My son and cannabis

[LynAnn]

Really just letting off steam this damn drug. Has taken my son away, started at 13 and the habit grew and he slowly disappeared. Meddled with other drugs had two kids hit and mental abused me his ex partner and now his current partner. He now has pure ocd (bad thoughts) severe paranoia and anxiety. And has pushed every one away from him. He has no one. He hates me I know as he tells me this but sometimes I can see the old son. But it is hard to want him near me I love him but I dont like what he has become.
This drug is a menace andshould be banned.

'I hope she gets the support she desires over on your new thread, I really hope she does.'

its a shame, dont you think, that she wasnt given the space to get the support she desires here on her own thread?

I've been accused of patronising OP before,if I was to recommend what you have pointed out Maryz I'm sure I would have been shot down with taunts such as, do you think OP hasn't tried etc etc. She sounds like a strong lady and I predict from what she has been through she has accessed all these services and she is still heartbroken. Thats why I said cope as best she can, to the best of her ability. No Raven I'm not afficilated to any 'church or religion'.

"cope as best she can"

I sincerely hope that you don't actually work with families ravaged by drug problems!

"drug users are not bad people, just very often sad or mad"

You are so clueless that it would be funny if it weren't so sad.

I have lived in three cities over two continents and rarely met anyone who has never tried any drug, including successful business people and health freaks training for a marathon. For the most part, people of my age have tried at least cannabis, and usually cannabis, ecstasy, and cocaine. We then settled down, developed a taste for dinner parties with wine instead of all-night partying with drugs.

At no point was any of this sad nor are any of us mad It was a lot of fun. Much more fun than alcohol.

If you don't even realize that drugs remain recreational for the vast majority of users, you are curiously uninformed in your field. If you have nothing to say to parents other than "You should have managed to keep DC away from drugs", frankly, you are useless and should considered a career change, for the good of those poor people you are supposed to be helping.

I feel a little sorry for you missmelo that you are so blinded by your own opinion that you cannot see why people are addressing you directly. It is NOT that we disagree with your general advice (and that is all it is, nothing specifically helpful), we are disagreeing with your abysmal mode of delivery, your way of making statements that you feel are so correct that they should go unchallenged and need no further consideration.

Your use of "end of", "easy as", and now "too bad" is really unbelievable.

People don't like the way you offer advice - "too bad"??? really? Is that what you say to people in RL as well?

The slating you have got on here has been mild. AF is distinctly NOT in the minority - but we are all banging our heads against a brick wall with you because you are determined to NOT see the message we are trying to give you - your approach stinks! Go away and re-learn how to talk to people without all the judgemental shite incorporated.

thumbwitch,
This is really what I wanted to talk to MM about but as you say she is too busy giving out her 'advice which is repatative to say the least'. I do have a problem with her being personally abused for expressing an unpopular opinion which has happened on this thread.
Anyway back to the matter in hand;
If we know that there is a genetic link to addiction (which I think we do), what should we do with people that we know are susceptible to addiction? Should we treat them differently in some way? To me this is the interesting question as it opens a real can of worms.
The genetic predisposition to addiction also gives a sound reason why afflicted parents should not mentally beat themselves up.

Maryz the addiction gene certainly isn't anyones fault, nobody controls their genetic inheritance.
Thumbwitch I am not blinded by my opinion, I am all to aware of the heartache that familes go through, I can't point out enough that I am not judgemental at all, regardless of what people perceive me to be. Sometimes when someone defends themselves against an argument put against them you should take that persons word. My opinion is yes, there should be full parental responsibility, doing everything you can to educate and prevent your child from using drugs but of course that isn't always enough, obviously I know this or else I wouldn't have a job. My reiterated point is that as parents we must do all we can in order to prevent it from happening, if you as a parent do all you can and your child still ends up on drugs of course you are not to blame, and I know its very difficult, heart wrenching and parents blame themselves, that is not what I am trying to encourage, thats just counter productive to their healing.

Cotedazur this thread isn't about recreational drugs use in adults, I'm aware that some adults use drugs recreationally and live functional lives but I can tell you now that you and I have very different opinions on drugs full stop.

Maryz,
I did hear somewhere that in a study that was carried out it turned out there was no significant genetic difference between Irish and British people - not perhaps what everyone would want to hear given national pride and identity etc.. From what I understand, one third of all English are someway descended from Irish people.
What I wanted to explore is what will we do differently when we can identify potential future addicts in this way? Will they have to be specially treated (for instance extra drug awareness education) or would this be considered discriminatory in some way?

ElBurro, while I'm mildly interested in genetic susceptibility to addiction, I don't really believe that genes are the whole story, so I would never feel that anyone is on safe enough ground to experiment with drugs. (I realise that that's quite a hard line to take where adults are concerned, and clearly some people here think drug use by adults is fine.)

The fact that drugs are available to kids is, however, disastrous in my book and it's clearly (IMO) very harmful to society as a whole.

There's also a whole debate to be had about legalising cannabis, and whether that would make it easier to prosecute anyone selling it to children.

Are you thinking that the adult population could be divided into people for whom it would be OK to take drugs, and people who just can't?

I am not suggesting anything, well, only perhaps, that future scientific advances will greatly increase our understanding of this problem. I am speculating on where this will lead (and hoping that others will also). I completely agree with you that drugs can be a very distructive influence on lives and society more generally and certainly should not be available to children (if that could be possible). However it is worth noting that many different societies have a way of escaping from reality - this seems to be a facet of human behavour that persists in many different cultures (i.e. it is a part of the human experience regardless of your society). The cultural element is the drug used. Traditionally in Europe we have used alcohol for this purpose but now we have a choice of drugs in addition.

Yes, good point about tradition. However traditionally drugs were controlled by elders or leaders of some kind, not drug dealers solely in it for personal gain. So the harm to society was less, if there at all.

Maybe the CofE could control drug use in the UK.

Or psychiatrists.

LMAO

good idea about the CofE especially as you need to be on drugs to understand Rowan Williams

Yes we were discussing that in our church house group the other day.

"what will we do differently when we can identify potential future addicts in this way?"

Just the knowledge that you have the addiction gene would be a deterrent. The reason why so many people use drugs like LSD, cannabis, ecstasy, and cocaine is that they are reasonably sure that they will not be addicted. And the vast majority are right.

If the few who will be addicted can be identified, they will be too scared to start, imo. Just like you would not start smoking if you knew for sure that you would die young from cancer.

As a teenager I used drugs, and I even bought them at school. I was an 'A Grade' student, came from a nice family etc but still decided to try drugs. Luckily for me it was a short lived thing, I haven't taken drugs since I was 19.

How could my parents have stopped me from doing something that they didn't even know I was doing?!!

I have kids who are teens and are at secondary school. Drugs are available. How can I police them on the way to/from school? One of my daughters gets the bus and people (i.e non school people) smoke weed on the upper deck of the bus. If she fancied going up for a toke how the smeg could I stop her?

We've talked about drugs. I had friends who sadly got sucked deep into drug culture and were damaged by it and I've told them about it.

I think as parents all you can do is talk, give the right messages and hope for the best. I imagine that when there are conditions like ADHD thrown into the ring too that it's very difficult.

AFAIK all the schools that I am involved with take a very hard line on drugs. But as one of the head teachers of one of the schools said, they can't be everywhere. They can't be on the walk home, or at sleepover parties and they have no control over what older siblings might be bringing into the family home.