Greg: What is going on, everyone? It is Matt and Greg here from Project Unbroken. Make sure you subscribe, and please help us share these videos, so that we can get the word out there about addiction, which is really plaguing our community right now. Today, we’re going to be talking about warning signs that your child may be using opiates or heroin.
Matt: Lots of them, I guess. I mean, to the untrained eye, I think a lot of this stuff would go unnoticed, but if you have a couple of key things to look for, I think there’s some physical things going on that you can notice and probably just some behavioral things that can raise some red flags.
Greg: Definitely.
Matt: Anything come to mind to you, to start off?
Greg: Yeah, number one for me would be … Not the number one thing, just the first thing that came to my mind was sleep patterns and then also feeling sick, like they’re feeling sick more often. I’ll let you explain that one. I’ll explain the sleep one. I knew that when I was using, my sleep patterns definitely changed, where I would sleep really long periods, like sometimes 18 hours.
Matt: Yeah.
Greg: I remember getting up one day at 4:30 in the afternoon and coming upstairs and it was dark already. It was in the winter. My mom was just like, “What are you doing?” I was like, “Shit! I hope she doesn’t know what’s going on.” I definitely had times like that where I would just … Before my addiction, I would go to bed at the normal time, 10:00, 11:00, 12:00, get up at 7:00, 8:00. I had a normal schedule. With my addiction, I would sleep in a lot. You can really sleep, when you’re using, when you’re using heroin or pills, because your body just gets tired out. You sleep at different hours. That’s definitely one thing. Then, I think you can probably explain the sick thing. If they’re feeling sick more often-
Matt: Yeah, that’s a big red flag. When you’re withdrawing, it’s like having the flu times 10. It’s pretty extreme. I mean, even the signs can be just runny nose, literally stuff you would see with the flu. It gets pretty bad. I remember, the first time I went through withdrawal I was actually on vacation. I was out of town.
Greg: In Mexico.
Matt: Yeah, and I didn’t expect it to be as bad as it was, but I remember. It was like having literally a stomach bug and the flu for an entire week, and you’re just, you’re miserable.
Greg: What was crazy at that time we weren’t really using that heavy. The heavier you’re using the worse it gets.
Matt: It was early on. I remember, I kind of did what I had right before I left. Got on the plane, I was fine. Probably like 12 hours, and then we were off to dinner with my family and all of a sudden I was just like … it was like a switch turned off. And I was just sick. It was miserable.
Here’s another sign. If somebody’s spending a lot of time in a hot shower, if your water bill’s going up, 100% sign. That was the only relief I could find.
Greg: Yes. You know what was crazy is when I was going through withdrawal I would literally get up in the middle of the night four or five times and hop in that shower.
Matt: It’s the only thing. That is probably one of the biggest red flags. If your water bill’s going up, I’m serious …
Greg: Or you just noticed your child is getting late night showers or something like that.
Matt: That is a red flag. You get these cold sweats and chills. Really, there’s no relief from besides a hot shower.
Greg: I think that’s a big one is like, if your child or kid, whatever, is just complaining of not feeling good, you know, “What’s wrong?” “I just don’t feel good, I don’t know, I’m just kinda sick.”
Matt: And even if they’re not saying it you can just see it. If they look like they’re ill, maybe it’s even a bigger red flag if they’re like, “No, I’m fine.” But you can tell they look like shit.
Greg: Some of the symptoms of heroin withdrawal are vomiting, restless legs, anxiety, you can’t sleep, you feel sick. You can get loss of color, usually you get. So, there’s just some common signs you can see with opiate addiction or heroin addiction.
Matt: Well, here’s another red flag, if it goes away like this.
Greg: Yeah. The constant change in mood, so if they’re either really happy or really sad and there’s nothing in between, that’s a huge warning sign.
Matt: Absolutely. And again, we’ve kind of talked about this in some of our other videos, I think as a parent, or if there’s somebody close to you that you’re kind of seeing some of this stuff with you may not wanna see it. I mean, a lot of times I feel like there’s a lot of signs out there, and of course, maybe sometimes parents are just like, “God, he’s acting really strange, what the hell’s going on?” You might wanna look a little bit deeper. Any of these things can absolutely be a red flag.
Greg: You know what’s tricky about that is like they’ll say he’s acting weird but then he’ll get high he’s acting great. Like, wait, oh, he’s so happy-
Matt: He’s good.
Greg: … he’s good, he’s all right, you know? So that goes back to the constant, you know, if he’s really happy or he’s like, “I just don’t feel good.” You’re really supposed to be in the middle most of the time. You can have highs and lows in life but generally you’re going to be at that middle where … I would say we’re even above middle, we’re happy but we’re not like, “hi, hi mom, dad.” You know what I mean? More happy than they would be normally.
Matt: Yeah, absolutely. Extremes in mood.
Greg: Extremes.
Matt: Especially the ups and downs. That’s definitely a red flag. A lot of times, if we’re talking to parents out there right now, you’ve been around your kid for a long time, you know their mode of operation for the most part, and everybody has their personality traits. Some people are more outgoing, some people are kind of more introverts and they keep to themselves. Whatever that is, is fine, but if all of a sudden it changes, that’s a real big red flag and you can’t just chalk it up to, he’s having a tough time at school or he went through a breakup recently or whatever it is.
We’ve been talking more about this in general. Stay involved there, keep the dialog going, and keep it open, because a lot of times something that may start off really innocently, where your kid thinks, “I’m just gonna try this out,” it can really spiral out of control. Likely.
Greg: For us. It did for us. Another big one for me is dilated pupils. Really pay attention to their eyes, because if they have like pinpoint pupils, that is huge sign. It’s a really easy one to spot. When people are using and they’re high their eyes are gonna dilate, or their pupils are gonna dilate.
If you look at me and Matt right now, if you can see us, you look at the person next to you or any of your family members their pupils should be a couple of centimeters big. They should be about this big. If they’re pinpoint where you can barely see them that’s a huge, huge sign.
Matt: Yeah, absolutely. I think that about covers it. Thanks for watching, guys. We’ve been getting a lot of questions about stuff like this. Like, what signs should I be looking for. If you guys have any questions or topics that you’d like us to cover, please leave us a comment or hit us up in the contact section at www.projectunbroken.com.
Don’t forget to hit that subscribe button and please share this video. If you know anybody that might be struggling with opiate addiction or any substance abuse, we’d love to try to get the message out about Project Unbroken.
So, thanks again for watching, guys. We look forward to talking to you soon.
Greg: Have a good one, everyone.
