It was morbidity all right. A 2022 Malaysian adolescent journey of the deeply concerning kind revealed by the Institute of Public Health's National Health and Morbidity Survey.
Picture this. Of the polled, 154,646 secondary school students aged 13 to 17 were "high" on sex, alcohol, drugs and cigarettes.
Future leaders are surely not made of these. Something is wrong with the fabric of Malaysian society.
Such red flags have been waved decades ago, but as a nation we have not been paying attention.
Parents, neighbours, teachers, leaders and the government have allowed this to happen.
Of these, parents must be blamed the most. Consider the teenagers' consumption of alcohol as a proxy for their ailing adolescence.
Seventy-three per cent of them had parents who were drinkers. Small wonder that home was the source of supply for 55 per cent of them.
Wonder why our students get poor grades at school? "Congenital" inebriation is one of the answers.
Alcohol interferes with the way our brain works. This is why companies forbid alcohol during working hours. If there is wisdom here for adults, there must be wisdom here, too, for the adolescents.
Sure, many of these troubled teens come from broken families or homes where both parents work two jobs with little time to spare for their children. But, parenthood comes with responsibilities.
Shirking these has a high cost, not just for the family, but also for society. Those who are not ready, willing and able should not start a family.
Parents can't turn their responsibilities into a burden for the rest, especially the teachers. They have 39 other students to shape and mould.
Yes, they can observe, counsel and report. Parents must know this: the school is not a second home. Home work is for parents, not teachers. A failure there isn't going to spell success at school.
The neighbourhood and community of the troubled adolescents, too, have a responsibility. Neighbours shouldn't just look the other way.
Malaysian city-dwellers must take a leaf from our rural neighbourhood. They ask after each other.
There isn't a gate separating one home from another like the ones in the city. And they meet at every event as the children grow up — at schools, weddings, open houses and mosques.
If something is amiss, the neighbours will be the first to know. And to the extent they can, they will help. Othewise, they will get help from those who can.
Humans live in a community for a reason. Malaysians started that way, but in our hurry chasing our private dreams, we have forgotten the nightmares of our neighbours.
Being charitable doesn't just mean giving. It also means listening. The government, too, must be given a bad report card.
Adolescence gone wrong isn't just last year's problem. Troubled teenagers — most of them on motorcycles and bicycles — have been troubling Malaysia for the last few decades, but governments come and go in Putrajaya doing little to nothing about ending the menace.
State governments were and are no better. There is a solution, but first our federal and state governments must try to understand our teenagers' brain chemistry.
Iceland has got its teens to say "no" to drugs by just doing that.
