I've NC for this as a few RL friends are on mn. Sorry it's long but don't want to drip-feed.
A dear friend has a new-ish boyfriend. They've been together about seven months and she has told me that she is serious about him. She seems very happy. All great, really pleased for her.
Last Saturday she had a birthday party. She has a mix of friends with and without children so she chose a child-friendly pub and invited those of us with DC to come earlier on, with the intention of carrying on into the evening for those who wish. We went with our 8mo DD.
We hadn't met new bf before but he seemed like a nice guy. After a couple of hours he disappeared with a couple of his friends and then reappeared. He seemed a bit quieter then before but we didn't really speak much to him, he stayed in a corner with said friends. We left soon after and the party carried on.
Then on Saturday, friend and I met up and talked about the party. She asked if I thought her bf was behaving oddly and said that she'd been cross with him because he and his friends had taken acid.
Now, I think I have a reasonably liberal attitude to drugs. It's not for me but if consenting adults make an informed decision to take them then I honestly don't care, or think that it's any of my business. However, I don't want my DC to be around drug-taking, however discreet. I don't want her to grow up in a setting where social drug-taking is normalised, in the same way that I don’t want her to see excessive drinking as normal. I told friend that I would have liked to know about the acid so that DH and I could have made a decision about whether or not we wanted to stay. We would probably have taken our leave, quite cheerily and with no mention of why, and we would have done the same if anyone had been very drunk. I said that if the situation recurred I'd appreciate a discreet tip-off.
She refused, saying that I was totally overreacting and that this would be an invasion of her bf's privacy, and telling me that I had double standards when it was a party in a pub where almost everyone, including DH and me, was drinking alcohol to some extent. She told me that I needed to 'lighten up' and relax my stance on drugs.
I honestly don’t think I’m being unreasonable (but then nobody ever does…) and this really would be a non-issue had the daytime part of the party not been specifically planned and communicated to us as child-friendly. We haven’t really fallen out over this, just agreed to disagree, and I don’t see our friendship ending over it but I would appreciate some other perspectives, as she has made me feel that my attitude to drugs is positively Victorian. AIBU??