Not sure that I agree with your idea that drug use during youth retards maturity, Al. I suspect that most people tried, experimented, or started using drugs in their teens; and generally, I’m sure that you’d find these people reach maturity at some point - regardless of whether they still smoke dope or not. Maybe for some emotional reason your friend is ‘stuck’ doing 15-year-old behaviour which is why she continues her habit in the same way an adolescent does. ‘Maturity’ is a bit subjective - what you may deem to be behaving “like a teenager” may be “refreshing” to someone else.
‘Maturity’ is contextual too, I think. Personally, I am fantastic in an emergency, a crisis, an important negotiation or anything requiring the broad elements maturity evokes - yet I *still find farts funny, roll my eyes like a child, and stay up really late for no reason at all.
(*I know. So *pathetically *immature, it makes me roll my eyes.)
As to your ponderings Superhal, I think that the psychological condition that could retard or prevent maturity can sometimes be an outlook, or an attitude that for all intents and purposes can *look *like maturity has not been reached, and in fact maybe it has.
For example, a friend whose father was murdered, mother was an invalid, only sibling was developmentally challenged, at 17 had to give a child up for adoption, and was orphaned in her mid twenties, expresses her maturity by behaving like a fun-loving teenager by not carrying any of the ‘baggage’ that some expect she ‘should’.
Another, whose well established multi-million dollar business went bust and who subsequently lost all the usuals that go with that, didn’t ‘pause for reflection’ or ‘considered others whose lives were completely ruined’ before starting up again without missing a beat. Is that maturity? I don’t know. That she kept right on going is mature. Believing that none of what happened was her responsibility, maybe is not.
I think that you do mature in the absence of major events; in the same way that anything organic does, whether it’s fertilised or traumatised, it still matures. I don’t think major events are necessarily a guaranteed road to maturity - for some people it achieves exactly the opposite.
Along with it being a natural development, I think maturity can also be learned - it all depends on what the emotional pay-off is I guess.
Which brings me back to your friend, **Al **- maybe she is the way she is because there’s no emotional dividend in being anything more than she is now.
God knows if any of this even makes any sense. I’m just too immature to go to bed, even when I’m really, really tired.