To ask posters who have done drugs

[WaterOffADucksCrack]

What they will tell/have told their children when they reach/reached the age when they're curious?

Mine aren't anywhere near that age yet but I'm curious because they will ask about it one day. My dad told me he'd done cannibas for around a year. He had fun tines but that it made him so lazy that he stopped as he was in college.

My story is different, I've tried all drugs. Ended up with a ketamine addiction. However with something like cannabis I'm more leaning towards telling the children of the good and the bad as I believe being ridiculously against is as bad as being ridiculously for it. Thanks.

No I won’t. My mum and Dad told me that they did though.
The reason I chose not to is because my opinions on health have changed a lot over the years.

I didn’t really care back then but now I don’t even take paracetamol. I dont want my DC taking anything that could possibly change his wonderful personality or hurt him. I’d like him to live a natural, simple life.

I don’t actually think drugs are bad just for the sake of being bad though. It’s the chemicals etc that put me off. If they were made of fresh air I’d probably still be carpet munching in ecstasy now ha

DH & I told son when he was about 19 - we were young in the 80s and early 90s

We had done acid charlie coke e mushrooms speed & weed - gave him our honest experiences both positive and negative - would rather he knew and could talk to us about it tbh

Coming at it from the other position, my father told me about his teenage experiences with drugs and alcohol. He didn't get into gritty details but wanted to warn me about the dangers he knew firsthand, reiterate that I could talk to him and my mother about anything, etc.

I'm not sure how old I was. Maybe a young teen. It had a similar feeling to when my parents had The Talk with me, honestly. Kind of awkward, but I think they got their points across.

For what it's worth, I've never tried drugs. Not sure how much is due to anti-drug education, talking to my father, and my naturally risk-averse personality.

I told them I had taken various drugs with I was younger and that I regretted it. I feel that it impacted on my long term mental health to a large degree. I told them that I don't know anyone who thinks now that taking drugs was a positive thing for them and nearly all wished they hadn't. I told them some people I knew still did them and had never really progressed in life because their focus and energy was mainly on drugs rather than studying or training or being successful. This is all true, I am not exaggerating so I am basically telling them the truth about my drug experiences. I'm very matter of fact about it rather than doom and gloom and fear mongering. I hope they take it on board and use the advice sensibly that's the best outcome I can hope for really.

I did some stupid things when I was 16/17 before I got pregnant at 18 with dd 4 with now dh (he’s a few years older than me). We both used drugs on nights out and a hell of a lot of our friends did to some still do (all our age early 20s). Haven’t thought about if we’ll tell dd with her being so young but I don’t think we will, I don’t want her to think us doing justifies her doing it, we done a hell of a lot of stupid things. Maybe if she asks I might tell her a very toned down version.

I will be honest with mine.
I smoked a lot of weed and hash, had some great times with it and never drank at all in those days.
I would have loved a smoke tonight outside in the warm air and would have no problem about dabbling still if i could source it without coming into contact with scumbags. Massive stumbling block there.
Ive had two lines of coke and thats as far as my experimentation has ever gone.
No pills, someone gave me some mushrooms once but the thought of a long bad trip just scared me too much.
My brother started off the same as me but has been a heroin addict for 15 years.
Ive shielded my child from him and his destructive behaviour as much as possible but he has seen and heard things that im hoping will have scared him off ever going down that awful road.
Any questions I will answer honestly.
Same as any other subject really.

I ended up with the same addiction as you OP, as well as dabbling in a little bit of everything going.

It was also an escape from childhood abuse and PTSD for me. I think I'm one of the lucky ones, in that I went on to have a relatively normal life. Stopped spontaneously, got a good job, had a family, etc, etc.

I honestly think the drugs saved my life and helped me heal. On my death bed, I will look back on some of my experiences with them as having been the best of my life. I definitely had my bad moments too, but I would pay ten times over for what I gained.

My childhood was far worse, and I would rather kill myself than live through it again. Maybe that's why I have the opinion I do.

I did very casual cannabis and poppers and will be happy to tell my children. Cannabis made me very paranoid and I will tell them about how I felt. Poppers just made me act like a dick.

I think I will be honest once they are teenagers and if they ask. I tried quite a few things in my wild 20’s and made quite a lot of poor / dangerous choices as a result. Most of them were down to excessive alcohol use though rather than drugs. Cannabis is legal here so we will definitely have to discuss that at some stage.

I'd tell them that sometimes people want to escape. Escape hardships, escape pain or even just escape monotony. And they take drugs to do that. But the thing is, the escape route itself can be way more dangerous and end up causing more pain than whatever it is they are running from in the first place. So it is safer to look for other ways...
Or sometimes, just to look whatever it is they are running from in the face and tell it to fuck off.

I was relatively pro weed until I recognised it was causing an effect linked to schizophrenia when I indulged in it. If I hadn't read that textbook in psychology class I might have continued to indulge and ended up perminantly damaged (as it wasnt a side effect that was long lasting or scary: basically the day after, I would always feel like someone was standing diagonally over my shoulder, right behind me. Not in a creepy way just, the feeling). I think drugs can affect different people in different ways and you cant always rely on 'knowing your own limits' ect so I would advise them against bothering at all in the first place.

Mine are a bit young to have that conversation with just yet but I think I probably will tell them a watered down version just so they know that when I'm telling them not to do it that I'm speaking from experience

I smoked cannabis as a young person, my son knows about it. He smokes it sometimes as do most people he knows (musicians), but doesn't go overboard and he would never touch anything stronger because he's seen what it has done to some others. I too was scared to try anything else.

'It's weird for me
My youngest (18)will do the 'high chat' with me as they know I won't judge and have been there before.
I can't stop them from doing but I can always be there to listen

My daughter has already smoked weed and she will be 18 in a few weeks, I explained the dangers to her about paranoia, lethargy and depression but ultimately, they make their own choices. Her and her friends tend to use edibles more than smoking it.

I told my dd the truth, to the best of my ability, about every single drug on the market, that I knew of.

I may not have told her of my experience with LSD though.

But when I was young my poor mother said things like cannabis makes people think they can fly.

And then when some of my friends became heroin addicts I found out all kinds of horrible things about heroin that no public information campaign ever tells you.

About heroin, I told her that it must be absolute wonderful, because nobody would keep on taking heroin for the two or so months it takes to get an addiction otherwise.

I really do think it is best to tell the truth about drugs, because they are the ones who are going to decide whether or not they take them and none of their friends will tell them that cocaine makes people paranoid and violent.

I have grown children. I don’t talk to them about drug use in the same way I wouldn’t talk to them about my sex life. I think it’s a bit weird. We go to festivals with them so I am sure they understand we have a past. We are both professionals though and luckily never got into that really lazy life of smoking weed.

@coyoacan
My parents wouldn't let us even listen to acid house!!.. And none of us ever said no to a baggie, a pill or a spliff, probably as a consequence of such suffocation.

I fully expect my children to experiment but would be horrified too... It's hard to strike the right balance between candour and assertion I guess.

I talk openly with my dc about my drug use and they with me.
I'm not going to be able to stop it, so at least I know what is going on

My/their and drug use conversions include legals - caffeine, otc painkillers etc

To those who say that drug users are chavs and it's a "discustin" habit:

Taking E has taught me so much about myself and taught me to relax and be happy!

I come from an ambitious family. I was clever. My parents primed me for success and overachievement. My life was work, work, work, comply, comply comply from an early age. At 24 I had already attempted suicide twice and had my own psychiatrist. And, yes, I passed my degree with a first. Top university.

It was only when I went to London and got a job that things started to get in place with me. It was a first step job in the media and I had some amazing weekends and met some wonderful people during my dancing days and even the man I later married.

I did not get addicted. I did not steal or lie. My friends were working in many different jobs, mostly in the media.

I learned I could relax and that life was there to enjoy not to endure.

I wish that I had learned that lesson for good and stayed and an easier job but sadly I did not and chased a high profile career, with mixed results, all my life, and only now after two decades being a semi famous person I fully realised that I was still pleasing my parents and changed careers.

I do not know what I'll tell my kids as it's so complicated and do not want to spread the idea that mental illness is part of their generic mapping but also do not want to stigmatise mental health and I would find difficult talking about drugs without talking about my subtext to them.

I am reading this thread with interest.

I don't have children yet but I think I'd be honest-ish - I might say that I had dabbled, and that there are lots of potential risks as well as the potential fun. I'd share information about testing, having a sober friend around, etc, and I'd stress that as a parent who put their safety first, my preference was that they didn't do drugs, but that I would always talk to them about it if they wanted my advice or any info.

It's what my mum did with me and it worked - I have maybe 2 nights a year where cocaine or MDMA might be involved, and very occasionally the odd festival. I assume my risk appetite will drop dramatically if I have children though, so I think that would be the end of my wilder nights out. A friend of mine whose parents were extremely vocally anti-drugs is now in treatment for drug induced psychosis - where we'd take something once and then nothing for 8,9,10 months, he would be back on it the next weekend. And then the next Thursday, and Wednesday.

@Sadmum1111 I am so sorry about your DD

I smoked marijuana when I was a teen but never tried anything else. Looking back that was quite a feat, as nearly all my friends took E and my boyfriend was into acid. I knew some kids who tried heroin too. Who knows what my parents did to raise teens (my brother was the same) who weren't that interested in trying drugs, but I'm hoping that I can achieve the same.

When I was in my early teens, back in the 70s, DF (a GP) sat me down and told me about drugs, both his own experience and the medical view. The information he provided allowed me to navigate my drug use safely. He believed that saying "just say no to all drugs" was an inadequate response. Knowledge is power.

He made the point, among others, that people often perceived cocaine and amphetamines as very similar but that they were not, and cocaine was very much more dangerous. He and many other medical students had used speed for revision, whereas cocaine was very nasty - highly addictive and potentially fatal. This was very important information for me.

When my own DC hit their teens I followed DF's example. Scrupulous honesty and sharing all the info I could.

This meant my DC felt equipped to avoid certain hazards and to ask me questions. DS2 said he was much impressed by my reaction when he had a bad reaction to a legal high. I was incensed not by him taking the stuff but by his negligence in not checking out the likely effect on someone like him, who had Type 1 diabetes. Drug users share this sort of information online.

In my case, alcohol was a far more likely cause of big problems. DF has been sober for 45+ years and I celebrated my 31st AA birthday last week. One of my cousins died of alcoholism last summer. We have a very strong familial tendency to alcoholism and I have made sure my DC are fully aware.

Just because you smoke weed then it doesn’t mean your lazy @TKAAHUARTG! I only smoke it at weekends and I get a high from it and love doing my housework whilst smoking it!

Plus plenty folks I know that smoke it more than me work too so they’re not lazy.