A time and place for drugs

Newshawk: CMAP ( http://www.mapinc.org/cmap )
Pubdate: Tuesday, December 30, 2003
Source: Toronto Star (CN ON)
Contact: lettertoed@thestar.com
Website: http://www.thestar.com/
Author: Christopher Hutsul

A time and place for drugs

SHOULD YOU DO DRUGS? Not all use is intrinsically bad

Some experimentation considered `developmentally normal'

CHRISTOPHER HUTSUL
The Toronto Star

Two things were certain for anyone who grew up in the Eighties:

1) If you experimented with sex, you'd end up with AIDS, and 2) if you experimented with drugs, you'd end up covered in scabs in an east end-crack house, soliciting $5 tricks for junk cut with rat poison.

As part of my elementary school anti-drug conditioning, I also learned that the current strains of mar1juana were "X times more potent" than what our parents may have smoked.

We were even visited by police, who told us about the perils of drugs, describing (in gory detail) the downward spiral that inevitably followed the sampling of an illicit product.

The first time would be fun, they said, and would feel like an escape from the challenges and drudgery of everyday life.

The second time would induce feelings of isolation and paranoia.

By the third time, the drug user would be losing control. He'd be robbing his parents, shoplifting syringes, flailing in a sea of chaos and dementia that would come to a dramatic conclusion at the airport, where officials would hold his sickly frame at gunpoint while they waited for him to discharge baggies of coke.

But despite the propaganda, the "just say no" generation found itself saying "yes" once in a while. And many of us, to our great shock, survived without experiencing the aforementioned calamities.

At 26 - having experimented with both sex and drugs (the kinds that don't require syringes) - I pinch myself in the morning to make sure that this is my life, that I really am healthy, that I'm not begging a pawn broker to hock my parent's sofa so that I can buy speed.

Amazingly, I don't suffer from flashbacks. There are no track-marks on my arms, nor do I have any embarrassing twitches or drooling problems.

Am I the lucky one? Or am I the norm?

According to an expert at Toronto's Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, my experimentation with drugs was just a part of a healthy development – a sharp contrast from anything I'd ever learned in school.

"The policy of the Centre for Addiction and Mental health is that drug use isn't a no-no right across the board," says Dr. David Wolfe, RBC chair in children's mental health at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. "A certain amount of drug experimentation is developmentally normal."

Not only is it normal, it can actually be a good thing. "There's some research that suggests that kids who don't experiment at all have some other social adjustment problems," says Wolfe. "It's one of those cases where too much is a bad thing and too little doesn't mean that you're necessarily healthy either."

Nick Barry, a drug and alcohol counsellor in New Brunswick, agrees.

"People who act out when they're growing up, and maybe smoke the odd joint or whatever, learn about how to manage these things later on better than people who've never done them."

I've seen some friends struggle with drugs, and others who've dabbled in a responsible, nonchalant manner.

Obviously, the drug experience is different for everyone, which is why it's impossible to make an overriding statement about the role of drugs in society - and whether one should try them, or avoid them.

In answering the latter, I've always followed the "there's a time and a place for everything" approach.

For me, most of high school was neither.

It sounds dorky, but during those years, I was too busy learning about myself, and trying to figure out what kind of life I wanted to live to be tempted by that which alters the mind. I was terrified about the prospect of losing what limited footing I had.

Not to mention the fact that I was dubious of how trustworthy my friends were in those days.

No offence, but my pals seemed volatile at the best of times, let alone when they were messed on drugs. If I were to experiment with drugs, I surely didn't want to do it at the back of the mall parking lot with a scruffy clan of anorexic girls and pimply, self-destructive thugs.

If something went wrong, I'd be on my own.

Needless to say, it's different when you're a little older, and you've got friends you can trust and a place of your own.

To ask yourself the "to do drugs or not to do drugs" question, as is the theme of this week's I.D. section, is also a time to think about the nature of your own personality, and whether drugs are something you'll be able to manage.

Wolfe says one factor in how a person will cope with drugs has to do with his or her upbringing.

He prompts us to ask ourselves: "Were either of your parents addicted to substances? If you grew up in a home where there was a lot of drinking, smoking or drug usage, you're at risk."

According to Wolfe, that applies to harder drugs, too. But for people who've reached a certain level of emotional stability in their lives and friendships, even cocaine could be managed by a casual user.

"I believe very few people become addicted to a drug like cocaine, not only because it's expensive, but because most people who come from a solid background, have solid friendships and a life plan aren't going to start using it every day," says Wolfe. "It's totally recreational in that sense."

"The ones who tend to get in trouble with it tend to have other risk factors, and if they don't get in trouble with that, they'll probably get in trouble with something else."

No matter who you are or what issues you have, every drug presents a worst-case scenario (what you heard about in school and on Miami Vice), and a best-case scenario (the eye-opening, culturally bonding experience you heard on the euphoric drug albums of the 1960s).

Anyone who dabbles will experience something within that spectrum.

As Barry says, some will have troubles with substances, but others – the vast majority of us - will be just fine.

"Certain people are going to become addicted to drugs no matter what," says Barry.

"It's in their personality. Those are the ones who always want more. But most people can take something and then leave it alone."

We live in a country that has mixed feelings about drugs. You can see that in the lingering federal debate about the lawfulness of mar1juana possession.

The very fact that the question is on the table tells me that drugs might not be as evil as they once told us. And it's okay to "Just Say Maybe."

 

And if we had a regulated system that emphasized educating users as to the actual effects along with risk factors for addiction, we might actually be able to make a dent in the numbers of people suffering with drug addictions. In addition, if we changed our message from "just say no" (which has been proven to have the opposite effect on teens) to "wait for adulthood," we might actually be able to reduce teen drug use, the first step to reducing overall drug use.

The war on drugs does not work the way we are fighting it. We need to change our tactics and set goals that are attainable (as opposed to a "drug free America by 200X"), measurable, and financially feasable.

 

I am just passing along an article, but in today's society, drugs (including alcohol) ARE a part of your development as a person. If you can't see that, then you are choosing to put the blinders on.

We have created a situation where it is better to use drugs as a minor because the punishment is so much less severe. Add to that teens' penchant for rebelling against authority and the cognitive dissonance created when teens see adults using all kinds of drugs (alcohol included) and are told by the same adults that drug use will kill them and you have created a society where drug use is a large part of development.

Over 50% of high school seniors since the 70s have used illicit drugs and even more have used alcohol. Are you really trying to claim that drug use is not a part of development?

 

BTW, we could reduce teen drug use under a different model. In Holland, teen drug use rates are less than half of what they are here because they emphasize waiting until adulthood to even make the decision to use drugs.

 

I would be willing to wager that I have seen far more than you could ever imagine (having worked for years as a drug abuse counselor). The problems inherent in drug use are far and away overshadowed by the problems inherent in prohibition. Of the people whose lives you saw ruined over drugs, how many could have been saved if drug use and abuse were treated as a healthcare issue rather than a criminal justice issue?

That would be virtually every single one.

Some of us need to educate ourselves about this topic. "Reefer Madness" was a propaganda film created specifically to convince the American public of the evils of mar1juana (a drug that has never had a single death attributed directly to it in recorded history). "Reefer Madness" is a myth, which you would be aware of if you opened your mind a little and learned something about drug use and abuse.

You can be uncomfortable all you like, but the sad fact remains that as long as we continue along the path we are on, our young people will continue to get addicted and die at the same rates so that the politicians can look "tough on drugs".

You may be OK with the way drug policy in this country is handled, but I see a much bigger picture which includes saving lives, reconnecting the police force and the policed, and saving a hundred billion dollars a year or more (nobody knows for sure how much they spend on the drug war).

 

And the part which you seem to be ignoring is that under a regulated system, drug use could become a much smaller part of teenage development. This article discusses the way things are NOW, which I agree is a pretty sad situation. We spend over a hundred billion dollars per year on this and half of the high school seniors in this country will have tried illegal drugs by the time this school year ends.

What a policy.

 

LOL. It may not be a drug, but it does kill FAR more people than the illegal drugs do each and every year.