My Perception of Drugs as a Child

[Asparagus_Prince]

Dude, it's almost scary how similar our stories are.

Raised Christian and now atheist. Check. Sheltered from fun stuff by conservative parents. Check. Moved far away for college. Check. First smoked weed at 19. Yep, me too. On my 19th birthday, in fact. Experimented with lots of drugs after that but it never became a problem. Check.

One difference is that I wasn't too upset with my parents. I never really thought of it as lying, rather they were just doing what they thought was right.

 

[Nas47]

I want to know if anyone relates to this.

When I was a child/teen I thought that if someone tried drugs one time, it is possible they could be addicted straight away. If they come back and use it a second time, they are probably going to be addicted. And if they use a third time, ding-dong it's over. You're almost certainly addicted and spiraling out of control. And the only thing that could be done is to get chained to a bed until the withdrawals are over.

I work with addicts through my line of work, and I know I've shared this with quite a few of them. No one has ever acted like they relate. Surely I'm not the only one? Anyone here know exactly what I'm talking about?

It bugs me not knowing why I visualized it that way. Was I told this by adults in my life? Did I get it from the "Just Say No" generation I was living in? Or was I just a child with a little bit of his own imagination?

Not remember even heard about drugs in my childhood.than was socialism.a few addicts in bigger cities.All i remember was that alcohol was integral part of any meeting and on evenings too.The elders drank and we-the children was playing and running below the table.Joyful

 

[dalpat077]

I want to know if anyone relates to this.

When I was a child/teen I thought that if someone tried drugs one time, it is possible they could be addicted straight away. If they come back and use it a second time, they are probably going to be addicted. And if they use a third time, ding-dong it's over. You're almost certainly addicted and spiraling out of control. And the only thing that could be done is to get chained to a bed until the withdrawals are over.

I work with addicts through my line of work, and I know I've shared this with quite a few of them. No one has ever acted like they relate. Surely I'm not the only one? Anyone here know exactly what I'm talking about?

It bugs me not knowing why I visualized it that way. Was I told this by adults in my life? Did I get it from the "Just Say No" generation I was living in? Or was I just a child with a little bit of his own imagination?

You're not the only one so don't feel that you are the outlier.

I would make the same argument about religion to be honest i.e. if you've been brought up in a religious household it is incredibly difficult to shed yourself of the bullshit and indoctrination and realize just how ridiculous the fairy tales are.

Actually there was a school of thought some time ago that all this bullshit about Santa and the Tooth Fairies is fucking wrong too. For the exact same simple reason i.e. the two people that you trust most in life as a child (in most cases) would be/should be/could be your parents. Only to then find that they've been lying through their teeth and making up stories for the most part of your childhood (the formative years). So the logic goes: how the fuck do you then trust anything that comes thereafter? I used to scoff at the argument but in hindsight maybe the laugh is on me.

Then again: there's no way of knowing (that I'm aware of) on just how many these scare tactics actually did work for. Maybe things could have turned out a LOT worse. Dunno. Just an observation and thought.

The fear tactics actually do work.

They actually do. I can tell you right now it's the single reason that to this day I've never tried Heroin. Who the fuck knows where that could have led to some years back? Mind you: I was told the same bullshit about Cocaine. And that didn't stop me! Didn't even give me reason to pause for a minute over a ten to fifteen year period. And of course: there's no shortage of warning signs and disclaimers when it comes to Fentanyl. And that has not stopped me from experimentation either (but then it's more me being a dumb fuck and trying to prove a point I guess) (but this is right up there with curiosity killed the cat and the Darwin Awards).

 

[Xorkoth]

I want to know if anyone relates to this.

When I was a child/teen I thought that if someone tried drugs one time, it is possible they could be addicted straight away. If they come back and use it a second time, they are probably going to be addicted. And if they use a third time, ding-dong it's over. You're almost certainly addicted and spiraling out of control. And the only thing that could be done is to get chained to a bed until the withdrawals are over.

I work with addicts through my line of work, and I know I've shared this with quite a few of them. No one has ever acted like they relate. Surely I'm not the only one? Anyone here know exactly what I'm talking about?

It bugs me not knowing why I visualized it that way. Was I told this by adults in my life? Did I get it from the "Just Say No" generation I was living in? Or was I just a child with a little bit of his own imagination?

I was the same way. I had no exposure to drugs whatsoever until I was 16/17 years old, so I just believed DARE class. I used to think about drug users as almost like a different sort of person... a CRIMINAL. I couldn't understand why someone would take drugs when it could kill you the first time and you'd end up addicted. It just made no sense to me. I assumed anyone who did drugs was an idiot. I now know all sorts of my peers were doing drugs but I had no idea and I would have been shocked to find out. It wasn't until I made a friend at the grocery store I worked at and found out he smoked weed, that I realized, hey, maybe regular people do drugs. He was cool so I must have been wrong. Then I got curious. Once I tried weed and LOVED it, I figured everything I had been told was a lie and I started to do whatever drugs I came across. Which was a bad idea.

Moral of the story: Just Say No doesn't work, it's best to be honest with kids about drugs.

 

[Jerry Atrick]

Dude, it's almost scary how similar our stories are.

Raised Christian and now atheist. Check. Sheltered from fun stuff by conservative parents. Check. Moved far away for college. Check. First smoked weed at 19. Yep, me too. On my 19th birthday, in fact. Experimented with lots of drugs after that but it never became a problem. Check.

One difference is that I wasn't too upset with my parents. I never really thought of it as lying, rather they were just doing what they thought was right.

Yeah, our stories are quite similar and I would argue they are similar for a lot of folks. But if we dig deep enough, I'm sure we would find differences as well.

One of the reasons I was initially upset was because my parents had raised me to believe they had never tried these substances either. It wasn't until I became more heavily involved in using that I straight up asked them (divorced, so separately) if they had in fact at least smoked pot in their lifetimes. They both then admitted yes, they smoked in high school or something. What made me mad was that they ended up okay yet still had to make sure I missed out on it when I was the same age.

Of course I'm not mad about that anymore considering those conversations happened 20 years ago. But my dad is a narcissistic manipulative gaslighter, which is completely independent of him scaring me away from weed by lying about his own past use my whole life.

 

[deficiT]

I was the same way. I had no exposure to drugs whatsoever until I was 16/17 years old, so I just believed DARE class. I used to think about drug users as almost like a different sort of person... a CRIMINAL. I couldn't understand why someone would take drugs when it could kill you the first time and you'd end up addicted. It just made no sense to me. I assumed anyone who did drugs was an idiot. I now know all sorts of my peers were doing drugs but I had no idea and I would have been shocked to find out. It wasn't until I made a friend at the grocery store I worked at and found out he smoked weed, that I realized, hey, maybe regular people do drugs. He was cool so I must have been wrong. Then I got curious. Once I tried weed and LOVED it, I figured everything I had been told was a lie and I started to do whatever drugs I came across. Which was a bad idea.

Moral of the story: Just Say No doesn't work, it's best to be honest with kids about drugs.

I started smoking weed and drinking at 10. My older stepsister first introduced me to marijuana. It was love at first sight, and from then on I was always the 'stoner' or the 'bad seed' or 'bad influence'. I introduced weed to pretty much all of my friends through middle school and high school.

By the time I was 17 I had a terrible drinking problem. 19 I went through alcohol withdrawal for the first time, and made my first attempt at getting sober.

But growing up I was always fascinated with drugs, and exploring my consciousness. It eventually got to be super problematic for me, but at first it was all fun and games.

 

[Asparagus_Prince]

One of the reasons I was initially upset was because my parents had raised me to believe they had never tried these substances either.

Yeah, we're starting to get into some differences now. We're not twins after all... lol

My parents definitely were and still are square eggs.