Do most Teenagers do drugs?

[Oslosunshine]

DD is 17. She was at a party last night and I got a call from her as it got shut down by the police. One of the girls at the party was taken to hospital in an ambulance after an overdose. Today I had a chat with the mum of the boy who’s party it was and she was, to be expected, incredibly frustrated as she had to fly back to deal with the fallout. Thankfully the police were only really fussed about the noise after the neighbours complained and nothing is being taken further.

However, this prompted me to speak to my DD about why drugs should be avoided and about being sensible etc. DD got very defensive and told me that everyone does drugs, ‘MDMA is safer than alcohol’ and lots more to that extent.

I was incredibly shocked- I know DD smokes (both cigarettes and weed) and whilst I would prefer her to stop, she’s 17 and like most of my peers, I did the same at her age. However, I knew absolutely nothing of the hard drugs and how common they are with her friends.

DH is also worried but sees it as an almost given. He went to a similar school in London to hers and was in a similar ‘scene’ when he was younger and confirms that it is very much the norm.

Mum of the party boy agreed that coke, ketamine, MDMA are all very normalised with their peers and thinks the best course of action is to educate them on dosages, rather than pleading with them to stop.

I feel so naive; I feel as if I have failed my daughter by bringing her up in this privileged inner city London environment where most of the DC have the money for these expensive drugs. But DH thinks it’s not our fault and that this happens everywhere. It certainly didn’t happen on this scale when I was growing up in a less privileged, more suburban area.

Is this normal for teenagers everywhere/ was I just incredibly sheltered growing up?

Hmm wasn’t really my experience. My friends and I experimented when we were around 20. I only knew one person who did drugs when I was a teenager. To be honest mdma I wouldn’t really be concerned about as it seems less addictive than the others as it’s a party drug so mainly done everything now and then. I’d be concerned if she was doing coke.

No of course it isn't normal everywhere. I'm not naive I know drug taking goes on but thankfully not "all teenagers".

No, neither of my children, who are now adults, did drugs in their teens.

Hope that doesn’t sound dismissive. Obviously it’s better to avoid drugs but a lot of people experiment. I personally found mdma was the best of a bad bunch

I think when teenagers say “everyone does it” they’re often either being defensive and trying to minimise what they’re doing or by “everyone” they mean in their group.

That said I’m no expert on teenagers nowadays but I’d be surprised if most do drugs.

I would also take it with a pinch of salt when people say their kids never did drugs. They have no way of knowing for sure. It can be easy to hide if you’re doing it on a night out and return home the next day. It’s unlikely they’ll tell their parents about it

@Mandofan
My friends and I didn’t start dabbling with drugs until we were at university either, which is why I was shocked that it is happening so early.

The problem with that is, if it’s a party drug, that’s all well and good until there are parties every weekend, which would be far too often to be doing it?

I have 2 teenagers, one does, one doesn't, seems to depend on the crowd they run with.

I went to sixth form at the kind of privileged school I suspect these children are at. There were two or three groups where drugs were the norm. But they were probably a third of the school. And they’re the groups that were either now ridiculously successful (mainly in the creative industries) or went badly of the rails in their early 20s. The rest of us neither smoked nor did any drugs (some of that changed for some of those people at uni). Alcohol, on the other hand, was universal.

@Oslosunshine for us it depended on the vibe. A house party would maybe involve smoking a little weed. MDMA was for the club. Clubbing every weekend get boring eventually. If it was me I would have a mature conversation about safe consumption. My friends and I told each other want to look out for and always went for powder never pills as you could always tell what the quality was like based on the powder. Overdoses were almost always due to pills so we avoided that. We’re all professionals now and no one has a drug problem

I grew up in a pretty midlands market town where there was a mix of demographics from rich people who lived in surrounding villages to very working class people. When I started going out in the nearest city from 18 onwards my experience was yes, most people my age were experimenting with pills, MDMA and ketamine. I smoked weed when I was about 16 and I know some of my friends also did harder drugs under 18. Drugs also rife at uni. In my experience, yes it is pretty common but most people I know who were doing that are now functional employed adults without any drug issues. Speaking to friends who grew up in privileged London private school circles, drugs were even more common in their youth and at oxford/Cambridge etc

I don’t think this is normal. It sounds like the adults are failing to teach the difference between right and wrong, and condoning risky behaviour which could lead to serious harm.

I think it really depends on the friendship group. No one in DS1's group does drugs (15/16yr olds) but a few in one of DS1's groups smoke weed (14/15yr olds). Thankfully he's not out with then often and not the whole group does it. I've advised him against it as he has asthma, he may well have tried it and not told me.

At 15 I'd tried most drugs as my friend group were older and all into them. My youngest sister was also in a druggie group at school and they were doing Ketamine in year 9. I have no idea how they all afford it, my DCs don't get enough pocket money to buy drugs!

One of mine (now 20) smokes weed occasionally if it's being passed around, as it were. The other barely even drinks. I don't think it's due to any great parenting hack, we just never have any cash 🤷‍♀️ Now they have jobs of their own the money's too hard earnt for them to spend on drugs.
But yes OP. When both went to uni they were boggled by the amount and variety their peers took.

I don’t think most teenagers can afford drugs or would have the faintest idea how to go about buying them?

There’s a Kevin Bridges sketch where he talks about how many people most teenagers have slept with and that it was a survey they had to complete themselves, and how most teenagers are likely to talk up their numbers to look good in front of their friends. I think that’s true here too - most teenagers are actually still very young / insecure / unsure.

The majority of the people I know have done drugs at some point in their younger years. Some only smoked weed whereas others did much harder drugs up to and including heroin.

I smoked weed as a teen and young adult but nothing harder and grew out of that phase.

@Redroceritsover
But how do you know that though? If I were to ask MIL or FIL, both would say the same about DH and his siblings. When in reality, DH experimented from about 15 onwards.

I think many, even most, teenagers will experiment. And “drugs are bad” may have worked when it wasn’t easy to get information about drugs, but doesn’t work to stop them trying now, when teenagers have access to the internet and to resources where they can find balanced information about different types of drugs, their harms and safer use.

@Pyri
If that’s the case then how on earth does my DD get hold of them? She said ease of access is one of the reasons why they are so common.

I never did when I was a teenager, nor did any of my friends. A few of them tried weed when they were in their late teens, but that’s about it.

A girl a few years above me at my school died of some kind of combination of drugs and alcohol, and I think awareness of that did make people more cautious.

@ComtesseDeSpair
That’s comforting to know.

I don’t know- I just feel so rubbish about myself and my parenting. I worked hard to give DD a good life, agreed to private school when DH pushed, despite being completely against it in theory and this is the outcome. I haven’t protected her.

[quote Oslosunshine]@Pyri
If that’s the case then how on earth does my DD get hold of them? She said ease of access is one of the reasons why they are so common.[/quote]
I have absolutely no idea in your daughter’s case, but teenagers include everything from 13+ so I assume it’s easier to get them for her peer group but not as a generalisation for all teenagers

[quote Oslosunshine]@Pyri
If that’s the case then how on earth does my DD get hold of them? She said ease of access is one of the reasons why they are so common.[/quote]
Mobile phones / WhatsApp / other messenger apps makes it really easy. Drugs aren’t bought from shady strangers standing around on dicey streets anymore. It’s as easy as placing an order for a takeaway.

@Pyri
Surely any teenager who really wanted to experiment would just ask one of their friends or classmates who they know are in the rave scene?