To expect my DD will try drugs?

[Roxietrees]

Not really an AIBU question but didn’t know where else to put it. Was just reading another thread and it got me thinking (maybe MN isn’t the best test group for this question but we’ll see!) I feel like back in the day on crime drama type tv shows where some young person goes missing the parents would always say to the police “no our son/daughter would never touch drugs, not in a million years, they’re not like that” or whatever. But these days you don’t get those kind of lines in the same types of tv shows (not that I’ve seen anyway, I might be wrong) and I’m wondering whether that’s because the attitude around drugs has shifted and it’s become more socially acceptable than it was early late 90s/early 2000s? I did a load of drugs in my teens and early 20s (early 2000s) so did almost everyone I know, and we’re all pretty normal, well-adjusted, successful people. My DD is still very young but I fully expect her to experiment with drugs as a teenager, I feel like it’s a right of passage. I just want to educate her about the dangers and discourage her but at the end of the day she’s going to make her own mind up. I’m just wondering if other people expect that their kids will try drugs or do you feel certain they won’t? If so why?

PP made a statement of fact. She didn’t say she was okay with it. Those of us saying that our DCs have tried drugs doesn’t mean we’re cool about it. Of course I’d a million times prefer she didn’t take drugs, or drink, or vape, or eat crap but she’s an adult woman and I can’t control her. She knows my opinion and all I can do is hope that she grows out of it.

I think people tend to respond quite understandably to self congratulating parenting posts because it often doesn't acknowledge other factors.

You've highlighted a good one. I come from a family with significant alcohol dependance. I don't drink but I really had some risky experiences with alcohol growing up through to age 30 when I decided I didn't want to drink. Never had any problems with occasional recreational drug use growing up btw.

The area people live, the socio economic group, family history, trauma, health conditions and neurotypes, peer influence. This all can impact risk level and behaviour even with parents trying their best.

I watch fentanyl stories on YouTube. There are many sad stories from parents who lost a child to recreational fentanyl use. It's clear when you see the stories that a combination of factors made one more susceptible than their siblings. Parents who are anti drugs and alcohol with good values also feature.

All I can say is that it's not too late to teach your child that drugs are not even something they should try once. Please, woman, know that something advertised as a 'harmless' party drug like ecstasy could be cut with nitazenes or fentanyl then after one try, it could be fatal.

https://www.uclahealth.org/news/release/about-22-high-school-age-adolescents-died-each-week

I actually feel the opposite, I think drugs are actually less acceptable to young people than they were in the 90s, and alcohol too.
I dabbled in my youth, but I was heavily into the music scene and drug use was rampant. Anyone I hung around with has long outgrown any recreational drug use (with the exception of may a few occasional weed users).
With my eldest two, neither they or their peer group seem to have any interest, and they’re both open enough that we discuss it fairly regularly. Within their friend groups, they don’t even seem to drink at gigs etc which was unheard of in my youth. Eldest is just as likely to be invited on a weekend hike or outdoor activity than to a pub in her early 20s.
Im not saying young people aren’t taking drugs, and I’m sure there are pockets of heavy drug users as there’s always been. But on the whole, I think young people are a good bit less tolerant of drugs on the whole. Certainly far more of my children’s peers are avid gym users etc than was typical in my peer group.

My 18yo has definitely smoked weed and tried coke.

I also did at a similar age.

yes I think people are being naive if they think theirs wouldn’t try.

Loads of research confirms that gen z and alpha are more risk averse than x and elder millennials. Less risky sex, alcohol and drug use. Obviously they experience horrible and different risks.

I am from an older generation when illegal drugs weren't so freely available or normalised (like it is on mumsnet) except for weed. Other drugs were just too expensive or simply not available as a street drug. The real cost of illegal drugs is much lower now than it was in the 1970s. Also, weed wasn't as strong as it is now and didn't smell so unpleasant. So, I don't know why so many posters find it so difficult to believe that there are a lot of people who have never tried anything stronger than weed, alcohol or nicotine.

I move in similar circles to @Doitrightnow and most of my friends are on prescription drugs rather than illegal drugs 😟

Almost certainly if he’d popping pills instead of whiskey he’d still be with us.

How do you know that @CamberwellCarrot78 ? If they were illegal pills how do you know they won't have been cut with something nasty? Alcohol addiction is awful, but I don't buy the argument that illegal drugs are safer because you just don't know what you are getting.

It’s easy to consider drugs a right of passage if none of your friends got heavily addicted.

I agree @Franjipanl8r
The "it never did me any harm" posters don't seem to take into account the devastating consequences of taking illegal drugs has on far too many people. I'm sorry you lost a friend.

Twoshoesnewshoes post is a depressingly very typical mumsnet example of normalising illegal drugs.

My niece is a drugs counsellor and has worked in prisons. She says that hard drugs have become currency since the smoking ban. I wonder if this might have contributed to rise in drugs use in clubs?

Permissive parenting is associated with increased likelihood of children trying drugs https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8761139/#:~:text=Parental%20permissive%20attitudes%20favor%20pro,those%20of%20parents%20%5B5%5D. There’s plenty of studies showing this and with regards to legal drugs its very easily seen in the children of those who drink / smoke/ vape that those chidlren are then more likely to drink / smoke/ vape. there’s a world of difference between authoritarian/ just say no parenting and a parent who is willing to talk openly and honestly with their children and educate via a way that allows that child to develop their own understanding about risk factors ,peer pressure etc.

I feel it is very possible but not inevitable that my DS will try drugs. I hope he doesn't because there is some risk, of addiction particularly. but most people who do a bit of recreational drug use in their youth are fine.

Yeah my mum would say that too

I think I am the only person I know who hasn't tried drugs. DH used to smoke - baccy and weed but quite when he met me because I didn't like the taste on him.

DS13 is VERY anti smoking - embarrassingly judgemental about it. He's pro alcohol though.

DD 15 has already had to look after a y9 from high school who was on the wrong side of a bottle of vodka and bagging deodorant. (Child ended up in hospital). It scared her.
Solvent abuse seems to be the rage in our high school. It's very 1980s.

I think less likely these days, actually! As a teenager most people I know tried something, even if it was smoking weed once and never again, but the young people I work with barely drink, don't go out twice a week like lots of people I knew in my late teens/early twenties (one of them has never been to a club at all - even the nerdiest most introverted kids at my college came out to town occasionally), and have never tried drugs. Obviously there are also tons of young people who will be doing those things, but anecdotally I think less so than when I was their age.

So maybe not!

I have three adult DC and I was able to (accurately as it turned out) predict which of them would going on level of risk aversion, extent to which they prioritised health and fitness, peer group and interests. It was one of the three if the stats from such a tiny sample help at all!

And mine 🤣

All of my friends tried/used drugs to a greater or lesser degree when I was a teenager in the 1970s, and I assumed that my daughter would also experiment when she got to her teens. I did my very best to educate her about the dangers and I know she did a huge amount of research herself, but of course she experimented. I’m just glad that we had a good enough relationship that she was able to come to me when she had a bad experience one night and I was able to help her. I think it’s like under age sex - the vast majority of teens will experiment with alcohol/drugs/sex and the majority of parents will be adamant that their children would never do such a thing.

I have never tried drugs (in my mid 40’s now). It never appealed. The thought of being out of control was scary to me and still is! My dh did take drugs at festivals as a teen/early 20’s but wouldn’t touch it now. We were open and honest with our two about drugs and said they can tell us if they planned to try something so we could tell them how to be safe but neither DDs were interested. Eldest tried a weed gummy once and hated how she felt and said she’d never try anything else. They are both pretty sensible overall though and don’t really drink much alcohol either.

Tbh I think posters who say they’ve had their own experiences of drugs are in a better position to educate their own DC. They also probably have their own horror stories that might put them off. I know two people who died from accidental overdoses (who were recreational users) and I’ll definitely be telling my DD about them to try to discourage her. Parents without their own experience IMO need to educate themselves about what kind of things kids are taking these days. I think many people assume weed is not so bad, anything else is really bad without learning about different drugs and what they do, just assuming their DC won’t do them. Prescription drugs can be the most addictive of all. What if your DC has done them and comes to you with questions and you can’t answer them? Leading with the line “all drugs are bad, don’t do them” is not helpful.

Weed is what I’m most scared of my DD doing because there is a history of poor MH in the family and if you’re genetically susceptible to certain MH conditions weed can “flick the switch” that may have remained dormant, had the person not used weed. This is especially common in teenage users whose brains haven’t fully developed. Weed is not the safest option, I’d rather DD did some class As over weed (if she chooses to do drugs at all).

One thing I don’t get - a lot of PPs saying a lot of teens are doing coke these days, how are they affording it?! Maybe I’m getting ripped off lol but I still occasionally dable for extra special occasions and it’s still 50 quid a gram, just like it was in 2007. That’s a lot of money for a kid so is it just rich kids doing it??

My parents and grandparents would say the same.

I took an obscene amount of drugs in my teens and to this day my parents do not have a clue.

They would swear blind that I have never done anything of the sort.

I've never asked but I'd be surprised if my kids had (2 adults and one teen).

I've never even tried a cigarette myself and I didn't try alcohol until I was 18. I was never really into doing stuff because everyone else did it but it also wasn't a thing in my group of friends either.

Fortunately my kids and their friendship groups are quite similar which has made the teenage years very easy for me.

So you dabble in coke so you can better advise your DD? And you think that's better than weed?

😆😆Yes my Mum still believed until she died that a couple of times when I came home somewhat the worse for wear when I was 14 or 15 were due to me drinking a pint of beer. 😆😆

Plenty of teens smoke and cigarettes are certainly getting more popular again thanks to the use of vapes as a gateway drug

Yep, I believe Coke is safer than weed in the long term. Especially for people who are susceptible to certain MH conditions (as I already wrote about in my post). You think just because coke is a class A drug and weed isn’t that Coke is more dangerous? That’s uneducated black and white thinking. Weed may be harmless to some people. It may trigger schizophrenia in others. This is exactly what I mean about the anti drugs brigade being uneducated and unequipped to educate their own DC because they just blindly lump all drugs into 2 catagories - weed and the dangerous shit. Do your own research, don’t be a sheep

I have no words. Take coke so you are not a sheep and can better educate your kids.😀
My own theory is that my kids will laugh in my face if I tell them not to do something I am doing.

Anti drugs brigade. That's a new one. Now parents are supposed to be pro drugs to be cool?

Oh geez another ignorant person that thinks grown adults do drugs “to be cool” 🤣 that’s an embarrassing thing to say.

It’s just my world, I don’t go out much and don’t drink much. When I do go out, if I go to a huge event where people are handing it out, sure I’ll still dable. Why does that make me worse than people who get blind drunk and make total dicks of themselves? Just cos it’s illegal? Open your mind. It’s just my preference. Quit the judging.

No I don’t want my DD to do it, but there’s lots of things we all do as parents that we wouldn’t want our DC to do, apart from you @LobeliaBaggins you’re clearly as an angelic as a pre-teen. However if she does choose to do drugs when she’s older I have to knowledge to be able to educate her about them properly at least. Kids of parents who know nothing and are just told never to touch drugs are going to be curious and rebel against that, then potentially get themselves into dangerous situations because they don’t feel able to talk to their parents about it.

I had this view until I actually had a teen but this current generation do seem much more polarised than my generation (early 2000s). Drugs were definitely a rite of passage for me and my friends and we came from “nice” middle class backgrounds, private education, uni etc… but it was all very socially acceptable.

My daughter and her friends seem much less interesting in drugs / boys / parties / sex than we were. It seems you are either a drug person or not a drug person for her generation with the majority choosing no.

im sure she will try a bit of weed, I know she had tried a cigarette and a vape but as a way of life or a regular thing her friends just don’t seem interested, they talk about the health implications and the risks with much more awareness that we ever had .

i think it may be a combination of the amount of drugs that are now chemically created in labs and much more obviously “scary”, social media and the risk of being found out and publicly called out and also the more home based online nature of their friendships.

my friends and I were always off in groups getting stoned in the park which sometimes lead into other things, my daughter doesn’t seem that interested in the mindless “hanging out” I used to do,,, she can achieve that from her bed on Snapchat! If she meets with friends it’s for an actual activity. It’s a very different teen world and I think one of the few benefits of social media is that groups of teens are much less likely to be hanging around together bored and thinking of ways to pass time and misbehave.

it does definitely still happen but it seems less common now.