Julie Myerson - why am I not surprised that a book has materialised concerning her own son's drug issues?

[glasjam]

Read this is in today's Observer www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/mar/01/julie-myerson-novel-drug-addiction

Does anyone else have the uncomfortable feeling that I have on learning that she is writing about her son's drug problems? I know that writers often mine their own personal experiences for material but I think she's putting her literary endeavours ahead of her son here. From what I can gather, he is still young, his drug issues are ongoing, and although he is out of the family home, surely this is risking any possible future reconcilliation? I also baulk at the way she "weaves historical research about Yelloly with her disturbing account of her son's ejection from the family home" It just smacks of middle-class-writer angst.

My cynicism is further fuelled by my very strong suspicion that Julie Myerson is the author of Living with Teenagers - but that's another story...

She says he thumped her but she's not exactly a reliable witness. Maybe he did, maybe he was an horrendous teenager but still doesn't excuse her offering up her version of the worst bits of his life for public consumption.

Yes, there is a "connection" between cannabis and psychosis (i.e. a higher number of cannabis users turn out psychotic) but whether that connection is causation or correlation is debatable - possibly, people with psychotic tendencies like the effects of cannabis at higher numbers.

Besides, smoking weed hardly turns you into an aggressive mum-beater. If anything, quite the opposite - you tend to vegetate on the couch and watch crap tv for hours on end.

MMJ -- some people do, but (a) it's anonymous (b) it isn't exactly the sunday papers and (c) we're not getting paid for it.

There are plenty of jobs young Mr Myerson could do in which his notoriety is a bonus.
Expect him to turn up on some celebrity reality show...

"if someone came on here nad posted that their child was smoking drugs all the time, had stopped going to school, was violent towards us, was stealing from us-what would the reaction be? would everyone say 'god stop being so crazy-all the lad is doing is enjoying a few spliffs'???"

No, of course they wouldn't. But if the same person used their child's real name and posted copies of the thread to his friends, school and future employers then we would all say "good god woman what are you doing?"

Of course it's not wrong to talk about or even write about traumatic family situations - but selling your child's dirty laundry to the highest bidder is rasther different to an anon thread on mumsnet.

Thank you for that post, janitor.

I dabbled in drugs and my brothers became low life addicts.
Yet we came from a comfortable middle class background. My parents made lots of mistakes in how they raised us, but I definitely DON'T think it was their fault that my brothers became addicts. Much more complicated reasons for that.

All I can think is that I suspect JM has been no worse than an average parent. Maybe she could have done a lot better, but her son getting into drugs and becoming impossible to live with is something that could happen to anybody.

Writing the book about it all is different, I don't know what I think of that.

My only fear is that she did write LwT too, because I loved that column.

I think it has been generally agreed that he is/was a pretty horrendous teenager, as teenagers tend to be.

It's the mother's (and father's) reaction to his behaviour and the cause of him smoking dope from a very young age that most people have been discussing.

I also wonder if writing this book is exactly the right thing to do.
JM has thrown down the gauntlent to her son -- he has the chance to prove her wrong, now. Maybe that's exactly what he needs to stay on the straight 'n' narrow.

It's all anonymous on MN.

Very big difference.

And we don't get paid by a publisher either!

'Besides, smoking weed hardly turns you into an aggressive mum-beater. If anything, quite the opposite - you tend to vegetate on the couch and watch crap tv for hours on end.'

With respect, this just isn't my experience of teenage boys and skunk - not weed, as some of you might remember it from your youth. Yes, it saps motivation and steals focus. But it absolutely goes with aggression, theft, and unbelievably anti-social behaviour if access to skunk (or whatever else the user wants) is threatened.

You really need tro live with a daily skunk user to believe its effects. Everything JM writes about it totally believable to me - no hyperbole to my ears.

mmj makes a fair point about families and drug use - blaming the mother (however misguided she may be) for the son's drug addiction is unfair. Suuport for the families of addicts is pretty much non-existent and it's a grim situation to be in. Reminds me a bit of the doctors who blame anorexia on over-anxious mums...

I would bet - in fact I know - that the reaction is different if the family (esp the mother) isn't middle class.

The boy says that violent incident was 50/50 on both sides but who knows as we weren't there.

It's very sexist she changed her name to his and not vice versa.

So they live in sin, she took drugs in her past and she sent him to a state schools. If they were properly married, she'd never taken drugs and sent him to a private school would it have been different? is it all because neither of them earn much money so she has to try to make money via these books. If she had a decent career earning enough mnoey to pay school fees etc may be they wouldn't be in such a mess. Become a journalist at your peril. The money isn't very good.

But yes we weren't there and it could have been much worse than it seems.

The boy says his parents were getting on so very badly, dreadful rows etc at 12 his life was a misery. That may well be true.

I don't think he's a 'normal' teenager.

I think he's probably a very unhappy boy with a lot of underlying problems which are being masked by the agressive behaviour (which stems from the skunk taking). I feel sorry for him.

I smoked skunk, so did many people I know.

None of us turned aggressive and we certainly didn't beat up our mums.

Skunk is more potent than regular cannabis but it's not that different.

you are right about one thing, Xenia, journalism is not terribly well-paid (although big name columnists don't do too badly). And Myerson's not exactly at the sharp end of journalism - doesn't actually have to do any research or conduct any interviews for her pieces. Or even tell the people she quotes that she's publishing their words...

Well, I don't think this thread should turn into a discussion of skunk vs pot so I won't bang on!

But daily, heavy use is very different to casual smoking (which lots of us have done, and which a certain type of teenage boy seems incapable of doing!). And a fair few of us on this thread have lived (as siblings) with these users, and they are unbearable. As well as deeply troubled and deserving of pity of course. But they poison a home - that's the only way to describe it.

Most of our parents didn't throw them out of course, which was an act made up of half of the unconditional love of parents, and half of cowardice.

Downplaying what it must have been like to live with Jake means you've not lived with anyone like that, and as I said, from a middle class teenage boy....it sounds completely believable to me.

But I still think she shouldn't have published a book about it!

At rather a tangent I was amazed to see Yasmin Alibhai Brown finding a way to use this whole saga to plug her forthcoming book. Staggering.

What I was trying to say is: I don't doubt that he was a very difficult teenager. But I do doubt that these problems were caused by smoking spliffs.

It sounds like there were much more important issues in this family, which are far more likely to have caused the boy's violent outbreaks.

I sure the formulation and development of his problems was multi-factorial BUT I'm afraid I disagree Cote D'Azur skunk is a horrible drug, I and all teh young peoples drugs workers I know hate it, violence ralated to mood swings, paranoia and psychosis is a reality. As is the behaviour of someone when they're denied access to it.

The young men I worked with on a secure unit and now in the community who pose a risk, I would say 70% of them have a pre-occupation if not an obsession with skunk and a rather boring, deluded narcissistic tendency to justify it's "medicinal" and "harmless" properties if I'm honest, the usual abdication of any personal responsibility that you hear with a lot of addicts, along with the lies, the deception etc.

I don't agree with her airing of her dirty laundry by any means, but please please do not minimise the effect of this problem on a family and wider society.