Episode Details

The Addiction Inoculation with Jessica Lahey Transformative Principal 401

Jessica Lahey is a teacher, writer, and mom. Over twenty years, she’s taught every grade from sixth to twelfth in both public and private schools. She writes about education, parenting, and child welfare for The Atlantic, Vermont Public Radio, The Washington Post and the New York Times and is the author of the New York Times bestselling book, The Gift of Failure: How the Best Parents Learn to Let Go So Their Children Can Succeed. She is a member of the Amazon Studios Thought Leader Board and wrote the educational curriculum for Amazon Kids’ The Stinky and Dirty Show. Jessica earned a B.A. in Comparative Literature from the University of Massachusetts and a J.D. with a concentration in juvenile and education law from the University of North Carolina School of Law. She lives in Vermont with her husband and two sons. Her second book, The Addiction Inoculation: Raising Healthy Kids in a Culture of Dependence, will be released in April 2021.

• Why did you write this book? 
• amwriting podcast
• The Deepest Well - Nadine Burke-Harris
• Shame - associated with alcoholism.
• Giving up a sense of control
• Personality, Genetics, and more.
• Epigenetics - how our genes are expressed. How our genetics are expressed based on what we have experienced.
• Scales vs. risk factors.  
• How do we raise kids to be healthy? 
• What does work in drug prevention? Spoiler alert - SEL programs
• Inoculation theory - the more a kid feels like they can say no
• Certain things we need to look for:
• Early learning issues
• Early aggression
• Bot Violates Life skills training.
• Gateway drugs and activities
• Kids and drug use is going down. But vaping is not.
• Not all kids are going to go on to be addicts if they use early on.
• The adolescent brain is uniquely vulnerable to substances.
• If we can keep kids away from drugs and alcohol until their early 20s, we can nearly eliminate
• Consistent messaging to kids, “We do not take drugs or alcohol until we are of age.“
• What if we fear we’ve already lost our kids? How do we get them back to square one?
• If you know your kids have abused, what should you do?
• Kids overestimate how much substances mean to other people.
• Boys will raise consumption to meet peer levels.
• Girls will start to socially isolate.
• People avoid creating sober events.
• Sports drive alocohol consumption.
• It’s about prevention, not treatment.
• Recovery doesn’t look the same in teens as it does in adults.
• Medication-based addiction recovery can be helpful.
• Talking with counselor at school.
• Identifying it early.
• Kids use [substances] to cope with whatever they are feeling.
• Community-based support
• Maia Salovitz
• Something’s gotta give
• Joseph Lee MD. Recovering my kid.
• David Scheff and Nick Scheff - High
• Recovery High Schools (one affiliated with University of Texas)
• 16 and in recovery on MTV.
• Start a recovery high school
• Evaluate your substance abuse prevention program. Blueprints substance abuse prevention University of Colorado Boulder. If you’re starting in middle school you’re starting too late.

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