First Steps: What to Do When a Teen Is Already in Trouble

Dr. Saulitis discusses adolescent mental health without illusions: what is "within reach" for a young person is often cannabis, and the earlier a child starts smoking, the heavier the consequences. Yet even facing disaster, you cannot give up — the question is always the same: "Well, what do we do?"

The Earlier, the Heavier

The doctor describes the mechanism plainly: with early, prolonged use, the capacity for abstraction suffers. It is not about mechanically memorized data, but about being able to "picture it, abstract it" and reach an answer. Without that, ordinary school steps — multiplication, division, multi-step problems — become overwhelming.

"If a child starts smoking cannabis at 14 and keeps it up until twenty, he essentially becomes mentally retarded."

"Pulling Them Through" Is Not Rescue

The doctor recalls a young man whom mainstream school "pulled through" to eleventh grade and a diploma. But at university the load is enormous, and such students "stand out immediately": they need a solid base, the ability to grasp lectures quickly, organize study at home, hold new information in memory, and build knowledge layer upon layer. This, the doctor says, is where the "break" happens.

Name the State in Plain Words

The doctor values precise language. He notes the observation that cannabis leaves a person not calm but "slowed down" — "as if stoned with rocks, knocked out by a dusty sack." Honestly naming the state is itself a first step: as long as there is "simply no understanding whatsoever," there is nowhere to move.

Fear and Anxiety as Part of the Picture

Among a teen's own problems are anxiety and panic. The doctor explains: normally fear is "a simple physiological reaction to danger" — the body reacts, the danger passes, the person calms down. A disorder begins when the reaction "gets stuck": the trigger is gone, but the fear hormones are still working. This matters when assessing a teenager.

Practice

First steps for a parent/loved one (strictly from the doctor's own logic):

1. Acknowledge the fact. Honestly assess how early and how long the child has been using — don't "pull through," see reality.
2. Name the state precisely. Tell "slowed down" apart from laziness or temperament; note whether anxiety/panic gets stuck with no visible cause.
3. Check key abilities. Can the teen abstract, hold a multi-step task, grasp new material and build on it.
4. Reduce the load. Don't set an impossible bar at once (like a freshman year); move in manageable steps.
5. Turn to a specialist and choose what "comes more easily" — an activity, a profession, a task within reach.

Don't Give Up

The doctor admits that, facing catastrophe, sometimes "your hands drop." But then sobriety returns: "yes, this is nature, this is how it is — so what do we do." That means acting as best you can, step by step.