Can you be a good parent and do drugs?

[Bruminbrum]

Hypothetical a point for just discussion as DH and I were talking about it tonight.

Im steering toward no, I think you can try but the act sort of precludes it, especially if it’s class A and habitual use

but what about weed?

in the home, well there’s risk if might not be able to respond as fast as you could to an emergency. But what if there was another sober adults that could respond? But then would the drugs still be in the house?
what about if you left the house and the child was in the care of safe and sober adults and you smoked weed out and about and only returned home when sober? strikes me as that’s a ‘safe’ way or maybe the safest way.

genuine point of discussion, purely hypothetical so no judgement and open to other opinions And to be convinced otherwise.

(im also someone that doesn’t drink or smoke if that is of any relevanc)

I’m a parent and I drink alcohol in moderation with kids in the house. As long as someone is sober enough to deal with an emergency it doesn’t pose a risk. I don’t do drugs and I would massively judge parents who engage in such illegal activity whilst under the same roof as their kids.

Tell me you've never done MDMA without telling me you've never done MDMA 😁

Obviously someone who is in charge of small children should not be under the influence of anything.

However, I didn't try "drugs" drugs until I was in my 40s, and like many people taking MDMA for the first time, my initial reaction was "Wow, if only I could have done this with my parents."

it was used a lot in psychotherapy before becoming a "street" drug. Empathy, openness, and reduced fear make it possible to cover a lot of emotional ground very quickly.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDMA-assisted_psychotherapy

Weed smokers can make the worst parents they stink their kids stink they think "no one knows" your CHILDREN STINK OF WEED of course people know awww its harmless should be legalised all the mental health links are just a conspiracy because it cures cancer and the government hushes it up its cures everything and the government hushes it up because because because.....

There is not one single reason why the government would hide a cure for cancer they could make an utter fortune out of it bloody insane paranoid rambling of a weed smoker on the school run really glad my child is in secondary now and I dont need to interact with school parents 😂

I spend my working life in the courts. The damage that drugs do to kids is overwhelming. Young people are routinely exploited, stabbed, trafficked and traumatised so that you can people can get their ‘little bit of weed’. So no, you are not a good parent or a good parent, or a good parent, if you use drugs.

Why should other people’s kids go through this so you can have a few minutes’ fun?

Yeah I’ve never done mdma.

my children are also young, we have no village. In my opinion doing a drug like that would preclude me from being a parent.

this will sound quite judgmental and I’m sorry in advance but I’ve always found it a bit pathetic, even in my 20s. I’m aware I probably sound like a right joy, but it’s how I feel

Yes and I consider this a world away from the risk posed by doing drugs

No he doesn’t support organised crime. He’s a gardener, with gardener friends. One of which grows a weed plant now and then.

He barely puts any in. Gets a jam jars worth a time. He has had his current jar since Christmas and it’s still got loads left.

No you can’t. Don’t make excuses for self indulgent parent-first behaviour

So has it around the house?

Of course teens will take drugs. Did it myself!

I’m answering in relation to parents.
We don’t have a teenager (but will in a few years).

You could end up losing your driving licence

Plus of course as already pointed out the issues about the 'supply chain'

I'm not sure what you mean by "I've always found it a bit pathetic" but you might be interested in the analysis of drug harms published in The Lancet in 2010.

Members of the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs, including two invited specialists, met in a 1-day interactive workshop to score 20 drugs on 16 criteria: nine related to the harms that a drug produces in the individual and seven to the harms to others. Drugs were scored out of 100 points, and the criteria were weighted to indicate their relative importance.

You can see alcohol right at the top, with MDMA close to the bottom (it's called "Ecstasy" in the graph).

Not that I've done it for years! but talking about "drugs" is meaningless when there are so many different drugs with completely different effects. People tend to lump all the illegal ones together in a way they wouldn't with, say, paracetamol / chemotherapy / antibiotics.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(10)61462-6/abstract

Edited to add: I did say that as a parent of young children, nothing is an option really!

Yes the jam jar hides in the garage. You cant smell it unless you open the jar indoors. But he rolls and smokes outside.

Having worked in mental health and seen the long term effects of weed, my answer is a heavy no. If you need a substance to relax, then you need to figure out why that is. A glass of wine is NOT the same as weed because a glass of wine doesn’t have the same effect as weed. Stoned people are not reactive to their children (or anything). All this nonsense about how it’s “natural” and “cures cancer” and “calms my brain” is just that - nonsense. It alters brain chemistry. Sure it’s fun now, but I’ve seen grown men crying behind doors in a mental hospital terrified of the people in their head coming to get them. Why? Drug induced psychosis. It’s well known that drugs alter brain chemistry, and depending on usage can cause brain damage. A drunk parent is not a good parent and neither is a stoned one.

weed stinks whether you smell it or not.

i work in safeguarding. Is cannabis considered a safeguarding concern? Yes. Will your children be removed? Not necessarily (depends on circumstances). Have I seen children removed due to drugs? Yes. Playing with fire imo.

im fun at parties.

This is what’s banned in my house. DH weed.

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Fascinated by this debate because I think lots of people possibly drink too much alcohol whilst actively parenting but would look down on someone doing weed. I heard a radio host once pondering whether if centuries ago we would have outlawed alcohol if we knew what we know about it now. My (definitely prejudiced!) instinct is no, you can’t be a good parent and do drugs, but then I question whether you can be a good parent and ever get drunk, to which my instinct is yes.

Can you be a good parent and drink alcohol? Of course you can, so I don’t see weed as any different. Cannabis isn’t even illegal in every case. I have a friend who is legally prescribed cannabis for anxiety, is she a bad parent? If taking drugs makes you a bad parent purely because it’s illegal does that mean anybody who does anything illegal is a terrible parent? Are you a bad parent if you illegally download a film for example or if you drive over the speed limit?

Why the need/ want to take drugs? IME some people take them to escape from difficult feelings. But to be a good parent I think it's important to be able to tolerate and feel difficult feelings in order to parent well. So that children can also learn that.

I worked in sales where drugs were ubiquitous and i did just find it cringe, it was my visceral reaction to people taking drugs

i think the semantic point on drugs a bit of a red herring we all know what we mean when we say takes drugs and it’s not paracetamol, it’s illegal drugs.

people have died from taking ecstasy though haven’t they? Whilst interesting, surely the better alternative is to not too any illegal substance, who cares if ecstasy is the least harmful harmful illegal substance, it’s still harmful

Read this and it shifted my view. Think I’m with you here, although would question whether certain people are aware that it alters their brain chemistry (I think many are naive to this!) and does that mean they are, not excused, but less ‘bad’ than people who know and do it anyway?

I find all this so interesting. Maybe I need to find some new hobbies 😂

I don’t think it’s great to have too much to drink when you’re in charge of children either.

The difference for me is more about legality. If something is legal (as alcohol and tobacco is), it’s still not great to have around children to excess - or because of the passive smoking risks - but at least you aren’t also complicit in the misery caused by the drug trade, and you’re not setting an example to children that it’s fine to break the law.

If weed - for instance - was legal, I’d have no more issue with it than I do with tobacco (don’t think it should be smoked around children because of the passive smoking effects).

My husband has a prescription he uses daily.

He is still a perfectly good parent.

However he doesn't use it when I am not here as although legal with a prescription he does not drive having taken it.

My parents have both always smoked weed and were absolutely awful parents. TBH it's hard to tell if the weed was the problem or it was just their selfish personalities overall (which included weed as an essential with our extremely limited funds.) Other than weed, after their divorce one later became an alcoholic and the other addicted to injecting speed...so it's also hard to tell if the weed was a gateway to this or they were always going to depend or some substance or the other.
But overall the parents that I know these days that smoke regularly are generally more selfish people- more concerned about they feel in each moment than prioritising their children.
They would disagree.

This is an interesting point of nuance, your husband isn’t using it recreationally. For whatever reason (you don’t have to disclose) it has been prescribed so is the best medical treatment for him. I wouldn’t class this in the same league as ‘using drugs’ even though the ‘drug’ is the same