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.

Thumbwitch - couldn't agree more. Strange and disturbing that missmelo can't/won't see that. Even more disturbing that despite many posters arguing against her views, and trying to explain why her views are too rigid and naive, she seems to have no ability to genuinely reflect on this and come to this realisation herself.

How can it possibly be OK that 'schools are a prime source of drugs'? Don't parents at the school insisit that the headteacher to do something about it?

missmelo, clearly I think you need a career change, you are arrogant and unable to see anyone else's point of view.

OP, I really identified with your post, my son also starting smoking the evil weed @ a young age, I love him to bits and have tried every method to make him stop again short of chaining him to his bed not sure what else I could have done ( actually wasn't a woman jailed recently for doing just this,trying and stop her daughter escaping to get her next fix). My son is 20 and still uses but holds down a full time job, has a girlfriend and seems to have hopefully coming out the other side.

I can see why people have got upset about the question of how such a young child got into drugs , but actually , i think its a valid one , and i say that as a parent of a young adult who has a serious drug problem and subsequent mental health problems .

My dd was quite young when she started this , probably about 14 , and like many others got it from freinds at school . Also like many others she would run away and the police would look for her , she would smash things up , steal , and attack us. She was often excuded from school.

Could i have done more ? Absoluteley . I tried to keep her in , tried to keep her away from these so called freinds , tried this and tried that , no money ect . When i look back in hindsight ( which is always easy of course ) it seems ridiculous that i had such little control over her and i can see now that there are many things i could and should have done . Its easy to look back of course , but i wasnt on the ball as i should have been , something i deeply regret .

I feel compelled to add my voice in agreeing that mismelos posts bare ABSOLUTELY NO resemblence to the reality of drug-taking in teenagers or the drug-culture at large.

And that the majority of 13 year olds who take drugs do it DESPITE parental discipline, support and love not because of lack of it....'just explain the effects of drugs indeed'!!

MM, you are either very very inexperienced in your field or you ineffectively absorb and process information from the world around you

sorry- and good luck to the OP and her son

Diggs, just out of interest exactly what else could you have done to prevent your daughter from doing this to herself? Short of locking her up in her room, as I said in my last post a woman is now serving a jail sentence for this.

I knew someone would ask me this .

The little things , the one i think the most important , freinds . My parents often didnt like my freinds , it upset me a lot and i didnt want to be the same . I wish id been firm and had some limits on who she was spending time with . Obviously too late once she got involved in this crap , but way before that , i wish i had said " look , i dont like so and so and your not hanging around with them , end of ".

At 11 or 12 , she didnt get to decide whether to peirce her tongue / go to school / stay up all night or eat ten cakes. I decided , because she didnt know what was good for her , but for some reason i let her decide her freinds . I dont mean i should have interveiwed them , but that when i met them and it felt wrong , , i should have said No.

I massiveley underestimated the influence freinds could have , and looking back i realise that she had perhaps got herself into something and couldnt get out of it. She had made freinds with a gang of people who had previously bullied her , it would have been very difficult socially for her to have come away from that group , they were violent and troublemakers and in order to not be bullied , she became the same . Obviously the nice kids didnt want to know her and she got herself a horrible reputation. It was a downwards spiral , and too late once it happened .

Self esteem , she didnt have much of it , i wish i had done more about this and realised the importance of it . I assumed at the time she was just a gawky shy teen and it was fairly typical , but with hindsight it was chronic , and i think a major facter .

Once she had gotton into it , i think there was still things i could have done . A differant school , maybe a short stay with relatives in a differant part of the country , a total grounding . I dont think she was happy , i dont think she particularly liked these freinds , socially coming away from them would have been very very difficult . I wish id changed schools , gone to see the police / parents of these so called freinds and been willing to be the over the top hysterical mother . I think she needed a get out . I could have done those things but didnt.

Of course , its hindsight , at the time it was very difficult and emotional , i was as out of my depth as she was . And of course , i feel guilty and that i failed her by allowing her to make bad choices when she was very young and vulnerable .

Op - it sounds like your DS may have tried to self medicate to a certain extent, to manage his condition with what was available to him. I'm so sorry you've been through this, and I'm full of respect for how much you have endured in the name of parenting - you've been put through so much by standing by your son.

missmelo - blimey! Whether or not you intended to sound do judgemental and critical, you did. If you did not intend to do so, you need to seriously think about your approach to drug users and their families. If you did intend to do so, you are a disgrace to the industry. In your attempt to backtrack you have been preaching to the converted. The vast majority of parents on this earth know it is their responsibility to keep their children safe from harm; we know it is not the responsibility of law enforcement to keep out children on the right tracks. But as us parents know, the influence we have on our children reduces with age to an extent; they become increasingly influenced by others, such as peers, teachers, employers etc. So please do not patronise in order to backtrack from your first comment. I too work in an industry in which parents are sometimes failing, yet it would be utterly unprofessional and ridiculously naive to assume that a parent has failed when something has gone wrong. Parents are just people, doing the best they can with the resources they have. Sometimes it's not enough, sometimes I'm not enough for my child, but I'm doing my bloody best.

I'm really worried that some MNers might be left with the impression that if they or those close to them had to access a drug service they might be faced with the type of prejudice offered by missmelo. Please be assured that such attitudes are most definitely not dominant in the drug service industry (they certainly were not when I was a drugs worker) and these attitudes do not last long as workers become better at their jobs, or are made to leave.

Diggs, thanks for your candid thoughts but to be honest I think you are being very hard on your self. Had you moved her to a new school it would likely she would have got herself involved in new friends who most likely were experimenting. Grounded her, she would have climbed out the window ( I did), god, I just think we have just such a horrible drug culture nowadays. One thing I agree is it all about peer pressure, my son has always been easily led. Like the OP said like her I with we could some how eradicate these horrible drugs especially the disgusting skunk they are all smoking, they just seem to think that is is sooo acceptable and that us parents are over reacting, don't understand etc etc. Sound familiar?

Yes , it does , its not a big deal to them at all and thats part of the problem , its socially acceptable . Another thing that irks me , those fucking adverts and phone lines where you can ring up and chat about drugs , or talk to frank ect. How about some advertising that says No ? Frank can Fuck off . You have a hard job telling your kids its not ok when they state that it cant be that bad , everyones doing it , and actually they have talked to frank so they know how to take drugs safeley .

Mine have come home with shit leaflets explaining each drug and how to take them safeley . Anyway , im resorting to blaming others and i shouldnt . This dd was my oldest , and i have done things very differantly with the others . Maybe she wouldve got into it anyway , who knows , but personally i think if shed have had better confidence and self esteem shed never have got involved with those people in the first place , they were the first step on the ladder .

Mary , my dd said something similar about being happy and relaxed . I suspect she was depressed , although its hard to know what came first , the depression or the weed .

This thread seems to have drifted well away from the original post. However I feel the vitriol (and abuse) directed against MissMelo is at least, if not more judgemental of her than her post was of the OP. She is speaking (tactlessly perhaps) from an area where she has some considerable experience. The self appointed arbiters of what is acceptable on a discussion board would do well to remember this. It is not controversial (to me at least) to say that parents are ultimately responsible for their children's behavour and yes I do speak as a parent of a 13 year old boy. This is not to demean the terrible experiences of some of the posters here or condemn or patronise them. Drugs are a blight on our society and ruin lives - to me that is the message we should all be drumming into our kids. And yes, this should also come from the media, school, police and social services as well. IMO a big problem is that there are many mixed messages around about drugs coming from adults (who have dabbled themselves - as I have). This makes the message that kids receive unconvincing because they know we do not really mean what we say. In a perverse way, I am fortunate that I have a ready made example (a relative) who I can point to as an example of how taking cannabis can ruin a life - and it really has. I feel that this waste of potential speaks louder to my kids than anything I could say to them.

Well put Mary and glad that things have been resolved for you.
The reason why I posted is that in this thread we are now discussing approaches to dealing with drug taking in children. This is something that is unfortunately potentially relevent to almost all UK parents. And I think we are all in agreement about the harm that cannabis can cause. MM, from what she has said, is actually in the frontline against this drug use and must have to deal with very many distressing and disturbing things on a daily basis. We should be able to discuss this without resorting to personalised attacks and ending up in a pointless slanging match. I do completely agree with your point that we have to deal with the world as it is (and not as we would like it to be) - I also doubt whether she intentionally intended to guilt other posters.

I agree that the personal attacks on Missmelo were entirely unjustified. But I'd be grateful if those who attacked her so gratuitously would refrain from turning their vitriol on me.

There has been plenty of discussion on this thread about what parents can and should do to help their children avoid ruining their lives. Not least to protect society at large, and specifically other children.

I didn't intend to hurt anyones feelings, of course I didn't, my God I see the pain and suffering families go through every single day but what needs to be said here, and its so difficult for many to reconcile is that hurt feelings, feelings of guilt and shame, should NOT supersede the importance of pointing out explicitily that when it comes to drug taking amongst children that parents are the key point in prevention, intervention and hopefully with the support of other agencies, transformation. Its not black and white, it never can be, what is black and white is that a parent of a 13 year old (not you OP you have stated in your later post that you tried your best) SHOULD be aware of what their 13 y/o child is doing and also, to prevent that child from engaging in environments where drugs will be available, no matter how tough and rigid you have to be, its the only way. Its a vicious cycle but you have to ensure that you are the protector of your children. And its not an easy process but it is an blindingly obvious one. It starts from day one, education, education, education people! Tell your children, hammer it home. Protect them. If your child has fallen on bad times because of drugs, thats terrible for you, I'm not judging you in your situation and I can see many are angry at me for making this point because they feel like I'm trying to say that they failed. Hurt feelings, feelings of guilt are not more important than getting the message across to all parents that constant dialogue around the issue is necessary. We can all be sad, so many have awful experiences but you must try to turn that into a positive for others coming up the line, I hope everyone who has been affected by drugs has the support they need now. In my work life there is a huge problem with the elephant in the room with regards to parenting and drugs, Every case is different the main point and the one posters should take away is that you need to be aware of what your child is doing, have responsibilty. Don't rely on schools, authorities etc to prevent drug dealing/taking/experimentation, it really starts with you

I think that sums it up quite well, Missmelo.

If your children have been damaged by drugs, it's not right to tell other parents of teenagers that there's nothing a parent can do to stop a child taking drugs.

Really the OP is making a plea for something more to be done to save children from drugs. Encouraging parents to abdicate responsibility for their own children is not a good way to achieve that.

If a 12- or 13-year-old child isn't the responsibility of their parents, whose responsibility are they?

Hi Maryz you have suffered from guilt and stigmatisation(and are still suffering) because of your family situation. I see parents everyday and the guilt is palapable, the aching helplessness parents feel when its gotten to a point where they engage services to help them. Every situation is different but what needs to be pointed out for everyone who reads this thread and, it has attracted quite a debate, is that parental responsibility is the first step in preventing drug use in children. As a thirteen year old you are still a child, as a parent you have a responsibilty, I am not saying you actively encouraged your child to use drugs or took a flippant approach, like a lot of parents I see they dont know what to do, it gets too far too fast and there is a feeling of helplessness. Thats why I really am trying to push the notion of parental responsibility with regards children and drugs, its never to early to start, age appropriate awareness, that is meaningful and reaches a childs consiousness. Its so obvious, I'm sure you are all to aware of the detrimental effects of cannabis but I can tell you its scary the amount of parents who do see cannabis as a 'soft' drug...the impact of cannabis on the developing brain can not be for one moment understated.