share your own experience, as well as learn from other people’s struggles.

Pressing The Issue – this blog is created to help people dealing with substance abuse. It tackles different addiction treatments and gives information on various drugs and their effects. Aside from addiction and recovery articles, you can also check recommended books that can help you further understand the nature of substance abuse.

Awakened Recoveries – a website founded by Gregg D. — a recovered alcoholic, writer, poet, gifted speaker, and university instructor. It provides comprehensive details on the 12-step recovery program, as well as video posts on practicing the principles of 12 steps and the phases of addiction recovery.

Here are three of the most widely used performance-enhancing drugs and the risks they can bring to the user’s health.

Anabolic steroids
This is probably the most popular performance-enhancing drugs among athletes and teens. They are used to increase muscle mass and strength. Although they have approved medical uses, they are not recommended to boost athletic performance. Still, many athletes are using them as the easiest and fastest way of bulking up.

In men, the negative side effects of anabolic steroids include baldness, shrunken testicles, infertility, impotence, and prominent breasts. In women, the effects include developing deeper voice, enlarged clitoris, increased body hair, irregular periods, and baldness. Men and women who are into anabolic steroids are also at risk of severe acne, liver abnormalities and tumor, high blood pressure, drug dependence, depression, aggressive behaviors, and infectious diseases like HIV (usually acquired through drug injections).

Human Growth Hormone
This performance-enhancing drug is known to produce anabolic effect. Athletes use them to enhance muscle mass and performance. The drug can be obtained only by prescription and is administered by injection. Although it allows tired muscles to recover quicker, thereby allowing an athlete to train harder, it doesn’t guarantee better performance. Among the side effects of the drug include joint pain, muscle weakness, fluid retention, diabetes, high blood pressure, elevated cholesterol level, and impaired sugar regulation. In addition, it could enlarge liver and kidneys which may lead to more serious health problems.

Erythropoietin (EPO)
Although commonly used to treat anemia in people with severe kidney disease, this drug is widely used by endurance athletes because of its effect on red blood cell production which gives athletes noticeable endurance boost. The procedure for EPO use, however, carry greater health risk in the sense that it increases the user’s risk for stroke, heart attack and pulmonary edema. Athletes who are blood doping are also more likely to experience seizures and hypertension. EPO injection must carried out with extreme caution, as the blood can be difficult to store and administer.

According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, drug fatalities increased 3 percent in 2010. Preliminary data for 2011 indicate the figure keeps adding up.

CDC researchers found prescription painkillers, such as OxyContin and Vicodin, as top drivers for the increasing drug deaths. The numbers were a disappointment for public health officials, who had expressed hope that educational and enforcement programs would stem the rise in fatal overdoses, the Los Angeles Time reports.

“While most things are getting better in the health world, this isn’t,” CDC director Tom Frieden said in an interview. “It’s a big problem, and it’s getting worse. The data supporting long-term use of opiates for pain, other than cancer pain, is scant to nonexistent. These are dangerous drugs. They’re not proven to have long-term benefit for non-cancer pain, and they’re being used to the detriment to hundreds of thousands of people in this country.”

Frieden added there are some promising tools which can help combat the problem. One of them  is the use of computerized drug monitoring programs by health care professionals.

In California, there’s the prescription drug monitoring program known as CURES but officials are not proactively using it to identify people who “doctor shop” or physicians who over-prescribe medicines.

Gil Kerlikowske, President Obama’s drug czar, echoed Frieden’s call for aggressive monitoring by state medical boards. He agrees that medical practitioners should be more proactive in fighting prescription drug abuse by utilizing state drug monitoring database instead of just waiting for someone to complain.

But what is it about peer pressure that forces someone to engage in risky behaviors? Why does it matter so much, especially in adolescents?

The truth of the matter is, peer pressure happens to everyone of us at some point in our lives. Some are good peer pressure, but many can be identified as negative peer pressure.

In his book Living with Peer Pressure and Bullying, Dr. Thomas Paul Tarshis defined peer pressure as the influence of other people’s perceptions on your decisions or actions. It can enter our lives in several different ways, such as in the form of comments made by classmates or peers outside of school; exposure to material items; and the pressure to perform certain behaviors.

With teenagers, peer pressure is deemed important because the choice made when dealing with it influences the success or failure of their future. As a teenager, the opinions of your friends and classmates in your choice of clothes, music or school becomes more important than that of your parents. The same goes for the more serious topics, such as drugs, alcohol, and sexual activity.

Dr. Tarshis explained some of the reasons why teens are forced to give in to negative peer pressures, which include the concern of losing a friend or making a new one; the concern about being teased; the fear of being left out or being bullied. Some teens who may feel that the consequences of not giving in to peer pressure are worse than feeling guilty about doing something that’s wrong.

Teens who are at higher risk of giving in to peer pressure are those who have poor self-esteem and confidence; poor family support; lack of hobbies or interests; lack of friends; and poor school performance. Kids who just moved to a new school or city are also vulnerable to giving in to peer pressure for the sake of gaining approval and acceptance.

An October 2012 campus survey conducted by the University of Michigan revealed that 27.8 percent of female undergraduates, 11.8 percent of male undergraduates, 21.5 percent of female graduate students, and 10.3 percent of male graduate students on campus were found to have eating disorders. But what is even more alarming is that 82 percent of women and 96 percent of men who are struggling with an eating disorder have not received treatment in the past year.

The researchers found that students who diet regularly dislike their bodies, fear gaining weight and seldom seek help for eating disorders.

But if you think the problem stops there, think again, because eating disorders can be a culprit in a person’s substance abuse problems.

The 2003 study, titled Food for Thought: Substance Abuse and Eating Disorders, conducted by The National Center on Addictions and Substance Abuse at Columbia University found that people with eating disorders are up to five times more likely to abuse alcohol or illicit drugs and those who abuse alcohol or illicit drugs are up to 11 times more likely to have eating disorders.

High school girls with eating disorders are at greater risk to smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol or use drugs than those without eating disorders. Similarly, girls who smoke, drink or use drugs are at higher risk to report past month eating disorder symptoms than those who do not have substance abuse issues.

The study concluded that individuals with eating disorders abuse caffeine, tobacco, alcohol, amphetamines, cocaine, heroin and over-the-counter medications such as diuretics, emetics or laxatives to suppress appetite, increase metabolism and purge themselves.

Marci Warhaft, the woman behind Fit vs. Fiction, knows exactly what makes kids today so obssessed with their appearance and the need to look good.

“It seems like you can’t flip open a magazine or turn on the TV without being inundated with images of impossibly beautiful, seemingly flawless women,” Warhaft explained. “As a result, so many young girls feel like they just don’t measure up and become desperate to change the way they look, even at the risk of damaging their health through risky weight loss behaviours. The same goes for the boys. I hear from boys as young as nine years old who are completely ashamed of their bodies because they don’t have the chiselled abs or bulging bicep muscles they see on actors on tv or at the movies.”

It’s common knowledge that many boys who want to beef up their bodies would rather take the easy route, that is, using anabolic steroids. But while steroids really help in improving strength and muscles, they are also associated with negative side effects, such as baldness, increased risk of prostate cancer, infertility, acne, bloated appearance, swelling of feet and ankles, and penile enlarged, to name a few. That’s not all; steroids users may eventually experience depression, irritability, anxiety, delusions, and other psychological problems.

Warhaft emphasized the importance of fostering a healthy environment at home. She said parents and children should be able to discuss weight issues at home as openly and honestly as possible. Encouraging the kids to become physically active is also a good way to help kids maintain a HEALTHY look as opposed to the kind of appearance they see among movie stars.

“Our fitness goals shouldn’t be about fitting into skinny jeans or a string bikini, but should be about FEELING strong and healthy,” Warhaft added. “We need to get our kids involved in activities that help them appreciate the amazing things their bodies can DO, so they won’t become preoccupied with how they look.”

The Intervention Organization noted that there are more than 8 million children in the United States who live with at least one parent struggling with alcohol or drug dependency. One in four children below the age of 18 is living in a home where alcohol abuse is a fact of daily life.

As much as an addicted parent needs treatment, children of addictions also need professional help in order to cope with the trauma of growing up in families affected by alcohol or drug abuse.

Health professionals, school teachers and guidance counselors, community-based program personnel, and social workers are just some of the adults that can provide children of addictions the help and encouragement they need.

If you want to help children who live in alcohol or drug-dependent families, check out the organizations listed below for more guided assistance.

The National Association for Children of Alcoholics
This non-profit organization have affiliate groups throughout the U.S., as well as in Great Britain, Germany, and Canada. They work to raise public awareness by creating videos, booklets, posters and other educational materials for intervention and children support. One of its affiliates in the United States is the Betty Ford Center Children’s Program, which  offers education, support, and hope to 7-12-year-olds impacted by a loved one’s addiction to alcohol and/or other drugs. For more information about the work they do, you can visit www.nacoa.org

National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence, Inc.
Since 1944, this non-profit organization has raised public awareness about addiction throughout the United States and increasingly across the global community. In the U.S. alone, it currently has over 100 affiliates that serving individuals, families, workplaces, schools, health providers, and psychological therapeutic community, among others. In addition to delivering media campaigns, NCADD is also committed to provide intervention services, drinking driver programs, recovery support, and school and community-based prevention. For additional details about NCADD, visit www.ncadd.org

Let’s tackle some of the common excuses used by drug addicts and alcoholics in rationalizing their addiction.

Excuse # 1: It gives me a sense of relief
How many times have we heard of people who take drugs or drink alcohol to escape their dysfunctional family or to forget about problems in their work, school, and personal relationships? Most people who abuse banned substances would say they just need a bit of a relief for what they were going through. Some would take prescription medicines to get over their depression symptoms; others would take designer drugs in an effort to get “high” and forget about their problems. When the family tries to intervene, the addict would usually react with indignation because s/he feels his/her sense of comfort is being taken away.

Excuse # 2: I need to use drugs or drink to be accepted
Although popular to addicts of all ages and status, this excuse may often be heard from teenagers who want to become a part of a certain group. That’s because in some peer groups, drinking or using drugs is the idea of being “cool.”

Excuse # 3: It’s okay to drink or use drugs as long as I’m not hurting anyone
Addicts feel that as long as they are not causing harm to other people they can continue drinking and using drugs however they like. The thing is, they may not be physically harming their loved ones but their addiction at any level is enough to cause emotional pain to family and friends. As the addict gets worse in her/his addiction, the more likely s/he could get herself/himself injured in the long run, as well as other people.

Excuse # 4: Everyone’s doing it, why can’t I?
People tend to compare themselves to others. In the case of an addict, the moment he compares his habit to other people who drinks or take drugs, the more he is convinced that what he is doing is normal.

Excuse # 5: I need to drink or use drugs to keep up with the pressures at work or school
We all go through tight pressure at work or in school, but some people think the best solution would be to take drugs or drink alcohol. In fact, there are people who think they’d be more creative or perform better if they take drugs. An individual may start with just few pills for the week, but before s/he knows it s/he is already increasing her/his intake.

A source told Radaronline that the 21-year-old MTV star volunteered to seek treatment for her heroine addiction, as well as “related stresses stemming from her tumultuous last few months.”

“Everyone has been worried about Jenelle doing heroin, even though she was denying that for a long time,” the source said.

This isn’t the first time the reality TV star has been treated for drug abuse problem. In November 2012, Jenelle involuntarily committed to a rehab center for 72 hours. According to the source, she now wants to get clean not only for herself but also for her son.

“Jenelle has been through the wringer lately,” the source said. “She got married to a guy that she now thinks is a disaster, got pregnant, had a miscarriage and is basically falling apart.”

Meanwhile, Jenelle’s on-again boyfriend Gary Head defended her on Twitter regard her substance abuse issues. “Jenelle is NOT ON DRUGS. She got sent for emotional support because this season was so intense.” he tweeted on Feb. 25. “MTV Does not want her to see this season and then relapse BC of all the stress but I will say that Jenelle does not do drugs. I won’t allow that and he knows that if she ever goes back to drugs then she can have them. But she won’t have me.”