On 2003-03-08 16:50:00, Anonymous wrote:
"On 2003-03-04 11:54:00, Anonymous wrote
"Quite frankly, as a parent, I find your story more of an explanation of why your daughter might have attempted suicide rather than an explanation of how Pathway allegedly helped her recover"
Why, because I ran out of options with her and sought to obtain expert help?
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No, because you went to the wrong experts i.e. drug warriors who believe that all drug use is abuse. It's not. Clearly, from what I've read about Pathways and everything that is Straight derived, the US led "war on drugs" is in itself a complete and utter failure. I suggest you read all 92,000 odd accumulated news items on
http://www.mapinc.org and you might be able to get the global picture. (they are both pro & con)
Or, because I didn't choose to let her use as long as I was present?
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What drug are you talking about?
Most knowledgable professionals that I know would be more concerned about their kids smoking cigarettes than about them smoking marijuana. But they would not condone going to school stoned.
Well, it sounds like you merely found a convenient way to rationalize your daughter's drug use.
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That's ridiculous. Using marijuana can be fun. When it is touted as "dangerous" by John Walters and the DEA, the drug warriors lose all credibility . As for ecstacy, we had a death in our town that was attributed to Ecstacy. In fact, the toxicology reports found that the individual who died was dosing himself with dextromethorphan for a cough when he took one pill. Deaths from E are rare (1/2 million are consumed every weekend in Britain without deaths) and are attributable to heatstroke and/or lack of fluids and/or electrolytes when dancing. Knowledgable users will take care of themselves, and only use it sparingly.
But I go on, you can get accurate information on most drugs by going to
http://www.erowid.org. I tend to give this some credibility, because a police toxicologist gave me that information.
Your actions were akin to holding your daughter's hand over a hot stove burner to teach her that it will burn her, but she can still use it to make soup. (Except that stoves are legal).
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My daughter has used drugs, fully aware of the real dangers they posed. You don't ban stoves because you might get burned. Your argument fails.
I wonder how your story would have turned out had your daughter actually died from her "experimental" drug use. First-time users have been known to die.
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See above. My daughter knew this before she used ecstacy. All things in moderation.
I chose a different approach, not to detach from my daughter, but to get her help.
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You think I detached? I happened to realise that I would not be able to convince my daughter of anything by just relying on the stupid arguments of DARE & zero-tolerance. I happen to have been involved in Juvenile courts and frequently witnessed the harm done by parents who "talk up" the sentences of their recalcitrant youngsters might have. Middle class parents were the worst.
I've represented teens with problem parents
I had reached my parenting and non-clinical limits on how to rationalize with a drug-using teen (it doesn't happen).
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Right
I figured an expert could work with me and my daughter to make some breakthroughs.
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Wrong experts
You say,
"A vastly higher percentage of the population attempt, or at least seriously contemplate suicide at some point in life."
This is pretty vague. What is "vastly higher percentage"? Is there some clinical study you reference, or just pull this out of your air?
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Actually, there are studies, and my wife worked with an organization that did some of the most advanced in N America. I'm not about to go looking up the the studies, but suicide prevention is something in which I have both academic and hands-on experience. Did it ever occur to you that drug abuse, (not use) might be a slow way of committing suicide?
Are you now trying to rationalize your own suicidal tendancies?
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So, what that mean? Now that is taking a personal moralistic tone. Depression is an illness or perhaps a chemical imbalance. Are you going to blame me for having the flu too?
Ironically, I find that your version of justifying inappropriate actions is not dissimilar to how my daughter and other drug using teens attempted to lie, steal, and manipulate to get what they wanted - more drugs; but it was always someone else's fault when she got in trouble.
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There is ample evidence that where a harm reduction approach is taken to drugs, crime drops. The crimes you mention are at least as much a product of the Drug War as of the drugs themselves. I would no more condone theft for drugs than I would killing. If someone makes an informed decision to use drugs, they are hardly victims to be protected from themselves. But the laws against theft, drunk driving, or murder are to protect us from being victims of somebody else. I would be more afraid of the consequences of arrest for drugs in the US than of the drugs themslves, because this is a crusade that has to stop!
You say,
"Drug use is NOT a primary cause of anything."
Are you serious?
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Absolutely.
I bet alcohol use and drunk driving don't cause huge loss of life either, right?
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But it's not the USE of Alcohol that is the problem here, it's the ABUSE. As I said, moderation in all things. I should mention here that neither of my children will drive after consuming alcohol. And their use of drugs is likewise responsible and controlled.
Drug use caused a great deal of damage to my daughter and our family. Broken family relationships, incarceration, hospitalization, sleeping in a crack house. I submit that none of those would have occured if drugs had not been used to distort reality. Were there other issues? Sure, and those were addressed as a family at Pathway. But the fact of the matter is that my daughter's use of drugs impaired her ability to make healthy, rational decisions that would have otherwise kept her safe.
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But you see, your daughter (maybe) got into it uninformed! As such, I'll bet she would have gone places and seen kids taking pills or whatever, and just popped into her mouth anything that came her way. My son saw that sort of things and determined that he would try to educate people to look after themselves and reduce the harm.
Both of my kids use drugs, but there are some that they would NOT use. You see, the real futility of the efforts of the DEA (and NIDA to a degree) is that they treat all drugs deemed illicit equally seriously. Because your daughter realised that she was being lied to at one level, she was led to believe that she was being lied to at every level. As such, the War on Drugs (and DARE) acted as a "Gateway" for her use of the more serious drugs.
The Canadian Senate report on Marijuana for example says that there was "no rational basis for making marijuana illegal in the first place." Zip, Nada None.
You and others are dead set on invalidating the benefits received by my daughter and the rest of my family from Pathway.
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I wouldn't say that. I would have to meet your daughter to be able to reach that conclusion.
It's as if you fear any positive results.
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It's entirely possible that there may be some positive results. However, almost every psychologist I know that knows and understands the methodology of "Straight" derived programs would suggest that your daughter might be the exception that proves the rule.
Your pathetic response is simply, "well, hopefully your daughter will still talk to you in 20 years after she is no longer brainwashed."
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That wasn't in my post and you are simply saying that to put up a straw man to my argument. So I'm not commenting on what follows from that in the rest of what you say.
However, as I did say, I know that you and others like you can never be convinced that your position is wrong because of that strong N. American Puritanism that Lord Bertrand Russell so despised. It gave us Prohibition and the Drug war, and unfortunately, by criminalising the use of drugs the US has made drugs more attractive to some than they otherwise would be. At the same time, I join with the more than 600 world intellectuals who have petitioned the UN to bring an end to the war on drugs as they believe it now produces more harm than the drugs themselves. Unfortunately, many of the victims, like you and your daughter, fail to realise this.
I am not denying that drugs have an addictive potential with SOME individuals. The cost of prohibition, however,is far greater and is a result of one of the biggest boondoggles in world history. And the US is responsible for forcing this war on the rest of the world through the various United Nations conventions. But that's a topic for another argument.
