16 yo Daughter knows of our drug use

[beecee]

Our daughter caught both of us using cocaine about 12 months ago and we now know she also read phone messages where we talked about drug use , very bad parenting we know . She is now at nearly 16 starting to push many of the usual boundaries and has mildly started to reference to what she know as a kind of blackmail/bargaining tool , I'm not sure how to go about this and any help with this would be great .

[daddydaddycool]

So be it, GnomeDePlume.

[GnomeDePlume]

If my children pressed me on whether I had taken illegal drugs myself, I would suggest that it is irrelevant and return to the subject of associated risk

So the plan is to be a mealy mouthed hypocrite. Without the spine to either justify your own actions or admit that you made a mistake. The one time when you might have something useful and interesting to your children and you are planning to wimp out.

would you ever admit to your children that you had cheated on their father if they challenged you up front on the matter

The vast majority of teenagers are entirely uninterested in if not slightly revolted by their parents' sex life. I cant imagine many circumstances where that question would be asked.

[daddydaddycool]

I've 'lost my mojo' mathanxiety, we're getting nowhere. I genuinely wish you only happiness and best wishes for the future.

[mathanxiety]

It seems I have really good bullshit radar too.

[mathanxiety]

The risks are real, and involvement cannot be condoned under any circumstances.

Yet you, the father of two small children, continue to take those risks.

And thank you for confirming my suspicion that you do not in fact have any idea what you ingest or put up your nose.

[mathanxiety]

Thank you for finally admitting that you have in fact used money to 'procure' drugs, and also for pointing out that your friends buy theirs with money. Maybe you can now wind your neck in and drop the outrage over being accused of financial support of misogynistic terrorists.

Presumably you avoid your own inconvenient truths whilst purchasing products from the likes of Nestlé, Monsanto, Amazon, Shell, Tesco, Barclays, Exxon, Walmart, Coca-Cola, Primark etc., the likes of which are deemed to be the least ethical companies in the world?

What you are saying is that there is lots wrong with the world. Your conclusion from that reasonable observation is that you can keep on using illegal and dangerous substances, but it makes no sense from a logical standpoint.
You might even say your list of corporate shame is irrelevant.

However, in the interests of teasing out your logic here, are you suggesting that there is some objective right vs wrong, black vs white distinction that can be made? Clearly if you use the word unethical in the context of corporate greed and abuses as if it really is possible to look at issues with little or no shade of grey to muddle you.

Whether or not you agree that there are any black and white situations in this world of ours, we are left with the fact that using illegal drugs is both a crime and the granddaddy of all unethical choices and hence the fact that the example you are giving your children is indeed, in your own word, a case of 'feeding them a steaming heap of bullshit'.

My children are all aware of their father's extramarital encounters and his fondness for porn, thanks to his own carelessness. The three oldest keep contact with him to the barest minimum now that they are no longer obliged to spend 26 weekends per year with him. None of them appreciated occasionally finding porn on the family computer or the fact that he chose not to install filters so as to enable his porn habit. None of them appreciated being asked to include 'daddy's friend' on days spent with him even before a routine and speedy divorce was finalised. Children have great radar for bullshit and can see bad parenting behaviour for what it is.

And furthermore, it is clear that the ramifications of the drug trade for the unfortunate people living in areas controlled by organised crime, and also the possibility that you yourself might die as a direct result of drug use are very much abstract propositions for you, hence your callous, jovial 'karked it', 'as said cradlee frothes at the mouth', and 'Juarez police officer having his or her cock or tits chopped off'.

For all I know you could be one of the 6.3% of US citizens that is morbidly obese, but that doesn't preclude you (or anyone else who is) from signposting the associated risks of morbid obesity to your/their children, does it?

You keep on asserting that the 'do as I say but not as I do' approach is something that is going to work for children.
(In the case of obesity your analogy falls flat because an obese parent is presumably making terrible food choices and maybe even cooking with lard, so by the time the children can make their own choices they are left with no good example to follow, no knowledge of any other way of eating, and an environment where they are faced with rejecting their parents' way of doing things if they wish to get healthy, plus a lot of excess weight to shed that can lead to hopelessness about their prospects.)
In order to nip in the bud any tangent about my weight, I can assure you I have a healthy BMI of 20.

Your mention of religion serves to contradict your point that all children (including you) make completely independent choices regardless of how their parents behave and regardless of what values their parents have transmitted to them. The vast majority of believers in the organised religions that have withstood the test of time are 'lifers' and their children tend to be lifers too.
I think the fact that you and all your siblings ended up getting involved in drugs and deceit illustrates a significant shortcoming of parenting approach and transmission of values on the part of your parents -- or perhaps they managed to transmit to you a shortsighted and inconsistent set of values that included far too many shades of grey..

(And 'halfwit' again?
Are you twelve?)

Don't you consider it ironic that people who seek to live their lives as ethically and impact-free on wider society as possible (vegan environmentalists for the sake of argument but insert your own defnition) are often derided by wider society as being 'hippies', with all the connotations that being a hippie brings - including a propensity towards the use of controlled substances? But one rule for one...life's full of contradictions beyond your own squeaky clean world, mathaxiety. But you've cosseted your children well.

Again, you deride my parenting approach despite illustrating where your parents' slack example leads, and despite the distinct possibility that your own drug use, and 'heavy nights' and your wife's drinking to the point where she was not fit to take care of the children will have an impact. The sort of impact those habits have is not confined to the hood.

(And I repeat, regarding the very silly habit of making up words and scenarios involving other people's perceptions 'hippie' for the second time on this thread are you twelve?)

[daddydaddycool]

Totally forgot to respond to points around quality of procured material.

I have two very old (non mutual) friends that happen to apply certain standards in order to minimise risk, including buying from trusted sources and quality testing the material themselves to substantiate the trustworthiness of respective sources (its a business transaction at that point, after all). I don't see either of them much these days because neither live in England, but when i do, the relative risk that i might 'kark it' (what do you mean its different in my case...!?) as a result of their respective 'due diligence' is greatly reduced.

[daddydaddycool]

"Does this imply that, let's say eight years ago, you did procure illegal drugs via financial transactions?"

Of course it does, otherwise we wouldn't be having this verbose dialogue. I stated it outright.

"Can you please explain your use of the term tightwad":
I haven't bought drugs for many years but on the few occasions I have used them since, I have been offered them for free. I was sarcastically insinuating that I was miserly because I been offered them for free, whereas in reality it has happened on so few occasions that I'm probably not that miserly after all. For right or wrong it was a throwaway comment which is inconsequential in the grander scheme.

"It is clear that you have in fact used your disposable income at some point to support misogyny and terror and the rule of organisations whose only interest is money and power."

Indeed it is, otherwise we wouldn't be having this verbose dialogue. Presumably you avoid your own inconvenient truths whilst purchasing products from the likes of Nestlé, Monsanto, Amazon, Shell, Tesco, Barclays, Exxon, Walmart, Coca-Cola, Primark etc., the likes of which are deemed to be the least ethical companies in the world? And presumably you wouldn't equally lambast the billions of people world-wide who might use their disposable income at some point to indirectly support the rule of the primary organised religions, which - and let's face facts - aren't exactly averse to the odd foray into misogyny and terror themselves every now and again, and which you surely wouldn't claim to be entirely disinterested in money and power themselves?

Don't you consider it ironic that people who seek to live their lives as ethically and impact-free on wider society as possible (vegan environmentalists for the sake of argument but insert your own defnition) are often derided by wider society as being 'hippies', with all the connotations that being a hippie brings - including a propensity towards the use of controlled substances? But one rule for one...life's full of contradictions beyond your own squeaky clean world, mathaxiety. But you've cosseted your children well.

"I hope your 4 and 6 year old daughters will find that perfectly understandable when they ask wtf you were thinking."

Now this is the first worthwhile statement you have made for quite some time, mathanxiety, and it is worth examining further. I'm not being sarcastic, it's genuinely challenging for me to address.

We've already established a fundamental difference between us that, unlike yourself, if my own children got into trouble for drug use in any way or form, then I would continue to support them unconditionally. But would I outright condemn the use of illegal substances? And what if they ask me whether I have ever taken illegal substances? Here are some basic principles that I will follow:

• I believe that disclosing my drug use to my children could potentially result in them having more positive views about drugs than their peers whose parents don't disclose drug use, even I was describing drug use in a negative context. That a parent may have done something wrong may simply legitimise the action either way, whatever it is. If they did it, why shouldn't I? But does this extend to feeding them a steaming heap of bullshit?
  

• If my children asked me directly if I have taken drugs, I will admit to having been exposed to illegal substance use in my past, and major on the negative aspects. Like yourself, mathanxiety, I know something about the levels of damage drugs can inflict. It doesn't matter if our relative experiences come via reading a story in a newspaper, or having a one-off 'bad trip', or cradling someone's head in one's lap whilst one phones the emergency services as said cradlee frothes at the mouth, or via a Juarez police officer having his or her cock or tits chopped off by a gang member in retribution for an arrest at some conveniently abstract point up the supply chain. The risks are real, and involvement cannot be condoned under any circumstances. In fact my line would be the same if drugs happened to be regulated down the line.
  

• If my children pressed me on whether I had taken illegal drugs myself, I would suggest that it is irrelevant and return to the subject of associated risk. What benefit would it serve to do otherwise?
  

You probably think this is contradictory in the extreme, but let's put it another way. Although precise figures remain elusive, surveys in the UK and the U.S. suggest that between 25 and 70 per cent of women (and 40 and 80 per cent of men; we're nothing if not honest...I'm being flippant, relax...) have engaged in at least one extramarital sexual encounter. If you just so happened to fall somewhere between that 25 and 70 per cent, mathanxiety (and there's a one in four chance that you do at the bare minimum) would you ever admit to your children that you had cheated on their father if they challenged you up front on the matter, unless of course your illicit affairs had already been exposed? Would you fuck ('scuse the pun).

I'm clearly highly 'fortunate' in that, at the ripe old age of 40, none of my drug-taking friends or family have been overtly subjected to the negative aspects of illegal drug use. But I acutely recognise that if my child is exposed to drugs they may not be as lucky as I am, so I won't be selling their benefits any time soon.

Leaving aside our solid upbringings possibly having any effect on our outcomes (and money is irrelevant as I'm sure you would agree), in no way does my experience proclude me from understanding and communicating the broader risks of drug use to my children. For all I know you could be one of the 6.3% of US citizens that is morbidly obese, but that doesn't preclude you (or anyone else who is) from signposting the associated risks of morbid obesity to your/their children, does it?

See, no matter how well (in relative terms) I think I might raise my children, mathanxiety, I happen to know for a FACT that parenting skills form foundations, but they remain foundations and are no panacea. Only an utter halfwit would brag of their superlative parenting skills in total isolation to the pressures of wider society, whether we're talking about drugs or not.

Onwards and upwards indeed.

(and yes, I specifically covered life insurance above).

[mathanxiety]

I do know what procure means, daddycool. That is why I did not claim it meant 'buy'.

I haven't procured illegal drugs via financial transaction in many years - more than seven in fact..
Does this imply that, let's say eight years ago, you did procure illegal drugs via financial transactions?

Can you please explain your use of the term 'tightwad' in the following statement:
the last time that I actually actively sought to procure illegal drugs myself as opposed to being offered them in a social situation (and sometimes accepting the offer, sometimes not), I haven’t got a clue but it’s certainly more than seven years ago (what a fucking tightwad, eh?)

It is clear that you have in fact used your disposable income at some point to support misogyny and terror and the rule of organisations whose only interest is money and power.

I hope your 4 and 6 year old daughters will find that perfectly understandable when they ask wtf you were thinking.

Best case scenario, they will find daddy cool and edgy, and congratulate him for being so balanced that he refuses to accept mainstream opinion about organisations that use acid to the face of girls as a weapon.

Worst case scenario, they won't have a daddy to ask.
...............

Onwards and upwards!

You seem to imply in your second last post on the subject that you nearly always get your drugs from friends and fellow partyers, for the last seven years anyway (that is to say for the entire life of both of your children ):

On the very infrequent occasions that I have acquire illegal drugs, it has been procured for free in social situations in the form of someone offering me odd line of coke, or toke on a joint, or dab of MDMA.

I never actively seek it out but if I am offered it, I either accept the offer or decline it depending on multiple factors; one of which relates to its provenance. 'Trusted sources' clearly do not guarantee the absence of brick dust but surely you get the gist of this point in relative terms. I maintain that I don't procure illegal drugs every now and again from a random dodgy bloke down a dark alley.

...but yet in your your response upthread to the poster who inquired about how sure you are that your illegal drugs were guaranteed as to purity you said:

[Comment from poster: but you'd still prefer to place you life at risk by taking something you have absolutely no certainty where it came from, what's in it, what it's been cut with or what effects it will have on you.]

Response from Daddycool: 'Once every few years from a source that (truly) tests purity/contamination levels? This isn't akin to a scenario of buying random shit from some ne'er do well down some dark alley.'

Can you please clarify how you can be sure that the drugs you accept at parties are from 'a source that (truly) tests purity/contamination levels'?

And then can you please clarify how the certainly that your source --
(truly) tests purity/contamination levels
has now been modified to --
'Trusted sources' clearly do not guarantee the absence of brick dust

It seems to me it is reasonable to infer that -
(1) that you must really, really trust your friends (I say 'friends' but actually your term was 'someone') when you are effectively putting your life in other peoples' hands.
And -
(2) you can't be really sure what it is that you snort or ingest at all...

Bearing in mind that you are the father of two little girls, and you may or may not have life insurance, and whose (granted, assumed) life insurance may or may not pay out if you die from dodgy coke -- to be blunt, I don't think what you do is all that remote from the scenario of buying 'random shit in a dark alley'.

(Since I have for a long time been assuming that you have life insurance despite no indication whatsoever from you that you have, I expect to be rapped over the knuckles for my presumptuousness any minute now.)

[daddydaddycool]

I missed your final two comments, mathaxiety - 'my bad' given that they carried the most significance out of anything you had previously said.

"As seen, the remarks about accepting offers of free drugs from fellow partyers imply a distinction between free vs bought."

Let's use cocaine as an example. People will buy cocaine whether I accept their free offer of a line or not. Clearly, if I do partake then I'm indirectly contributing to the continuation of "a horrible industry that destroys lives". Leaving aside the fact that it's arguably an even more horrible industry that destroys lives BECAUSE it is illegal...I don't financially support the industry because I never buy it, nor do I offer it to others (thereby leading to potential addiction) because I never buy it. When did I last take cocaine, mathaxiety? A long time ago. When did I last buy it? 15 years ago at a guess. When did I last argue its benefit in any way or form? Never.

"Have you found out whether your life insurance policy pays out in case of drug related death?"

I've looked into it and indeed, my life insurance is one of the more progressive policies that may well subject me to a random urine test for drug use.

Did I knowingly ingest any illegal drugs in the previous twelve months before they posed me the original question? No. I didn't have to lie. And would I be willing to undertake a future random urine test? Yes.

[IfNotNowThenWhen]

Well. My Dad was a pretty prolific drug user in his youth, and smoked dope every day for 40 years. I knew that he had taken mescalin, acid, mushrooms, coke yad yada from being quite young. When I was about 19 he asked me to get him some E cos he fancied trying it (I said no)
For this reason drugs don't impress me, and I am not about older people doing drugs (although I have strong political aversion to coke).
I think you say "we did a stupid thing, and we won't be doing it again." then you educate her on the harm that hard drugs do, and tell her that, while you have been foolish, she cant blackmail you, as you are, actually still her parents, and you want her to be safe.
And mean it. Please don't take cocaine, really. It's a horrible industry that destroys lives, least of all yours.

[daddydaddycool]

Your incessant nonsense is why you ruffle my feathers, mathanxiety.

"It stretches credulity to suggest that you do not pay actual money for your drugs, ever. What is in it for your amazing, conscientious source if not money? There has been not one peep from you over the course of many pages to refute the idea that you buy drugs with money or to clarify how you manage to 'procure' drugs without using money."

You have written nearly 450 words on the subject of the definition of procurement without actually knowing what the verb 'to procure' actually means. Look it up, mathanxiety, and please find me one example where it is directed related to financial transaction. It means to 'acquire' or 'obtain'. Money is irrelevant.

Every time I refute one of your myriad presuppositions, you hone in on irrelevant minutiae and look for weaknesses in my argument. But in the vain hope of finally putting your misguided pedantry to bed:

Like I said, I haven't procured illegal drugs via financial transaction in many years - more than seven in fact because I have a fixed reference point (wife's young cousin from whom I procured some weed, via the sharing of a joint, remember?). On the very infrequent occasions that I have acquire illegal drugs, it has been procured for free in social situations in the form of someone offering me odd line of coke, or toke on a joint, or dab of MDMA.

I never actively seek it out but if I am offered it, I either accept the offer or decline it depending on multiple factors; one of which relates to its provenance. 'Trusted sources' clearly do not guarantee the absence of brick dust but surely you get the gist of this point in relative terms. I maintain that I don't procure illegal drugs every now and again from a random dodgy bloke down a dark alley. Hundreds of thousands if not millions of people do, and the risk of procuring (and in this case buying or maybe providing a blowjob (hi Mumoftwoyoungkids)) something more dangerous, or at the very least of lower quality, undoubtedly increases. Does it not?

If my usage was more frequent, I would have nothing to lose in telling you. If I bought a gram of coke last week, and the week before that, etc. I would say so because I'm tarred and feathered either way. In fact I'd go as far as to suggest that the more frequent the use I admitted to, the less I'd be tarred and feathered. You couldn't possibly admit it but I'd wager that you're annoyed I don't fit your archetypal profile of an illegal drug user, and you're probably even more annoyed that I don't condone illegal drug use. Drugs can cause irreparable damage to individuals and those around them, but one-dimensional lynch mobs aren't really my thing, ta very much.

[GnomeDePlume]

Teenagers recognise the cant and hypocrisy of their parents. A parent who is less than honest about their illegal drug taking rightly earns the contempt of their offspring.

The parent either has to justify their illegal drug taking or they have to admit to their teenage children that they were stupid. Either way they have to admit that they were criminal.

I am not sure how as a parent of teenagers I would handle the ambiguity of saying that you must obey this law but it is okay to break that law. Will my teenagers respect my judgement on which laws need to be obeyed and which dont? Also if I have said that it is okay to break a law how do I teach my teenagers to handle the consequences if I or they get caught?

Perhaps I just lack the necessary imagination or my habitual obeying of the law is just lazy parenting. Who knew?

[mathanxiety]

I don't know why you are getting your feathers ruffled at this late stage of the thread over whether you buy or barter or receive drugs as gifts or in payment for previous massive favours rendered.

It stretches credulity to suggest that you do not pay actual money for your drugs, ever. What is in it for your amazing, conscientious source if not money?

You have mentioned I believe three times how you 'procure' drugs from a source who tests for purity/contamination and who does not operate in some dark alley, and you have mentioned that you sometimes do and sometimes don't accept offers of (free?) drugs in social situations, with a clear distinction being made between accepting offers in a social situation and actively seeking to 'procure' from your dealer who is well known to you.

Here are two examples of 'procure':
*Comment from poster: "but you'd still prefer to place you life at risk by taking something you have absolutely no certainty where it came from, what's in it, what it's been cut with or what effects it will have on you."
-Comment from Daddycool: 'Once every few years from a source that (truly) tests purity/contamination levels? This isn't akin to a scenario of buying random shit from some ne'er do well down some dark alley.'

[Here you use 'buying' as if a transaction using currency is implied in both scenarios. 'Random shit' is the emphasised element here.]

*the last time that I actually actively sought to procure illegal drugs myself as opposed to being offered them in a social situation (and sometimes accepting the offer, sometimes not), I haven’t got a clue but it’s certainly more than seven years ago (what a fucking tightwad, eh?).

Tightwad means someone unwilling to part with money, a mean or miserly person. Accepting offers 'as opposed to' procuring illegal drugs implies the offers are for free drugs and the procuring is a transaction involving money.

In addition, I have used the phrases 'buy drugs' and 'buying drugs' several times in posts addressed to you over the course of many days, and I and other posters have alluded to the ultimate destination of funds involved in the trade, i.e. every single transaction included therein. You yourself have posted about the international drug trade and cited money laundering, etc. as aspects of it.

There has been not one peep from you over the course of many pages to refute the idea that you buy drugs with money or to clarify how you manage to 'procure' drugs without using money.

As seen, the remarks about accepting offers of free drugs from fellow partyers imply a distinction between free vs bought.
...............

'Of course (and whether you believe it or not- I sincerely doubt it) like your own, my number one priority is the safekeeping of my family, both now and in the future.'
Have you found out whether your life insurance policy pays out in case of drug related death?

[Mumoftwoyoungkids]

I will ask the same question again, mathanxiety, because your response is laughable. Again, how or where did I suggest that I spend any of my disposable income on cocaine or ectsasy?

Well - how else do you get it if you don't buy it? Do you give the dealer a blow job?

[daddydaddycool]

GnomeDePlume - what is YOUR ultimate point?

[daddydaddycool]

I will ask the same question again, mathanxiety, because your response is laughable. Again, how or where did I suggest that I spend any of my disposable income on cocaine or ectsasy?

Go on. Give it a decent shot at least.

[GarlicAugustus]

He hasn't said he spent family money on them I never used to buy my own drugs.

[GnomeDePlume]

Sorry daddydaddycool, no, you arent making sense. My comment was in reply to bringbacksideburns. You arent the only other poster on this thread.

[mathanxiety]

Daddydaddycool:

"I wonder how you as a father of two girls (iirc) can choose to use your disposable income for cocaine or ecstasy"
How or where did I suggest that I spend any of my disposable income on cocaine or ectsasy? -- you ask...

So here are your own words:
My own example: I spent a significant proportion of recreational time in my late teens and early 20's 'using' (yawn...) cannabis, MDMA, acid, cocaine (in decreasing order) then went about my daily business successfully. I kept it proportionate because I came from a solid family background and required no secondary emotional outlet, other than what we youth simply did in the early 90s then.

Since then, I have occasionally dabbled but in terms of years rather than months or weeks, e.g. I went to a party last July (2013) and had a few spliffs and lines of coke along with beer and red wine. Sure, it was a heavy night but my wife (we're now 40 with two DDs) who doesn't partake but had plenty of booze, was a mess the next day so I looked after the kids, relatively happily. Then nothing until May this year when I took two ecstasy pills in a club with old friends (fantastic fun!) but haven't hankered after them since.

I stand corrected.
There is in addition to cocaine and ecstasy acid and pot.

And look what the tide brought in!
we're now 40 with two DDs
Good to have that clarified.

[daddydaddycool]

GnomeDePlume - either look back at what I have said and take it into account either way, or continue with your own unrelated insinuations. You just seem to make random statements that bear no relation to the discussion.

Does that make sense?

[GarlicAugustus]

Good grief, this is a strange thread!

I realise OP's buggered off, but I couldn't see what the problem was to start with and still can't. Sixteen-year-old discovers parents are imperfect human beings. World rocks for a nanosecond. That's all, folks, come back next week.

As for the numerous posters treating recreational cocaine abuse as if it were indistinguishable from terminal meth addiction ... well

[GnomeDePlume]

sorry daddydaddycool you arent making sense

[daddydaddycool]

GnomeDePlume - you're uncertain of your own argument and piggyback others who appear to maintain the consensus. Forge your own path.