Abel Pharmboy and Drugmonkey are having a conversation that I wish I could approach completely abstractly, about what parents ought to be telling their kids about drugs (whether legal or illegal) and their use. (Also, Page 3.14 has a reader’s poll about whether teens can be scared off illegal drugs. Poll results will be published in the ScienceBlogs Weekly Recap newsletter, for which you can sign up here.)
Of course, having two kids who are not yet teens but don’t seem to be getting any younger, the issue doesn’t feel abstract at all. The clock is ticking.
Here’s what is currently shaping my strategy:
1. Truth, not lies.
As Drugmonkey notes:
when teenagers catch you in the lies-to-children you tend to lose credibility. Thus, if they figure out you are lying before you update the lies-to-children to lies-to-adolescents or lies-to-non-scientific-audiences, you may have lost your opportunity to do so.
One of the things I’m trying to instill in my kids is that the truth matters. Getting the facts before one makes decisions is usually better than the alternative.
Before they actually become teenagers, though, you better believe we’ll be discussing the present state of our knowledge about the teenage brain and the exciting substances it manufactures.
2. Complexities are part of our world.
The sprogs already have some sense of this, having discovered one “Red Ribbon Week” at school that caffeine is a drug, and that chocolate contains caffeine. Pinning down just what counts as a drug, and just what constitutes safe and responsible use of a drug, is not black and white. (If it were, they probably would have reported their mother as a hard core caffeine addict and I’d be in treatment or doing time.)
It’s not obvious to me that the programming at school is always sufficiently attentive to the complexities. This means we have to do the thing we try to do with pretty much everything the kids are learning at school to this point: talk about it with them at home. Which leads me to:
3. Ongoing conversations, not “The Talk”.
Whenever there’s a subject a parent judges important to convey to a kid but utterly terrifying to have to actually talk about with a kid, there’s the risk it will build up to “The Talk.” (In addition to “The Talk About Drugs” there’s “The Talk About Those Changes Your Body Is Now Or Will Soon Be Undergoing,” and possibly, if everyone survives those, “The Talk About Sex.”) The problem with “The Talk” is that it is at least as excruciating for the kid as it is for the parent. S/he can tell how nervous you are about delivering this information, and s/he wants “The Talk” to be over as soon as possible.
This kind of cuts into follow-up questions that might actually yield useful information, or address concerns the kid has that goes beyond whether you’ll actually make it through your spiel before your head explodes.
I’m hoping that normalizing our conversations around what they’re hearing in school, what they’re hearing from their friends, what they’re seeing on TV or reading in books, will keep information — and questions — flowing on a regular basis and not let the pressure build too much.
4. A frank discussion of how a mother deals with probabilities.
In keeping with the truth as we know it, I’m not going to tell my kids that using an illicit substance even once is guaranteed to wreck their lives.
I will, however, tell them how averse I am to taking chances with their health and safety. Even if they’re gambling on one chance in a thousand of something bad happening to them, there is no chance I’m having any additional children. They are irreplaceable, as far as I’m concerned, which means I’m going to be on their asses if they decide to take gambles with even a small chance of killing, disabling, or badly hurting them.
I’m happy to help them learn to manage risks, but they’re just going to have to deal with the fact that the investment I’ve made in bringing them into the world and raising them means I do not judge their well-being as completely distinct from my own. I’m not going to put them in bubbles, but I will argue strongly in favor of the principle of no permanent damage — which is to say, decisions where the range of possible outcomes makes the really bad stuff you can’t undo very, very, very unlikely.
5. What’s legal, what’s moral, and what’s a good idea: three separate things, not always tightly coupled.
Cigarettes are legal, but I don’t want my kids gunking up their lungs with ’em (even when they’re old enough legally to smoke them). Smoking cigarettes is a bad idea (from a health point of view), but I don’t think you can go straight from there to judging smokers to be immoral. (Depending on what you think morality requires, smoking may well amount to treating yourself immorally, but that requires an actual argument.)
Since we’re well past the point when the authorities can snatch me and my siblings from my parents, I’m going to reveal that they served us small amounts of wine on special occasions in our home, before we turned 21. In fact, I recall that they also let me drink an entire beer at a family barbecue the summer after my freshman year of college (when I was still 18). Technically, it was illegal for me to be drinking on these occasions. Practically, this was a way for my parents to convey something about responsible uses of alcohol in social contexts.
I have absolutely no idea how any of this would go over in the current zero-tolerance climate. But there was something really sensible about it.
That’s where I am right now. I’d rather reason with my kids than scare them, to help them grow into making sensible decisions rather than to insist on making their decisions from them.
I know that part of growing up is establishing oneself as distinct from one’s parents. I think that’s healthy. When the rebellion comes, I’m hopeful that it will take the form of listening to boy bands or reading Ayn Rand or even, if it comes to that, eating meat.
It goes without saying that I welcome input from those of you who are already dealing with these issues on the ground.
My parents, too, served me small amounts of wine (diluted with water) long before I reached drinking age. With every occasion, they impressed on my how important it was, when I became an adult, to know my limit and control my drinking. We didn’t talk about morality, but about the many ways that unscrupulous people could take advantage of someone who was inebriated. The lesson stuck.
My dad talked to me several times about the consequences of using illegal drugs. Dad was an accountant, and most of his clients were doctors or lawyers. Over the years he’d seen more than one medical client slip into self-medicating, and basically over time become less and less functional until he lost his practice. So Dad understood that you didn’t need to be one of those “dirty hippies” to become addicted to drugs, and shared that with me.
I guess the ultimate lesson was that the world isn’t black and white; stuff you’re familiar with can trip you up badly, and it’s important to understand and watch out for that. That’s a very good lesson to share with the sprogs.
I admit I’m not dealing with it, but I’ve certainly given it a lot of thought, and you seem to have it figured out pretty well. Back when I was deciding what mind-altering substances I was willing to try, I read a lot of pharmacology texts and talked to a number of people.
I decided that the drugs I was most comfortable experimenting with were the cannabis family, and the hallucinogens (psilocybin, LSD, etc.) I haven’t tried LSD or MDMA, mostly because of uncertainty about the quality, but I have no great objections. LSD just takes planning; you’re going on a 10-hour roller-coaster ride, so be sure you’re in the right mood for it and you’re going to be comfortable for that long. Any discomfort, especially mental/emotional discomfort, will be incorporated into the hallucination.
I’m big on practical details. Pat Califia’s advice for avoiding AIDS has really stuck with me. Paraphrased, it was basically “Don’t do injectable drugs. If you do do injectable drugs, never ever share your works. If you do share your works, here are detailed instructions for cleaning it with bleach, and then washing out the bleach afterwards. And I know it’s hard to go through that nit-picky multi-stage cleaning process if you’re strung out and need a fix, but I’m sorry, I haven’t got any better advice.”
However, in my research, I discovered two drugs that really scared me. One was PCP, which is highly dissociating, and doesn’t have a saturation threshold like LSD. The other was nicotine. That stuff is scary habituating. I spoke to three ex-heroin users who were unanimous that it’s a lot esier to kick heroin than nicotine.
The other thing it’s worth explaining is what an addiction feels like. I had a minor form that was very illuminating.
In University, when working late in the labs, I used to get a chocolate bar from the vending machine down the hall every night at around 10:30. One day, I decided that this was an unreasonable burden on my budget and I wasn’t going to do it any more.
That night, around 11:00, I get fidgety. I get up from my desk and go to the bathroom, then sit down again. No, I didn’t have to pee. Why do I feel like something’s not right?
Oh! My body is telling me that it wants its sugar buzz! I ignored it and the urge went away in a couple of days, but I didn’t want chocolate per se, but rather I was fidgety and wanted something, and if I’d let myself, I would have got a chocolate bar and everything would have been okay again.
I think that’s what an addiction feels like. The “I don’t feel right” is physical; the “substance X will make me feel better” is learned. But once you learn how to scratch that itch, it’s hard not to.
The hard part of kicking nicotine is that the itch takes months to fade away, and you have to suffer that whole time knowing that a cigarette would scratch that itch within 10 seconds. At least with heroin it only takes a couple of days.
Interesting topic. I graduated from high school in 2005 and I definitely do not think that the public schools handled drug education very well. Rather than a frank discussion about what these drugs can and do actually do to people, my drug education consisted of a lot of generalizations, worst case scenarios, and learning all of the different street names. I truly believe that knowledge is power and that kids ought to be equipped with the information to make informed decisions. If kids are going to use drugs, don’t we want them to know what’s at stake? I remember reading recently that many people have suffered acute acetaminophen toxicity from ingesting large quanitites of Vicodin—which contains 5 mg hydrocodone per 500 mg acetaminophen—to get high. When combine with alcohol, the effects are even worse. If these people knew how dangerous high doses of Tylenol could be, not to mention opium derivatives, this sort of thing could be avoided.
I generally agree with Janet’s points here. I’m sort of surprised that I’m getting ripped apart for saying similar things on the linked Drugmonkey thread.
While the government’s education ideas are very lacking, I do like the basic premise of the “Ask” campaign, which has similarity to your 3rd point about ongoing conversations. If you take a basic interest in what your children are doing and listen to their answers you are more likely to listen back and be interested in parental opinions (whether or not they follow them)
This thread reminds me of the Calvin and Hobbes strip in which Calvin tries smoking for the first time…
I like your perspective. If you, or anyone else, are looking for a decent book on this, I recently bought Aletha Solter’s “100 tips for raising drug free kids” (I have two of her other books, and this one was only five bucks at Barnes and Noble, so while I’m not going to need it for a while I decided to buy it). I like her perspective on other aspects of child raising (her other books I own are “The Aware Baby” and “Tears and Tantrums”) so I imagine I’ll like this one too, but I admit I haven’t cracked it open yet.
Overall, I think your ideas are very good.
I too grew up being given small quantities of wine on special occasions — not watered down. When I got to be in my mid-teens, my dad would also give me small quantities of whiskey and other stronger drinks, so I would know their tastes and perhaps be able to detect that someone was trying to slip me a drink in inappropriate circumstances (That was back before vodka became so popular.).
When I finally got my driver’s license, my dad made it clear that if he ever detected alcohol on my breath I’d lose *any* use of the family car for at least three months.
Taking advantage of the context of a related subject can help reinforce a negative context for using a given drug. My daughter is asthmatic, and she already knew that tobacco smoke induced asthma attacks, so it was pretty easy to build on the idea that smoking *anything* was probably not a good idea for her. Later on, she used that herself to discourage friends from smoking tobacco or pot — “OK, smoke if you want to, but not around me, because it will give me an asthma attack.”
Another indirect way of attacking tobacco use is in the context of discussing bad politics. The only reason tobacco is legal is that federal laws (promoted by the tobacco industry) give exclusive regulatory power over tobacco to the Treasury Dept. for taxation purposes. If the FDA could regulate tobacco, it would have been banned years ago because of its carcinogenicity and longterm effects in causing COPD.
Finally, being able to talk from experience on the subject was useful — not my own experience using drugs, but personal observation both in the lab and among people I knew. I worked in the neuropharmacology department of a big pharma research lab for several years. Seeing what drugs like LSD and amphetamines did to lab animals, there was no way I was going to try them myself, and I was able to pass that on to my daughter.
The fact that my wife and I actually knew a guy who became so strung out on meth that he repeatedly did stuff like walking down a major shopping street in broad daylight in nothing but a pair of sheer pantyhose was also enlightening. Kids, especially young teens, want to avoid major embarrassment at all costs. Letting them know that use of some drugs could cause them to behave in very embarrassing ways can be a good deterrent.
Understatement of the week.
My daughter’s almost 12, she’s received the DARE propaganda, and my spouse and I are still not sure how and when to let her know that all these years we’ve been hiding the bong behind the paintcans in the basement and (usually) waiting until she’s gone to bed. Someday I guess I’ll also tell her about all the acid I used to do…complexities indeed.
My dad is a hypertaciturn Swede and talking about just about anything makes him pretty uncomfortable. The day he bought me a beer at the ballgame (I was almost 18 and about to go off to college) was a really meaningful gesture.
No, you’re getting ripped apart on the linked Drugmonkey thread for making an argument from necessity, i.e. “it is not necessary to use drugs, therefore people shouldn’t use drugs.” But we’ll leave that over there.
Good lord, you Americans are a puritan bunch. I’m Scottish – I first got drunk (and I mean drunk) at the age of 12. I first got drunk in a pub at 16. Legal drinking age is 18. The idea that drinking a whole beer at the age of 18 might constitute anything to remark on (except, perhaps, your unusual sobriety) is just weird.
Easy there Dunc. She was talking about parental behavior in direct facilitation of drinking, not her own teen drinking behavior in total. And given that this is read by the students, the Mom and perhaps the Sprogs…do we really expect full confession time here?
as always the data from MtF can be used to back up our subjective experiences and memories of the teen years. Some 25-30% of 12th graders claim to have had “5 or more drinks in a row” at least once in the past 2 weeks. 50% report having “been drunk” in the past year.
that last number sounds low to me. but we can go ahead and prioritize data over my ancient subjective impression.
Ah, I forgot to count ethanol! Mostly because I don’t like it very much; it tastes like mouthwash and the effects never seemed worth overcoming that for. (Dried psilocybin mushrooms taste like vacuum cleaner lint, but the effects are worth it IMHO.)
But yeah, you guys are ridiculously puritanical. In my not so humble opinion, the correct fix to teen drinking and driving is to swap the order of the drinking and driving ages; it’s important to learn and understand your reactions to alcohol before getting used to driving yourself everywhere.
And the more you make people wait like it’s a big thing just mean there’s going to be more of a bender in response when the pressure comes off.
I have always, as far back as I can remember, been welcome to whatever my parents were drinking. In restaurants, I’d get a glass just like them. The first time I got drunk is legendary; I got a big cup of the grape juice the adults were drinking and fell asleep in front of one of the speakers at a party.
I don’t really go to pubs, but I remember going to the off-licence for some rum to make a flambe at the age of 14 or 15.
But the U.S.’s policy is a travesty of rationality. Remember Elisa Kelly? Sent to jail for two yers because she thought her son would be safer if she supervised the party?
Your approach seems eminently reasonable — probably because it’s similar to what we’re doing with our boys. Lots of little “talks” in context, not one big “Talk.” Honesty about the complexities of life and how people deal with that (made very evident recently as someone close to the boys was hospitalized for alcohol poisoning.) They’ve been offered alcohol (sips, of course); so far, they think the taste is nasty, which is fine by me.
Ping!
I am so there with you, on wishing this was an entirely abstract discussion for me. There is a part of me that would be far more comfortable keeping them hidden away from it all.
On the up side, it’s nice to know the six year old is taking it in. He recently had to field a call from his best friend who recently lost his guinea pig to old age. He insisted that we needed to head over to see him, so he could help him through his ‘reaving. When we got their, you would have though it was me talking to the best friend, my boy reproduced most of our discussion that happened when his hamsters died. Gives me a fair bit of confidence that things will come together with other discussions.
Easy there Dunc. She was talking about parental behavior in direct facilitation of drinking, not her own teen drinking behavior in total.
Ah, I knew I had a comment floating around somewhere that needed following up…
If we’re talking direct parental facilitation, the first time my parents gave me alcohol was at the age of 9 years old. It’s just not regarded as a big deal over here. Well, except in the sense that alcohol use (and abuse) is a pretty significant part of our national culture…
For example, in the UK, the law does not prohibit giving kids (over 5) alcohol at all. It just prohibits the sale of alcohol to children. If I remember correctly, kids are allowed to be served alcohol in licensed premises from the age of 16 upwards, provided it’s purchased by an adult and served with food. At home, you can give your kids booze if you want once they’re past the age of 5.
For example, in the UK, the law does not prohibit giving kids (over 5) alcohol at all. It just prohibits the sale of alcohol to children. If I remember correctly, kids are allowed to be served alcohol in licensed premises from the age of 16 upwards, provided it’s purchased by an adult and served with food. At home, you can give your kids booze if you want once they’re past the age of 5.
This site claims:
This Handy chart also indicates that some states allow legal-age spouses to provide alcohol to their under-age spouse.
It’s also worth pointing out that the $3 aspirin in the store is probably $0.05 for ingredients and $2.95 for quality control and verification. As a professional chemist I doubt that there is anything that could compel me to take street drugs with the possible exception of something biologically grown like marijuana. Who would trust some unregulated lab for psychoactive chemicals to ingest? Ick.
There is also the larger ethical issue here which is frequently ignored. Buying street drugs is supporting an industry which is not only illegal here in the US, but causes real harm to people in producing countries internationally. Just look at the effects of cocaine production on western Africa or opium in Afghanistan. Our society’s use of non-essential pleasure drugs not only feeds underground illegal domestic elements like organized crime, but it also affects a lot of other nations as well. People are all worried about ‘going green’ in places like the UK and elsewhere and then think nothing of buying drugs produced in conditions that are often anything but green… pollution, bad politics, poverty.
Decisions about recreational drugs are complicated and go much further than just substance X affecting biology Y.
“I first got drunk (and I mean drunk) at the age of 12. I first got drunk in a pub at 16.”
Given that Scots have among the highest alcohol-related death rates in western Europe, and that things are getting worse, not better, maybe you guys could need a little more puritanity.