I use cannabis every day, but once a year I’ll stop using for a two week “T-break” (tolerance break). My yearly t-break is coming up in a few weeks and I’m actually looking forward to it.
At least for me, it’s easy as pie to stop. I just stop. It’s still in the house, but I’m not even tempted. On the plus side, cannabis suppresses dreaming and the sudden cessation of use causes me to dream hard. I go from no memory of dreams whatsoever to intense, vivid dreams that are incredible every night.
Funny, but I didn’t view the responses as excessive “dumping” on the OP.
The OP impressed me as awfully sheltered and naive - and not just about pot, but even moreso about the ability of a parent to affect their childrens’ choices and influence the adults they become. Good luck when your kids are out of school and out of your house, and making choices that you not only disapprove of, but also anticipate are likely to result in undesirable fallout down the line - which you will eventually have to share in dealing with.
It is just how life works. There is no rulebook for parenting. So long as you make your choices based on the best info you have at the moment, and that your actions are well intentioned, that’s about the best you can do. You, your spouse, and your kids are all going to make any number of choices that you’ll later regret, or that you would’ve handled differently given different info.
IMO, the most important thing to aim for is an “authentic” relationship in which all parties communicate honestly and openly. But, just because you WANT such a relationship, doesn’t mean you are going to be able to achieve it.
I remember a presentation we went to when our kids were in HS. The speaker said before reacting, assess your kid’s actions on a 100 pt scale, where 100 - the WORST that could happen, is your kid ends up dead. When you adopt an approach like that, anything short of death can be dealt with and come back from. AND, on a scale like that, teens smoking pot is pretty small beer. Especially if they are keeping up their grades/activities/social responsibilities, and the parents didn’t even notice it for 10 months.
OP here and I respectfully disagree, Dinsdale.
Not sheltered or naive. I knew I would have to deal with these issues at some point but thought I would have until college years. 14 was a little bit of a shock to me. And the scale thing you reference 0-100 - uh, I think this is the high 90s. This can hurt my kids…lead to death.
Wrong. Many people use drugs to self-medicate something, knowingly or unknowingly. Not all, maybe not even a majority, but many.
It’s important to at least ask the question of whether it’s a self-medication situation, because if you don’t, then you can’t be mindful about it, you can’t interrogate whether there are better/safer ways to medicate, you don’t have a cognitive framework to detect when if your usage patterns start to get disordered.
And this is why some people think you’re being naive. Smoking pot would fall no where near that high on the majority of parent’s list. Teenagers smoke pot, drink, have sex; and while there are consequences to all of them they are not nearly as disastrous as you are making it out to be.
OK - we disagree. But the majority of folk I know - including my spouse and kids - drank, did drugs, and had sex before age 21 - and all ended up gainfully employed, in longterm relationships, free of criminal records or avoidable health concerns…
I smoked a ton of pot starting in my teens, and associated w/ a ton of folk who did so as well. My consistent experience is that your concerns are exaggerated. But you disagree. Fine. I’m not sure based on what, but fine.
I’d probably agree to a rating in the 80s somewhere - due to possible legal/school discipline issues, possible reflection on motivation/achievement, and remote/minor possible health concerns. If your kids are active, respectful, socially doing well with a decent crowd, etc. - I’d have little concern about occasional pot smoking. If they were getting high before school, their grades were dropping, stealing or dealing to support their habit - I’d likely feel differently.
While they are in your house, you are certainly free to lay down whatever laws you wish regarding what takes place in your house. And I would have ZERO objection to telling your kids you allow NO illegal material in your house. In fact, I could imagine I telling them they had given up their expectation of privacy, and that that I might search their rooms. Hell - they are kids. Feel free to check their on-line presence. You are the adult. Make the choices - but also, anticipate the lessons taught, and potential repercussions.
Your family - deal with it how you wish. I’ve been raked over the coals on these boards in the past for posts I made concerning my family. Some criticism I thought unwarranted. Other, not so much. Welcome to the club.
I concluded long ago that you really don’t know what is going on behind the other closed doors in your neighborhood, and that just about every family was fucked up in one way or another. Like they say, if everyone would openly display their problems, people would be falling over themselves to get their own problems back rather than swapping for someone else’s.
It will be interesting when your kids go to school. Or better yet, when they are out of school, out of your house, and off your dime - and really aren’t interested in your opinions or advice. That time is coming quicker than you might imagine. And reacting as you did in this instance might not be encourage the optimal longterm relationship.
On edit - I really don’t know where I would “rate” pot smoking. To be honest, the idea of the scale was sufficient to tell me that anything short of death can be come back from. My baseline instructions to my kids was that I didn’t want to be picking them up from the hospital or police station - tho even both of those can be come back from.
If you’re going to rate something as common and non-damaging as smoking pot as ‘high 90s’, how much space are you going to leave on the scale for things like using addictive drugs (meth, benzos, opiatess, coke) especially ones with big health risks like needle drugs? What about selling drugs (especially ‘not pot’), or things like burglary? Or escalating to violent crime or organized crime (like gangs)? Or some kind of cult, militia, or other isolating and dangerous group?
Like other people have said, the reason you’re getting pushback is that you’re overreacting to a fairly minor, normal part of growing up (using restricted recreational drugs like alcohol, pot, or tobacco occasionally) as though it’s one of the worst things that could happen and a personal betrayal of you. While it’s something that should be addressed, it’s just not the extremely dangerous situation you’re treating it as.
While it is technically true that marijuana can be a contributing factor to a situation which might lead to death, you should also consider the odds of that happening. Think about how many kids try marijuana (a lot!) versus how many end up with serious consequences because of it. If death was a likely outcome, then you would hear of it happening all the time. But how often have you heard about something like that? Surely you have friends and neighbors that have teens now or had them at one time. Chances are, a lot of those kids tried marijuana and/or alcohol and, hopefully, they all grew up just fine.
Or getting a GF pregnant? Acquiring AIDS/herpes/hepatitits…? Experiencing serious injury - such as loss of limb? Getting interested in violent porn? Getting kicked out of school? Getting a felony conviction? Or even just developing some really nasty habits/opinions/personality traits? Being disrespectful towards women? Minorities? Those less fortunate?
Is occasional pot usage worse than all of those? Or do they ALL fit in the top 90s? Gotta wonder how the OP would fill out 0-95…
OP says se has never done any drug - so she has no personal idea what it is like. Know anyone who smoked? Been around them? But she is NOT naive! Her statements strike me as buying into some pretty extreme anti-drug propaganda.
2d generation Irish. Are some good old Catholic attitudes playing a role here?
Almost all the kids I knew in high school and college tried drugs at one point, and at least half used them regularly (usually pot but occasionally something else, most commonly prescription drugs). These were mostly middle and upper-middle-class white kids, and most of them turned out fine.
But in my limited understanding of parenting, the problem in the OP’s reactions/actions is not being overly concerned with drug usage, but rather that the very strong reaction is far more likely to lead to kids deciding that it’s best to just make sure to keep things secret from their parents rather than leading to better decision making. Seems like the best likelihood for improved outcome would be calmness, love, and understanding, without publicizing feelings of betrayal and attempts to instill guilt, IMO.
Declanium, please read** iiandyiiii**'s post. Your kids didn’t trust you enough to talk to you about honestly about smoking marijuana or even just talking about it. In your case it could have been because they anticipated your reaction, which is actually good news and 180 in the opposite direction of what you assumed. This was not a slap in the face to you, they cared about you and wanted to avoid hurting you.
If you want to stay an important part of your kid’s lives they have to be able to trust you not to go off the deep end when it comes to the mistakes you make in life.
I had a pretty strong reaction, as we can all agree.
It’s kinda hard to walk that back. As per my husband’s recommendation, they are meeting with a MD next week to go over the harmful effects of vaping (which I think again we can all agree is not good for a 15 year olds lungs). From there, possibly counseling. For both of us.
OP, you kinda remind me of my mother. I remember how upset she was the first time my twin and I went against her wishes when we were 18. She cried a long time and then gave us the silent treatment for a few days.
What was our crime? She wanted us to play our violins for extended family we didn’t know, and we refused to do so. The horror!
We had been perfect girls up to that moment. Never went through a rebellious phase. Never mouthed off at her or anyone else. Always did what we were told. Always eager to please. So watching her break down like that both frightened and pissed us off. The former because the over the topness of her reaction made us feel like she was losing her mind. The latter because we felt like my mother was refusing to see that we had earned the right to say “no” without being guilt-tripped by her histrionics.
Now I think drug use is different than refusing to play a musical instrument. But the angry response seems pretty dang similar.
OP, my relationship with my mother quickly went back to normal and eventually she learned not to take my choices in life so personally. But occasionally, her “good girl” mentality rises to the surface and infuriates me. I can’t say “damn” without my mother twisting up her face like I just stabbed her in the chest. I know she isn’t choosing to be like this, but I wish she would push back on her thoughts a little harder. She has it her head that I have to act a certain way to be a “good girl” and deviating from that means I am “bad”. It sounds like you may have a similar script in your head.
Well put. No harm in letting kids know mom and dad are human, which includes occasionally acting/reacting “in the moment” in ways we might later regret. Moreover, an opportunity to encourage honest and open communication of everyone’s emotions, motivations, etc.
