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...

My family has a genetic predisposition to addiction going back generations. My mother was one of four, two of whom were alcoholics. I am one of four and two of my siblings have been habitual drug users. Going back further and there is anecdotal evidence of a similar pattern.

We all had a very happy childhood and stable family life. Two of us became addicts and the other two have never smoked a cigarette, tried dope or drunk excessively.

V. interesting thread, btw. It is good to get the views of those working with addicts. Though I feel happier now we've moved away from criticising the Meyersons.

I'm not ascribing "all behaviour to genetics". The fact is though my mother and father never drank to excess, never smoked were happily married and our childhood was stable and happy. Two of my brothers became addicts and the other two of us didn't. It's hard to see how in our case "behaviour patterns had an influence" in terms of addiction.

But is cannabis addictve in the medical sense? I didn't think it was - unlike alcohol, nicotine, heroin etc where you crave a fix as the concentration in your blood system decreases and if you are addicted and don't have that fix you experience physical withdrawal symptoms. Cannabis is often used by people with pychological problems as a means of blocking out unwanted feelings - a form of self-medicating. A symptom of the real problem as opposed to the cause.

Dittany, I'm not making any claim "simplistic" or otherwise. I'm simply relating my own experience in which it would seem that the addiction owed more to genetic factors than anything else given we had a very happy, stable childhood with no addictive behaviour in the household.

I think the term 'addictive' is used as if it is a perfectly scientific word but of course it describes something that is particular in every case. Some generalisations can be made but each addiction is, strictly speaking, unique imo and ime.

I feel some sadness for this family's crisis but if you look at both parents' public statements and their son's and add it to her sister's in the daily mail today you get a pretty dysfunctional picture. A picture that, to my mind, describes a situation caused by far more than cannabis! It's a family crisis for sure. But all the parents are doing here is exposing the family when they should be protected their children's privacy and doing the much much harder work of addressing these issues in private.

It's not appropriate to write a book like this. It's a betrayal of the parental role. But it seems they are in such profound denial that they're justifying this huge spectacle. In a way the fuss they're making indicates how much suffering is going on and to what extent they're in flight from that. Just my opinion.

LadyGlencoraP: yes!

DD would have started there in September if we hadn't moved house. I used to take the children to the playground opposite its back gate when they finished school (they were at the next door primary) and it was literally crawling with drug dealers from 3pm on, targeting the secondary school kids. I saw two armed police raids in the playground in the three months before we left.

Though I am aware that secondary school children (of all sectors) are a target for the all-too-common drug dealers.

Jonathan Myerson

Was this the real reason Jake got kicked out?

parents with no boundaries re:privacy, it's all wrong for their kids.

Having a father with that hair would have driven me to drugs as a teen.

I imagine Jonathon Myerson's dilemma and soul searching has been felt by millions and millions of parents of teenagers. MN posters have called the police and tried to get them to speak to weed-smoking sons, others have taken a 'let them get on with it and grow out of it' stance.

Bet many MN-ers would have a right pop if they were lobbying their local councillor about graf and then found that his sin was conducting his very own graf campaign - however worthy!

I was actually at that commission meeting that Jonathon Myerson describes. He struck me as a nice, caring, thoughtful man.

Sometimes parents make a really good fist of trying and just get it wrong. It's hard to know - especially with an eldest child, surely?

Can we not see the Myerson's family crisis as one that could be going on in any of our homes? It went wrong.....how can we analyse the possible, potential and multiple causes and assume with confidence that we would get it exactly right?

I agree with you Blu, excellent post. Whilst I would never in a million years publish anything about my family, I feel pretty uncomfortable that so many people seem to lay the blame for the son's addiction firmly at the parent's feet.

Fascinating thread which I will have no chance of reading fully while baby asleep, but am a right in reading that an earlier poster (Blu I think) ascribes the source of the drugs problem to... South London?? Isn't this a bit of a generalisation? I thought drugs happened all over the country and in my experience are very prevalent in private schools.

Other than that I agree with Xenia's posts about needing to accept teenagers for who they are and weather the storm, although my own children are much younger than this thank goodness.

Crossed post with Blu and very much agree with your recent post. It sounds like there is fault on both sides. For example, at one time Jonathan seemingly starting a fist fight with his own son and then another time Jake punching his mother in her ear.

I would be interested to hear the other siblings' views on everything as they would probably be the most reliable sources (but maybe they have had their fill of the media).

I think Xenia's point about seeing it through with teenagers is good too.

A relative of mine spent his teenage years smoking dope, drinking and lying in bed all day. He was a virtual recluse, obsessively playing computer games and verbally abusive to his mother and father. He is now 26 and still at home and still has a bit of a drink problem.

A year ago he was diagnosed with aspergers. His mother was tempted to throw him out a few years ago. thank God she didn't as he would never have coped.

But what about the other children in the family?

But much of that blame is because they have both - well, her mostly - been so SMUG and APPALLING in writing about the kids earlier. If my mum had written about my lurve for the family doggie when I was seven, I'd have been on smack not skunk by my teens.

Quite, MI.

You are all being far too reasonable. Mark my words, the key to all of this is in the father's hair.

Also, Jonathan M's argument in today's Guardian is that this is a work of crusading, investigative journalism revealing the skunk epidemic, and that all opposition to it is founded on a misunderstanding of skunk and its effects.

Rubbish; it's a personal, individual account. Yes, I've only read extracts; but none of those extracts touch on the services, the knowledge and the specialist input that exists for dealing with young people with drug problems. (There is a support group but that seems to be about it.) And the opposition is, obviously, about the personal stuff again.

Just read that Jonathan Myerson link. Glad to see his son's graffiti was nice 'tasteful' graffiti, a cut above normal graffiti....