If you do drugs (weed, coke, mushrooms, meth, heroin, oxy) I’m not going to have you in my life.
This is not that unusual really.
Have you ever watched Intervention?
Intervention is a fucking* TV show.*
But what about your decisions?
And do you actually care about them? Answer the question.
I tried to get them to stop. Obviously I care.
They will not because of the world normalizing the usage.
All I can do is protect myself from having a front row seat to the destruction of their health and futures.
My $0.02:
Young children have their parents to make all the critical decisions in their lives and to set boundaries. Young children struggle with this at times, but generally accept it. This is normal. Adults, by contrast, are expected to make their own decisions and set their own personal boundaries. Adults generally accept this and this is normal. Teenagers, however, are caught in the middle – we expect them to start making their own decisions and setting their own boundaries and hope they get it right every time. But this is silly – of course they don’t get it right every time. Nobody does. Teenagers are figuring out what their own standards and boundaries will be – and they won’t get it right if they don’t test the limits. How will they set their own limits on drugs or alcohol if they don’t have any personal experiences, push their own limits, or go outside their comfort zone.
Personally, I think some teenage rebellion is a good thing. It teaches kids how to set their own boundaries. Making mistakes is a huge part of this. For me – my goal is to make sure my kids survive this process and are as safe as they can be, while still allowing some kinds of rebellion and learning of their own limits. If all they do is follow my rules, they’ll never learn to set their own healthy boundaries as adults. In my experience – this is a bad thing. I’ve seen lots of “perfect” kids who never rebelled grow up to be very dysfunctional adults. On the other hand, I’ve seen lots of “rebellious” kids, myself included, who grew up to be well adjusted and contributing members of society.
All the above is only my own personal experience. Take of it what you will.
Yes, kiber. I expected adolescent rebellion. Pulling away, broken curfews, taking car when not permitted But not drugs. That’s a different level.
So you’re saying that there’s absolutely nothing you can do, that there’s a 100% chance that their life will be crap? Not 90%, not 99%, but 100%?
Yes, as evident by most ppl in this thread too.
I maintain my view that once you’re using drugs at 14/15, it’s a lifelong habit.
I’ve read this whole thread. And I don’t understand.
I smoked pot when I was 15 years old to 20 years old, off and on. Now I’m a dual qualified lawyer who loves her life. I didn’t try anything stronger than those relatively harmless things that were popular in the mid-90s. I haven’t had drugs in 22 years, and I don’t even drink anything anymore.
Smoking pot had absolutely nothing to do with my parents. When I smoked pot, I wasn’t deciding that my family didn’t matter. I was making a decision, as an autonomous human being (as opposed to an automaton) to do a certain thing. Usually because I was with my friends and having fun.
I don’t understand why you are taking this so personally. Your sons’ lives don’t belong to you - they belong to them. You may have fed them and housed them and cared for them, but that doesn’t mean you own them. You can’t tell them what to do all the time, and therefore when they make their own decisions, you shouldn’t get angry. They aren’t your slaves or your pets.
When you say they have chosen this over their family, it’s absolutely not the case. What is actually happening is that you are choosing for them, you are making the decision that what they have done (rather innocently, and for fun) will exclude them from your heart and your family.
It’s kind of a mean thing to do to someone who is just trying to have some harmless fun.
They are probably not going to get cancer - and if they do, that’s up to their choices, and not a reflection on you at all.
This has nothing at all to do with you. You are making it your problem.
They aren’t doomed to cancer or anything else.
Jeez, if they’re smoking weed, they’re going to be a lot mellower than your average teen, but your Dorito budget might increase.
You seem reasonable, Elysian.
But you were probably not obsessed with weed like my 15 year old.
He spent a lot of money on it. Smoked alone.
And my husband found a picture he had taken of a joint on his phone. I mean, WTF is that? He worships the damn thing.
For a family with addiction issues, this is not good.
So perhaps different from your life experience
Actually I may have started at 14. I had a few older friends who liked to smoke pot and play pool. We weren’t hurting anything at all, just having a good time, laughing and building relationships. There was no evil there.
People always fear the things they don’t understand. Why don’t you try pot a couple of times? You’ll see that you don’t have anything to fear.
Even my mother tried an edible a couple of years ago. She fell asleep. She was 68.
Have we been reading the same thread? Because I see person after person claiming that they smoked weed as teenagers, and either stopped later on, or are living happy lives despite their drug habit. That’s hardly 100%.
It seems to me that you WANT their life to be crap, because if it isn’t, that means that you were wrong, and that you being right is more important than your children’s happiness.
Just one data point - but I started smoking pot when I was 8. I smoked sporadically through my teenage years and haven’t smoke once in the past 30 years. I currently have a good professional career, hold multiple government security clearances, and pass routine and surprise drug tests on a regular basis. For me at least it has definitely not been a lifelong habit.
Quit with the gaslighting, already. You know damn well what people in this thread have a problem with. Not you deciding not to allow smoking in your home - that’s perfectly reasonable. It’s also reasonable to be concerned about how this could potentially impact their future (I was likewise concerned about my brother, as he could have gotten kicked out of college if he was caught).
What people have a problem with, for the 30th god damn time, is how you’re treating your own children like lepers. You’re completely writing them off as failures while kissing the ground your beloved nieces walk on. That is fucked up, and NOT something a good parent would ever do. Or if they do (because no one is perfect), they recognize their awful behavior and do everything they can to earn back the trust of their children.
Your kids did what many - not all, but many - kids do. They experimented. Kids do that with drugs, with sex, with alcohol. You can encourage open conversation and set boundaries, but there’s only so much you can do to control them. Too much control, and you shut down open and honest communication between you forever.
I’m not saying you should happily let your kids continue smoking. I don’t think ANYONE here is saying that, yet you keep repeating it as though we are. But how you’re reacting to this is messed up, and you’re damaging your relationship with the kids. That’s on you.
Sad that you’ve written them off and apparently have no interest in trying to help get your son on the right track. Hopefully they’ll have great lives, but unfortunately it looks like those lives will be without you as a part of them.
Why not alcohol and nicotine as well? By many measures they are more harmful, both to individuals and society.
You may find this chart of the most dangerous drugs interesting. It comes from this paper [PDF], published in The Lancet.
And both alcohol and nicotine are more addictive than marijuana.
Watch her deny your existence :smack: Or that of my brother, who may occasionally smoke weed, and may not, but managed to graduate, and holds down an awesome job and a relationship.
I hereby deny your brother exists. Go ahead - prove me wrong.
Outdated study Greenwyvern. From 1994.
The high THC level - my kids were doing the 88 pct type weren’t available in 1994.
The high THC is what is causing addiction or if you prefer the term, use disorder.
No, I never got obsessed with it, but I may have taken a picture if I had a smartphone back then. My friend once rolled a joint with fifteen different papers, it was about the size of a baseball bat. We laughed like loons until our stomachs hurt, it was hard to stay upright, and we hadn’t even lit it yet. It’s making me smile even now.
Sure, some people get addicted to it. I knew a few boys who were at the time. They couldn’t shut up about it, one of them would roll out of bed in the morning and light a joint. Those people were kind of boring. But they still didn’t get cancer, or become addicted to meth or or things. A couple of them became super health nuts, later, it’s funny how people turn out.
A lot of people will disagree that pot is addictive, but I do know otherwise.
But that boy who rolled out of bed was still a great person, and great fun. He bought into a construction business later and did pretty well. He owns a lot of motorcycles now, posts pictures about it online. Is he still smoking pot - probably. But it hasn’t ruined him.
None of us - and I repeat, none of the thirty or so people I knew at the time who smoked pot - did it to hurt their parents or family. They did it to have fun, like any other group activity, like having a round at the pub, or playing board games, in fact some of the people I know now who do it will also play board games at the time. So very risque and they all love their families quite a bit.