You have probably heard people talking of huffing inhalants and just thought ahhh someone is sniffing glue. Well it is a lot more complicated than that nowadays. There are huffing inhalants everywhere in your home that your children can be getting into to get high. Yes get high.

Your reaction to that might be like mine was up until a year ago. “Oh yeah I’ve heard of that, but I don’t have to worry about it. My kids are to smart to do something so stupid”

Oh yes I can freely admit that I was like a lot of parents, really quite in the dark about what huffing inhalants meant. I usually associated the term with a mental picture of the "dirty bum" that sat slumped over in the dark alleys of the city, where I would never tread, and surely my teenagers would know nothing about.

What I now know is huffing inhalants is a very different thing than simply sniffing glue or paint fumes. It’s not just the poor mental cases that huff. A lot of kids are huffing; white, black, rich, poor, popular, unpopular, smart, not-so-smart, athletes, non-athletes, gay, straight, beautiful, ugly. Yes any and everyone can and are huffing inhalants.

My friend Christine was happily married; she had two teenage children, one boy and a girl. She was in all ways, just like me. Up until the night she was called to go get her son from the police department because he had been arrested for driving under the influence. She rushed down there thinking, how could he be drinking?

What she found was totally different. He had not been drinking, but had been huffing inhalants. She blinked and waited for a description of what that meant. He told her he was sorry and it had been his first time and he promised he would never do it again.

He seemed genuinely contrite and so she gave him some nominal punishment and felt that the situation was good now. She believed him in everyway. (Now knows to stamp, “dumb parent” on her forehead)

A month passed before I got a phone call from Christine, a tradgic accident had happened Paul and his best friend had been killed in a auto accident and then she let it slip. He had been huffing inhalants. Not only that, but the huffing inhalants had been stuff in the home she had bought as part of everyday living, paint cans and hair spray and white out and spray deodorant. How could she have known? Lives forever changed.

I was like her, but not anymore, at least not about huffing inhalants and I can only hope that if you are reading this and think or know someone that is “playing around with huffing inhalants”, get them help. Expose it. Don’t worry what they are saying or thinking. Just do it. Don’t think because it is a cleaning supply that is safe in your house, that is safe from your kids. Whatever you believe, don’t believe that inhalants can’t hurt, because believe me they can kill.

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