In the Beginning

In the beginning, just a few short months ago, my son didn’t come home after school, nor did he arrive in for dinner. There was something about this event that sent my parental antennae to high alert scanning. When he did come in later that evening, it was like a different, alien being had suddenly invaded his body and mind. The change really was that fast, and I remember the day vividly.

In the next few days, I learned a number of things about my son: he was addicted to smoking; he enjoyed smoking cannabis and had been smoking cannabis for at least a year and a half (since he was 12 or 13); he had ditched his friends, and had hooked up with a bunch of new mates none of whom I had met or heard of before.

Before I was a parent, I had smugly believed that I’d know immediately if my children smoked or did drugs. I was I thought realistic enough to think that by the age of 14, sex, drugs, alcohol and smoking would have been in the orbit of my children’s lives – but they would refuse some or all of the above at least for a year or so beyond 14 (or a decade!). (This is often told to parents at school meetings – to get with the sad reality that 14 most kids have tried or been offered tobacco, alcohol, drugs and sex).

I thought I was ‘cool’ and experienced enough to be able to tell if my kids were into this stuff. It was, however, a brutal shock to me, not only to realize that it was all happening right then for him, but most distressingly, that it had been going on for a long time. (I’ll tell you a story about my conversation with other parents on facing the realities of what our kids are up to in a later blog).

So what did I do?

I went into overdrive. I researched every site on the internet I could about drugs and teenagers. Ironically, I had the time to do this – if my son wasn’t home at 1am or 2am in the morning, I suddenly found I had a lot more time. (The burn out was to come some weeks later – and so was the establishment of the “2am Club for Parents”). I read articles and watched videos on parenting teenagers from all corners of the globe. I googled with 2am eyes for research on what cannabis does to the teenage brain. I can tell you this: it’s nastier than ever, as cannabis these days is usually hydroponically produced and its narcotic effects (THC – the mind altering chemical) are far stronger than a generation or two ago causing increased hallucinations and side effects that could last for years. You can check it out yourself – and I recommend you do – by searching for information on the internet you can weed out (pun intended) the good articles from the bad and get some useful information, on many drugs not just cannabis. The US government’s NIDA site was one that I found easy to read.

I also burned up phone lines during the day. I contacted every agency in the city to talk to them about their drug and alcohol programmes for youth. It was massively sobering, frightening but also valuable. I was starting to build some support groups. I was learning to have the humility to reach out and admit things were not going well in my family, and to have the grace to accept advice and help.

My advice : right from the very beginning get ahead of the game. Find the information. I explained repeatedly to counselors at advisory bureaus: ” I will not be six months down the track from today, and facing a worse case scenario, wish I had talked to you, or found the information and the support resources I needed, only for it to be, by then, too late.”

Early intervention is the key in my experience. If you don’t like drugs (and let’s face it, they are illegal), be clear and concrete with your kids from a really early age about what you are prepared to tolerate, and that you have a zero tolerance attitude. The same goes for underage drinking, sex and smoking. It might not actually stop your teen from doing it, but I know, that somewhere inside my teenager’s brain synapses, there’s a signal that transmits a message: ‘this isn’t a good thing to be doing’, and/or, ‘my mum would not want me to be doing this’.

If this is so, and I wish it to be so, I have a hope and chance that my zero tolerance on drugs, and my value based guidelines on social and personal issues, might at one pivotal, split second point in my son’s life, stop him for doing something life alteringly stupid.

Last weekend I found a home made bong (a water pipe used for smoking marijuana) in my teenager’s room. No dramas – I threw it in the rubbish and not a word about it was spoken. He knows I found it and I chucked it out. This was “zero tolerance for drug paraphernalia in my house” in action.

Perhaps I was – still am – being overly paranoid. But if you are a parent who was up last night at 2am, as I was, not knowing if your teenager was drunk or stoned or coming home at all, and you care enough to read this blog, then I think a healthy degree of paranoia might be enough to get you informed, and get some action underway. That is if you are not too exhausted the next day!

For now, sleep deeply and peacefully. Blessings and light.