Video: Nearly 1 in 5 teens has abused prescription drugs

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SEATTLE - Many teens are going no farther than the family medicine cabinet to get high.

But one local family has a warning for others.

Prescription painkillers helped Rachel's father deal with chronic back pain and three surgeries.

"It didn't kill the pain, but it made it where I could deal with it on a daily basis," Keith said.

But when she was 14, Rachel began taking his pills.

"I would wait for him to leave his room, or just like when he wasn't around, and I would like go in his bathroom and sneak them from him," said Rachel, now 16.

She soon got other powerful prescription narcotics, using her dad's pills as currency.

"I would trade kids at school my own medicine to get it from them and it was like their grandparents or something," she said.

The major source of the traded drugs was family medicine cabinets.

"I have taken percocets, and oxycontins and vicodins, or hydrocodones, and methadones, and valiums," Rachel said.

Eventually she was hospitalized with an overdose, the highs replaced by regret.

She's now in recovery. Her psychiatrist, Dr. Ray Hsiao, co-directs the substance abuse response team at Seattle Children's Hospital. He's seen many kids like Rachel.

"They go to what's called pharm parties, p-h-a-r-m, where they actually trade pills with other kids," Hsiao said.

An alarming recent study showed nearly one in five teens has abused prescription medicines to get high. Many of them mistakenly believe the prescriptions are safe.

"With overdose of these medications you can actually have seizures, comas, or it can actually slow down your breathing so much to the point where you actually die," Hsiao said.

Dr. Hsiao says a nationwide surge in prescriptions is fueling the problem. 

"If you look at data between 2000 and 2005, the number of doses of oxycodone being sold, went from about 14 million to 29 million," Hsiao said.

Rachel's father says he now keeps tempting prescriptions locked away.

And Rachel credits rehab, Dr. Hsiao, and a life skills class at Children's for teaching her ways to cope with the stresses of growing up.

Kids who learn about the risks of drugs at home are only half as likely as peers to try them.