9781422273869

As you go through adolescence, various people will line up to advise you about what to do and what not to do. Parents, teachers, and counselors will constantly offer the wisdom of their experience (whether you like it or not). Your pediatrician will want to weigh in on how much exercise you get, how often you eat vegetables, and the amount of time you spend on your phone. At school, friends and enemies alike will be full of opinions about what you should or shouldn’t be saying, doing, or wearing at any given moment. All the while, total strangers in faraway boardrooms will painstakingly design advertisements to try and convince you to send some of your hard-earned money their way. But, ultimately, the only person who can make decisions about what you do is you. When it comes to experimenting with drugs and alcohol, those decisions are serious and can come with life-altering consequences. So, before you make any decisions about drugs and alcohol, it’s important to understand the science, the risks involved, and the potential consequences. Because some of those potential consequences are as serious as consequences can get. This book will present the facts, without scare tactics or moralizing. Since different drugs have different types of impacts, chapter 1 is organized into sections based on the type of drug and its effect on the brain, as well as on the rest of the body. The next chapter, “Drugs A to Z,” is mini-encyclopedia of the drugs

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