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Article published Oct 19, 2009 Knowledge on the part of parents, teens is crucial
I remember the attitude my parents had toward my drinking as a teen.
It wasn't outright approval, but it didn't set off any alarm bells, either. For the most part, they begrudgingly viewed it as a rite of passage -- something all young people go through during their late teens and early 20s as both a form of rebellion and an assertion of adulthood.
Before I go any further, let me be clear -- I don't blame my addiction on my parents. Their attitudes toward drinking, which reflected those of the majority of my friends, had nothing to do with my decision to drink -- a decision that would eventually lead to drug use, abuse and addiction.
I made the choices that earned me a seat in the rooms of recovery; the consequences of those choices are mine alone to pick up. I can't point the finger at anyone and say, "You made me this way. You made me do this."
No one can "make" me use drugs or drink alcohol. Beer doesn't leap out of the convenience store cooler into our arms; drug dealers aren't lurking in the bushes waiting to pounce and shove a drug down our throats. We seek out those mood-changing, mind-altering chemicals; we ingest them; we alone pick up the tabs for those actions.
That said, there's still a huge gap between what teens do and what their parents are aware and approve of. My father bought me beer for a New Year's Eve party my freshman year of college; it was at the home of a friend with whom I'd gone to high school, and many of those in attendance were there with the OK of their folks.
None of us, however, were of legal drinking age. Our parents rationalized that as long as we were someplace safe and relatively supervised, that we wouldn't be a danger to others, or at least not as big of a danger if we had been sneaking around and driving the roads.
In other words, my parents knew that I was drinking; they just didn't realize how quickly or to what degree it grew out of hand. They didn't see the weekend nights away at college, when I passed out after being carried back to the dorm room by friends. They didn't know about the nights I staggered all over town in a stupor, barely able to put one foot in front of the other.
And I wasn't the only one -- the social life at the college I attended consisted of fraternity parties on the weekend that usually ended in fights, vomiting and promiscuity. That's pretty much the college experience for everyone, but some of those who partake -- like myself -- don't grow out of it.
At some point, the partying gets old. The string of one-night stands gets tiresome. The awful, pounding headaches and nausea of hangovers gets to be too much to endure. At that point, most college students grow up and go on to become responsible, productive members of society.
Others of us, however, continue on a downward spiral. At some point, we had crossed an invisible line, and alcohol and drugs were no longer tools of recreation -- they had become coping mechanisms. Our brains were already becoming rewired to depend on them for pleasure, relaxation and physical/mental/emotional well-being. We had to have our drugs and alcohol, and over time we had to have more powerful drugs and have them more often.
That's the message I try to impart to young people when I talk to them about drugs -- not so much that drugs and alcohol are evil, because that's about as effective as the "Just Say No" program was in the 1980s. Telling young people that something is a forbidden fruit only entices them even more.
Instead, I try to tell them that the choices they make will affect them for the rest of their lives. I didn't sit around as a teenager thinking, "Man, I think I'll be a drug addict when I get older." But because I made choices to try those drugs, they sank their claws into me in a way I never anticipated or expected. I didn't think I had any predilection toward being an addict; there's no history of it in my family -- but once I introduced drugs into my system, that switch was flipped and the race is on.
Choices -- parents have them, teens have them, addicts have them. That's what recovery is all about -- making the right choices and embracing the power of choice. On Oct. 27, the Substance Abuse Prevention Action Team -- part of the Blount County Community Health Initiative that gets funding from the Blount Memorial Foundation and Community Outreach through grants -- will hold an expert panel presentation and question-and-answer session about modern-day drug use,
It takes place from 7:30-11:30 a.m. at the Knoxville Airport Hilton in Alcoa. If you'd like to register to attend, contact the Blount Memorial Foundation and Community Outreach at 977-5727 by Tuesday.
The National Guard Drug Task Force will host guided tours of their trailer and a demonstration of an "on-the-spot" substance abuse test, and parents who attend the event will get a substance abuse test to take home. More than anything else, however, they'll get information and maybe even a new understanding of addiction and how it can happen to anyone.
Steve Wildsmith is a recovering addict and the Weekend editor at The Daily Times. Contact him at steve.wildsmith@thedailytimes.com or at 981-1144.