Drugs and our Children

Trying to keep our children away from drugs can be a incredibly scary and sometimes impossible endeavor with all the influences they encounter in the media and movies in this day and age. Add to that their perception that "Everyone does it".

Unfortunately all the "Just say no" approaches that the American society has tried never has and never will work because they leave off the most important detail. The problem is they/we are afraid to tell the truth. The whole truth. Children can see through half truths or lies a lot better than we give them credit for.

They/we tell them over and over that drugs are horrible and will ruin your life, which of course is part of the truth but not all of it. Why in the hell do you think anyone would do such a crazy thing in the first place if it was bad from the moment they take them? The complete truth is most drugs are unbelievably , fantastically good at first. They take away all your problems and concerns about life and some of them make you feel like some kind of Superman, able to jump tall building with a single bound. Of course that only last a little while, then it's all down hill from there but it's still the complete truth and our children need to hear that.

A perfect example would be how our society handles marijuana use with children. I had the talk about marijuana with my child as soon as she started high school and this was my approach.
I told her one day at school a friend would very likely ask her if she wanted a hit, saying it was cool as hell and fun. Ok, lets say she did. She would find out that it was a ball. She would laugh, talk like crazy and have fun with her friends while high. By the way, somewhere during this, she would think "Wow, everyone has told me all along that it was horrible but this is nothing but fun, fun, fun. They lied to me about this. They must be lying about all the other drugs also".

Then I would tell her the rest of the story. Having tried it that once would naturally lead to trying it again, maybe a week later, then a couple of times a week, then what the hell, every day. I told her what would happen would be smoking marijuana would slowly but surely become more important to her than all the things in her life that were previously important, like the classes she liked, the teachers she thought were cool, her dance classes. Everything would become a drag and hard work. Her teachers would all of the sudden be too damn hard on her and she would start hating them and school in general.

By the way, she came back to me a lot later and thanked me for my honesty about the whole subject. You see, she knew the whole, complete and honest story, including the good parts. Not just the one sided "Drugs are bad", which is only partly true.

Our children are way smarter than we give them credit for and deserve our complete honesty about every aspect of life, even if we worry that the truth is scary.
So come on, take the responsibility of being an adult and parent and tell your children the truth.