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Substance Abuse
The difficulties of detachment
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<blockquote data-quote="Calamity Jane" data-source="post: 523564" data-attributes="member: 13882"><p>I think there's something to be said for how much we and our contemporaries "invest" in our children, as opposed to the level of involvement our parents had in our lives. Not that I would change a thing. Speaking in generalities, I believe my parents and my friends and relatives' parents were far less <em>interested </em>in what we were doing, particularly once we reached 18, as long as we weren't sponging off of them! They cut the strings, and we sort of naturally and healthily detached from each other. Of course, we all knew of some hard-core problem kids, who ended up in jail, or sadly, died. There were no RTCs, or SA treatment centers that I even knew about - maybe they were there for rich people, (like the Kennedy's lol) but it was out of the question for people like us. Maybe there was a stigma about going to AA or NA, and none of the kids I knew who were messed up went to meetings, and I definitely don't think their parents did, either. So we either had to straighten up and get wise, or die, or go to jail, or panhandle. Most of us chose to straighten up. Consequences hit us sooner because no one offered anything to us if we crossed that line. Don't get me wrong, our parents DID love us, and they showed it, but if we would've done half the things our kids do, our parents would have disowned us, and we would have deserved to be disowned. Our folks sure wouldn't have chased and begged, and pleaded the way husband and I have done. They wouldn't have paid out of pocket for shrinks, etc. like we have. It's difficult to know if we were better off without a safety net, and without our parents helicoptering over us, or if kids our age who were <em>really </em>troubled would've been helped by a program that's offered today. I don't know, but I think when kids don't want to listen, they just won't...and when they want to do what they want to do...they will - no matter how interested or disinterested the parent is. From a teen perspective, parents are irrelevant. It's part luck, and part catching it before they're legally adults so we have some sort of influence. Meetings and a forum like this can be a lifeline - years ago, you probably would have suffered in silence and shame. Sure, substance abuse doesn't occur in a vacuum; there's depression and personality disorders, and trauma and other issues that trigger use, and those things weren't even diagnosed then, so people certainly suffered. But a lot of people just hung out, got wasted, and fell into a habit because they were dumb and that's what they liked to do. Their brain cells evaporated, little by little, and it was very hard to get out of that routine. If you want to be a fool, who's going to stop you? There are now more things available as far as treatment, intervention, DBT, wilderness, etc., but I wonder if there are more substance abusers now than there were when we were their age?</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Calamity Jane, post: 523564, member: 13882"] I think there's something to be said for how much we and our contemporaries "invest" in our children, as opposed to the level of involvement our parents had in our lives. Not that I would change a thing. Speaking in generalities, I believe my parents and my friends and relatives' parents were far less [I]interested [/I]in what we were doing, particularly once we reached 18, as long as we weren't sponging off of them! They cut the strings, and we sort of naturally and healthily detached from each other. Of course, we all knew of some hard-core problem kids, who ended up in jail, or sadly, died. There were no RTCs, or SA treatment centers that I even knew about - maybe they were there for rich people, (like the Kennedy's lol) but it was out of the question for people like us. Maybe there was a stigma about going to AA or NA, and none of the kids I knew who were messed up went to meetings, and I definitely don't think their parents did, either. So we either had to straighten up and get wise, or die, or go to jail, or panhandle. Most of us chose to straighten up. Consequences hit us sooner because no one offered anything to us if we crossed that line. Don't get me wrong, our parents DID love us, and they showed it, but if we would've done half the things our kids do, our parents would have disowned us, and we would have deserved to be disowned. Our folks sure wouldn't have chased and begged, and pleaded the way husband and I have done. They wouldn't have paid out of pocket for shrinks, etc. like we have. It's difficult to know if we were better off without a safety net, and without our parents helicoptering over us, or if kids our age who were [I]really [/I]troubled would've been helped by a program that's offered today. I don't know, but I think when kids don't want to listen, they just won't...and when they want to do what they want to do...they will - no matter how interested or disinterested the parent is. From a teen perspective, parents are irrelevant. It's part luck, and part catching it before they're legally adults so we have some sort of influence. Meetings and a forum like this can be a lifeline - years ago, you probably would have suffered in silence and shame. Sure, substance abuse doesn't occur in a vacuum; there's depression and personality disorders, and trauma and other issues that trigger use, and those things weren't even diagnosed then, so people certainly suffered. But a lot of people just hung out, got wasted, and fell into a habit because they were dumb and that's what they liked to do. Their brain cells evaporated, little by little, and it was very hard to get out of that routine. If you want to be a fool, who's going to stop you? There are now more things available as far as treatment, intervention, DBT, wilderness, etc., but I wonder if there are more substance abusers now than there were when we were their age? [/QUOTE]
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