Forum: Close to Home
Topic: What factors in a child's family and environment do you think increase his or her risk for substance addiction?
Topic Posted by: Close To HomeDate Posted: Wed Mar 18 15:22:22 1998
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Posted by: Jim Ellison (fundude@ibm.net )
Date posted: Tue Mar 24 13:08:00 1998
Subject: Risk factors for children
Message:
MODELING is the most powerful form of teaching. Parents cannot do drugs themselves and expect their kids to be drug free. It is especially important, then, that we come to grips with the fact that alcohol is a drug, otherwise our credibility will be lost. Even those of us who don't have kids are acting as models. We are ALL in this together. Related to this (perhaps the same risk factor) is HONESTY. When I was in Junior High (twenty five years ago) we were shown a film about drugs. In the film the worst elements of heroin, LSD, and marijuana were combined and presented as if all three drugs were equally dangerous. My friend's brother, who had just gotten back from Viet Nam, presented a different picture of pot. We tried it and found that the information in the film was almost entirely false. Our teachers and parents lost all credibility. This was VERY damaging because: 1) It was a break in our relationship with our parents and teachers 2) We then went on to try other drugs figuring that they weren't as dangerous as people were saying. It turned out that many of these other drugs WERE extremely dangerous and led to various degrees of psychological and physical damage. Trying to keep us away from pot by trying to scare us was a TERRIBLE strategy. We would have done a much better job of navigating our way through our experimentation had we been given the real information. Scare tactics in general are a poor strategy. They are disrespectful, short lived, and tend to distort reality. Marijuana, of course, IS a dangerous drug, but it needs to be placed in perspective. No single drug should be "lumped" in with any other drug. They are all different. -Jim