Sounds like you've already talked with him, so that's good. But I would still advise him to be careful around friends who do drugs. I'm about to turn 21 myself, and have experience dealing with friends who do drugs. There are tons of kids out there who smoke weed, and your kids will become friends with some. But you should seriously talk to your kids about staying away from any heavy users or anybody who touches the harder drugs out there. I'm in the transition of losing a good friend right now because I just can't deal with his drug nonsense anymore. What was funny 3 years ago got old, and as my friends and I grew up he was staying the same. He has literally cost me close to a thousand dollars in a 3 year span, and he just recently wrecked another friends car. He decided to take his keys without asking, and drive while drunk and on pills. We've tried to get him to stop, and have even sat down to talk him so he could tone it down. But it never get's through to his head. I could no longer try and help someone who just doesn't care. I hope that after he loses all his real friends he'll realize that he needs to change. But for now I had to get away from him....because friends like this will only hold you back, and put you in situations you don't need to be in.
The people disagreeing with me, as I predicted earlier, either A) never did drugs, and are proudly boasting this fact or B) did drugs to the point that it took over their lives, and they are now remorseful. FWIW 'weed' is not a drug (nor are magic mushrooms and DMT). Weed was smeared by corporate propaganda for financial/social reasons and actually has a lot of positive value if done recreationally. Walk around the coffee shops in Amsterdam and you'll see kids smoking a joint while studying for exams. Psychedelics literally expand and change the way the mind thinks, unlocking parts of your brain that are otherwise never used. Same with DMT, most people have never heard of it, but it's found in basically all living organisms and is produced in your pineal gland while you sleep. Yet, it is strictly banned by our government. On the other hand, I have a BIG problem with big pharma and the way it poisons us, especially our children, who are systematically turning into zombies, because pharmaceuticals are ineffectively replacing good parenting. I do not mess with any of this crap, nor do I think taking these will contribute to a positive life experience. Illicit drugs are usually bad, but cocaine, ecstacy, acid (a good one imo), are all OK in *strict* moderation, as well as a few others. Poppies actually can be good in some ways but I wouldn't recommend the average person try them without doing a lot of research. I'm definitely not advocating doing what I have listed as 'drugs', I just think that all kids should learn about all of them in detail and be left to make their own decisions. People who have a problem with other people smoking mar1juana in the privacy of their own home are insane though.
Weird, Requiem is actually the movie that made me want to start using drugs. Perhaps I misinterpreted the message?
Alcohol kills TONS more people but yet it's still OK! Welcome to the corporate brainwashing of America. BTW I think alcohol is fine in moderation but is still way worse than coke, E, acid. coke is by far the worst of those 3 but still isn't nearly as bad as alcohol. I mean if you give your kids adderall it's basically the same thing as coke/amphetamines.
Meh, once they get a degree they'll be in the 'real world' and have too many responsibilities. If anything they should take 6 months to a year off after high school and backpack Europe and Asia, with a nice week in Amsterdam.
I don't fit into either of your two categories but agree with other posters in thinking that teaching my kids to use drugs responsibly is not part of my role as a parent. Even before having kids I didn't think so. Despite the extent to which I tried drugs I would say it was helpful to know my parents disapproved. Parents, give your kids an out, many want one. I wasn't particularly prone to peer pressure but I know a number of my friends loved being able to use the excuse of strict parents to get out of things they didn't want to do. As to learning about drugs in detail, the schools I went to went into great detail about the precise effect of legal and illegal drugs. It didn't keep quite a number of kids from using them all the same. One thing that seemed to influence how much parents discouraged drug use and how seriously kids took that warning had to do with what families expected from their children's futures. I spent time with a lot of Ivy League bound kids as well as young adults already living on welfare. I won't pretend that the kids with a prestigious future ahead of them never smoked weed at a party but the restraint and sense of how much they had to lose was significantly greater. I also knew kids whose parents supplied them with weed because they thought that was safer than letting their kids go find it on their own. Their response was generally that their parents didn't care enough about them to concern themselves with their future, their health, or their emotional life. As an interesting aside, statisticly teenagers are less likely to use drugs if they have a sit down meal with their parents most nights of the week.
Ok, not wasting my time reading most of this thread. I will tell you what my family has gone through, and is still going through. My daughter is 19. From the time she was old enough to walk and talk, we have ingrained in her constantly about how vitally important it is that she not ever do drugs, that she not drink or smoke. She always, growing up, always responded in exactly the manner we wanted - 'Of course, Mom and Dad, I'm not stupid, I will never do those things.' etc etc. So, by the time she was in around the 8th grade (about your own child's age), she had started smoking, and not long after that, started on the mar1juana. From there she has taken other drugs, of varying degrees of 'hardness'. All the while becoming completely disinterested in school, unmotivated to do anything, at all, ever, incapable of passing even the simplest classes in school. We tried everything, and I mean everything. Counseling, kicking her out, we even sent her off to 'rehab'. *CAUTION* VERY IMPORTANT!! Let me say this again, this next bit is EXTREMELY IMPORTANT: *IF* you (or anyone else here) should ever find yourself in need of a 'drug rehab' place, do NOT go onto the internet and just search for places. Go to your doctor, and get information on legitimate rehab places. The internet is filled with rip-off scam artists who steal the life-savings of people who are desperately trying to help their drug-addicted children, and who are not thinking clearly, and easily succumb to high-pressure 'we must help them NOW' tactics, who then proceed to take 20 to 35 THOUSAND DOLLARS from you, with ZERO ACCOUNTABILITY, and do absolutely nothing for your child. The worst offender in this scam rehab business is scientology. They hids who they are, and their 'drug treatment programs' are nothing but scientology programs, exactly the same in fact, but with dangerous prolonged hot sauna treatments and extremely high doses of vitamins and minerals like Niacin. If you ever find yourself speaking with or communicating in any way with anyone from any place called NARCONON, Hang up the phone immediately, and do NOT believe one word they say. Ok, that's off my chest. Been dealing with this bad-decision-making girl for years, and there's no light at the end of the tunnel yet. So I ask myself, what could I have done differently? One thing: Have her tested for drugs both regularly and randomly. That's the only thing I can think of. If we had done that, even though the 'It would never happen with MY kid!' mentality is prevalent, and is exactly what allows these kids to 'get away with it' for so long, maybe we would have been able to get her head screwed on right before things went so crappy. In any case though, ultimately, these kids make their choices themselves, and they are the ones in the end who have to deal with the long-term consequences. So, in short, take your child for very regular checkups, pay CLOSE attention to grades in school, talk to (or email) the teachers often, have them keeping an eye out for any changes in behavior and attitude. And don't hesitate to administer drug tests. If the kid is clean, then no harm done. If there is trouble there, you will be better off catching it sooner rather than later, and when they know they could be tested at any time, they may be less likely to make the stupid choices they so dearly love to make. Lastly, try to understand priorities - whether someone 'likes' your child is less important than notifying the parents of that child if you suspect that they are using drugs. You could be saving that kid's life.
Or, like me, C. learned just about everything there is to know about drugs and came to their conclusions based on research, reasoning, and evidence. For the purposes of this discussion, yes it is (they are too). The term "drugs" is what we use to describe psychotropic substances. Anything that affects one's mind or perception is a "drug" for the purposes of this conversation. Completely agreed. Recreational use of mar1juana does not have the deletorious effects of many other substances and as such is one of the safest intoxicants out there. True enough. I would suggest that if you surveyed college students, the ones who regularly use, much less study while using, mar1juana will, on average, not grade as well as those who do not use pot. I have no doubt that one can have a successful educational experience while using mar1juana, but I would be hesitant to say that such an experience would be better than one which did not involve intoxicants. Which has both positive and negative effects. You will never hear me argue in favor of prohibition. Completely agreed. I suspect, given my children's energy level, that it will be suggested that our children get tested for ADD/ADHD, but I won't do it because I don't believe it is good for young people to use drugs, a category that ADD medications fit into. Neither do I. Moderation is the key, but the forms of these drugs (in particular, cocaine) make it more difficult to use recreationally. Crack is especially dangerous, using needles to inject cocaine increase addiction rates dramatically, and even snorted cocaine can be extremely addictive. I would not mind cocaine being sold as part of an "energy drink" in strictly controlled and regulated settings. Psychedelics (acid and to a lesser extent, MDMA) can also be used successfully in moderation. Education is the key. The physical addiction is the biggest danger with opiates (poppy based drugs). Once your body starts craving the drug, it makes it dramatically more difficult to stop using. You actually get physically ill, nauseous, puking as you withdraw. I agree with the exception that I think kids should learn about drugs and then make the choice to experiment with them when they are older, after their bodies have adjusted after puberty. Adults smoking pot in their own homes should be left alone, pure and simple, agreed.
Actually in my psychology class two years ago we talked about a study on this very thing. Universally, those who were studying sober did better than those who were drinking/on drugs while studying. The interesting thing was that if you studied drunk, you did much better if you took the test drunk(although still much worse than the completely sober process) than if you studied drunk and took the test sober. The same thing happened with weed.
It is definitely accepted that if you use a substance (just about any substance) while studying, you will do much better on the test if you are using the same substance when you take it as when you were studying. That's the reason I pound down the caffeine before a test.
Attach electrical wires to him. Then give him some weed and coke. If he takes a wiff or sniff, zap him. Repeat until his mind is instinctively fearful of drugs.
This is exactly how the conversation went between my parents and my sister and I. I'm now 22 and my sister almost 20, and we both drink occasionally or smoke cigarettes or weed. She's doing great in school and I graduated magna c*m laude this year and have a nice job. My dad has no idea that we drink or smoke, he is the kind of person who believes the first sip of alcohol leads to a life of moral degradation, heinous crime, and eventual early death. But - we have learned on our own to cope responsibly with those substances, and find nothing wrong with it. Personally, I would never even think about trying cocaine...I'm not addicted to anything at the moment, and I'd rather never start.
You hide the drinking and the smoking yet you ruin your body with Moestavern's poison. Its all down hill from here and poor Dad doesnt even know.
It's always difficult on parents, but the fact is that your influence over your children as they grow into young adults is limited. Encountering drugs, including tobacco and alcohol, is part of the modern human experience. There's no "saving" them from it. The best thing that you can do is have frank discussions about your own experiences with drugs and encourage your kids to leave them alone. Telling a kid how to interact with peers at age 14 and up becomes a fool's game. You can't scare them too much anymore. Just make sure your kids are informed about the risks and be frank about your concerns. Ultimately, however, it must fall to your young adults themselves to make their own choices. It's not a choice Dad can make for you. EDIT: For more information, see signature.
