Addiction haunts too many teens and their families.  It's literally epidemic, especially if one includes cell phones and video games with the more frightful demons of drugs and alcohol.  Too many parents give up the fight in preference to "peace" in their relationship with their kids.  They rationalize the video games and incessant attention to cell phones.  They say drug and alcohol use is just experimentation, a phase all kids go through.  Some prefer their kids drink or smoke at home rather than having them out driving under the influence. Maybe the parents have addiction issues of their own and their children's addictions are either too familiar to confront or it affords them time to indulge their own.  Those who choose to confront it run the risk of pushing the addiction underground or engaging in seemingly constant, ugly battles with their teens.  How can we understand this and how can we help?


First, context: There are windows of development throughout childhood where certain skills are to be mastered.  If the opportunity is missed, remediation can be used but it never can fully compensate.  A simple example is left/right dominance.  If this is not established by eight or nine years old it is almost impossible to establish it later in life.  Just think of people you know who are otherwise intelligent, functional people who hesitate or incorrectly respond to a left or right directive.  As children get older, the tasks to be engaged become more complex.  At puberty there is an inward focus on the self, their physical changes and the awakening of their inner life.  Correspondingly there arise questions along the lines of, "What can I do out in the world?  What is my task?  Where do I fit in?"  This is followed a few years later with the even more difficult questions of, "Who am I?  How do I find a place in the world where I am appreciated for who I am and how can I find a way to express my uniqueness and bring my gifts to the world?" These are sometimes articulated and always lie just beneath the surface of any teen's life.  


As a culture, we do a poor job of giving teens the support they need to work through these questions yet if these questions are not worked with at this time, remediating is extremely difficult and will never be as complete as it could have been if tackled in the final stages of childhood. We see this in the many adults who live with a sense that they have not found work that fulfills their inner sense of destiny/what they are meant to do in their life.  Like most of us, they were not guided well to work with these questions in their teen years or, like many, they avoided this task with drugs and alcohol themselves.


This developing sense of self is by definition deeply personal and as this sense of self develops, so too does a sense of loneliness.  As one comes to the realization of one's uniqueness it closely follows that one feels there is no one "out there" who can truly understand him or her. It takes tremendous courage to continue on the path to the self and acute sensitivity to be aware of what is calling from the world to the inner sense of self.  It is not by chance that teens are both sensitive and courageous.  In traditional societies this time of life was anticipated and carefully watched for.  As soon as the child showed signs of this awakening, a coming of age process and rites of passage ritual was in place to guide them.  Elders from the community stepped in, for this was a task for the community and couldn't be done by the family.  (To digress for a moment: Teens naturally start to pull away from the family in the teen years.  This is the healthy process of establishing independence.  If the family holds on too tightly, the necessary independence is not established. What traditional societies understood, and what we do so poorly, is that teens still need adult perspective in their lives.  The coming of age/rites of passage tradition provided this.  Understandably, without this system in place today, families often try to "hold on" to their teens.  While temporarily effective, ultimately it stifles their development of independence.)  Because the support is not in place for teens to embrace and engage this loneliness and because they are not guided on how to use this acute sensitivity, the burden of these experiences becomes extremely painful.  Here is born the gravitation toward escape.  Here too is where addiction often enters a person's life.  


We can see why so many young people seek escape. Overwhelmed by an inner loneliness and an undeniable sensitivity to the outer world, they seek to turn off, to run from this relentless demand to look inwardly at themselves and to perceive the world and what is calling for their attention.  If they aren't guided into a healthy escape they reach for whatever is easiest and since many have not established trusting relationships with adults who can guide them, they look to their peers and mimic the behavior they see there. The difficulty is that many of the escapes that their peers have found are either physically or psychologically addictive.  Some kids are capable of using these escapes in moderation.  Most are not, hence the prevalence of addictive behavior.


So what can we do?  First of all we need to normalize the situation. Parents need to gain perspective that the struggle is healthy though not always pretty. Teens need to know that the internal and external struggles are normal and healthy.  The second step is to embrace it rather than run away from it.  We must teach teens that this is the work of this stage of life.  This is the time to feel deeply the loneliness and anguish over finding their way.  We need to teach them how to listen to what is calling them.  They must deal with these questions sooner or later and now is the proper time. Delaying the inevitable until they are adults will result in far poorer results and the possibility of a far more difficult path to self awareness.  In following posts I will speak more specifically to how this is done and especially on how we can develop the support around them that they need.  Look also at the post on rites of passage.  There are some ideas there.  See you next time!

Guiding thoughts:


I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element.
It is my personal approach that creates the climate.

It is my daily mood that makes the weather.

I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous.

I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration;

I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal.

In all situations, it is my response that decides

whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated,

and a person is humanized or de-humanized.

If we treat people as they are, we make them worse.

If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become

what they are capable of becoming.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe




 “Without a community you cannot be yourself.  The community is where we draw the strength needed to effect changes inside of us.  What one acknowledges in the formation of the community is the possibility of doing together what is impossible to do alone.  This means that individual problems quickly become community problems…… What we need is the ability to come together with a constantly increasing mindset of  wanting to do the right thing, even though we know very well that we don’t know how nor where to start…. Your desire alone is strong enough to guide you along this path.”

Malidoma Somè




“It is sheer nonsense to say that the anti-social impulses must be resisted, for they cannot be resisted. The essential inner development of mankind in our time must be grasped, the essential evolutionary tendency understood. It is not a matter of finding prescriptions for resisting the anti-social impulses; but of so shaping and arranging the social order – the structure, the organization of that which lies outside the individual – that a counterbalance is present to that which works within human beings. It is thus vital for our time that, parallel to the individual achieving independence, social forms provide a balance to this independence. Otherwise, neither the individual nor society can develop properly.”

Rudolf Steiner 




“Eighty percent of success is just showing up”

Woody Allen

To say that the world our adolescents are entering is more complex than the one we grew up in is a vast understatement.  The rapidity of change, the development of globalization and the technological advancement alone make for a challenging enough environment.  When we factor in that the social structures, such as extended families, religious organizations and clear societal norms, which once brought direction and boundaries to growing up, are now either non-existent or greatly diminished in their impact, we can see that teens often feel that it is up to them to find their own way.  The values that we as parents and teachers try to impart are often at odds with what peers are telling them or the examples they are given through music, movies, advertising and internet sources.  Once teens have access to the internet, there is really no control over the influences in their lives.  Short of locking them in a box, we

have to acknowledge that these influences are part of their experience and we must learn to deal with them in a conscious way.  They need information about the world they are entering. If we wait too long we lose standing in their eyes; they see us as out of touch, behind the times and not a source of pertinent information.  We cannot put on blinders because we are either uncomfortable with what is emerging or unwilling to accept what is unfolding.  Truly, if we do not help our children navigate this labyrinth, we are doing them a disservice.

For the past several decades much has been written about rites of passage and the lack of them in our society.  The term “rites of passage” has become cliché, being used to describe everything from a first kiss and getting a driver’s license to getting drunk and even being arrested.  Where rites of passage used to be a vital and crucial initiation conducted by the most revered members of a society, it is now a random series of experiences decided upon by the youths themselves.  Without a consciously guided path to take into adulthood they make up their own rituals and most of them are destructive in nature, whether it is driving too fast, drug and alcohol use and abuse or premature sexual activity.  Parents have even become rather fatalistic about it, saying things like, “He cares more about what his friends say than what I tell him.”, or, “He’ll be OK as an adult if he survives being a teenager.”  Many parents of teens literally hold their breath and hope for the best.

The question becomes: Are the rites of passage that teens are going through today serving them and society well?  All indicators, from statistics about drug and alcohol abuse to numbers of fatal crashes involving teens to high school and college drop out rates to the upsurge of gang membership to teen pregnancy rates and the numbers of exasperated parents throwing up their hands at a loss for what to do, tell us they are not.  So, what can we offer as an alternative?

Adolescents will go through a transformation during their teen years.  Everything from their bodies to their relationships to their view of spirituality will change. The question is: Will it be guided?  In the past virtually every society that can be studied had some sort of initiation or rites of passage for its adolescents.  The rituals were conceived to give guidance during this transition.  These societies did not do this just because it seemed like a nice idea or there was nothing else to do on a dull Saturday.  They did it because the behavior of their unwieldy teenagers demanded it.  If they were going to become contributing members of the society, they would need to be shown how to develop constructive habits.  These rites were performed outside of the family structure.  It was understood that the energy of these youths needed more support than the family could provide.  Usually it was a circle of elders or extended family members who took on this role.  

In studying traditional rites of passage rituals, one finds a consistent pattern.  They began with what might be referred to as a “call to adventure”.  Here the child was often ritually kidnapped and taken away by a group of elders.  In the myths that give a context to the rites of passage, the youth often tries to resist this call to move toward the next stage of life but is made to by circumstance.  This initial stage is about separation: it is time to leave childhood behind, and most children don’t want to leave the comfortable and carefree realm of childhood, even though they may want the benefits of adulthood.  Today, this circle of elders or even the extended family is often not present.  The youths begin to reject their parents influence as in days of old but instead of wise elders stepping into the void, equally inexperienced peers become the source of direction, rituals and trials.  The resulting experiences do little to prepare them for the responsibilities of adulthood and often take them toward self-destructive behaviors.

The second stage is often called “Finding One’s Path”.  Through vision quests, isolation and other trials where one was forced to confront oneself, the youth was forced to seek the answer to the question: Who am I?  Here the child was seeking to understand and accept his own gifts and begin thinking about how he might define his own goals, beliefs and values while beginning to think about how he would put his unique gifts to use for the benefit of his society.  Today, the process of finding oneself often becomes an attempt to fit into a peer group by dressing, talking, walking and behaving a certain way.  Instead of developing the skills needed for independence, they transfer their dependence on their parents to a dependence on their peers.  Goals and values can often fall to the lowest common denominator or are determined by the influence of advertising and media.

The third stage can be referred to as “Entering the Labyrinth”.  Here a youth was put through a series of tests or ordeals to prove he was worthy of taking on the responsibilities and privileges of adulthood. Often during this stage there was a conscious experience with death, where the youths would face their mortality and undergo a symbolic death of their childhood.  This experience of the opposing forces that accompany life gave context to the preciousness of life. Birth and death became meaningful passages that were made conscious to the initiates.  These ordeals were also designed to break down a youth’s egotism so that they would become receptive to new information and insight.  There was no automatic entry to adulthood on a given birthday; surviving these ordeals brought about a transformation and a gaining of confidence which was necessary in order to be accepted as a “new” person in the community.  Without guidance the ordeals youths create for themselves often involve drugs, alcohol, sex, risk taking and, at times, violence.   Some teens create ordeals and separation for themselves by failing or dropping out of school and hence driving away their parents and the adults who care about them.  Teens need positive opportunities to prove themselves in their own eyes and in the eyes of the community.  They need to be seen as having gone through transformative experiences, as having proven themselves.

The fourth stage was often a guided look back by the elders at the experiences of the initiation to distill out the lessons learned or the vision that the youths had been given during their ordeals.  From there the youths would take this new vision of their lives and begin to plan how it would manifest.  They would begin to see how they could lead their lives in service to others.  They came to know that they needed to share what they had learned, for in the future they would be the elders guiding the next generation of youths.  The hedonistic experiences of today’s teens cannot lead to an understanding of life in service of others and hence cannot guide them to find meaning in their work and relationships.  What we see as a result of these youth generated rites is a focus on self and materialism.

The final stage of the rites of passage process was the return to the community.  Here there was a formal acknowledgement by the society that the youth was now worthy of new respect and responsibility, that the child had been transformed into an adult.  It was understood that this new adult still needed guidance and support and also that he was now mature enough to assume the role of an adult in the community.  Today we have no formal way of assessing or acknowledging the transition into adulthood.  Is it a driver’s license, graduation from high school or college, becoming a parent?  None of these are guarantees that a person is ready to be an adult, in fact, much of today’s media portrayals of young men glorify extending adolescence into one’s twenties or even thirties.  Just watch a few beer commercials and one can see this quite obviously.  Refusing to take on the responsibilities and commitments of an adult is now idealized.  “Kids” living with their parents can now extend well into adulthood.



In traditional and more homogenous societies, the content of the rites of passage was consistent.  Cultural and spiritual norms and the roles needed in the community changed very little.  These could be passed down through the generations.  Today, where change happens so rapidly, we don’t have a ready made template to guide us in creating rites of passage.  The plurality of our society and spiritual beliefs, the demands of a changing and increasingly technological economy and the desire for individual expression make creating meaningful rituals and rites of passage difficult.  But just because something is difficult does not mean it should not be done.  In fact, the consciousness needed to create these new rites is as beneficial to those creating them as it is to the youths who need them so badly.  

Men today are sorely in need of community.  A study in the 1990’s revealed that on average, men in the United States had less than one close friend.  Most things men do together are activities that afford little opportunity for real communication.  While playing sports, watching sports, even doing work projects together, usually conversation remains on a superficial level.  The one word response is a male art form, but it doesn’t serve us well when we are facing the difficulties that will always arise in life, be it in our marriages, families, work or health.  When these difficulties do arise, we don’t have the skills or avenues in place to communicate them. This is not a heritage we should pass on to our sons or the young men in our lives.  By coming together to define “rites of passage” for our sons and students we, out of necessity, begin to develop the communication skills that we need, both because we need to know how to teach them to these young men and also because we take the time to define our beliefs and learn how to express them.  Doing this, we develop a vital vocabulary that serves both us and them.

Rites of passage for today must include the practical skills needed to maintain a house and car, financial literacy, spiritual expression, moral guidance, finding one’s path in life, stewardship of the earth, how to have successful relationships, respect for women, caring for those in need, adventure and challenge, mentorship and more.  Each community must take the time to define these for themselves and determine what they are capable of teaching and what they will need help in bringing.  Just as in days of yore, the youth provide the energy.  It is our job to guide it in a constructive direction.  Our boys need us.