Just curious...

[MommaDebi]

I have been following some of the threads here and at the Straight threads.

I am curious about one thing.I know that I was not a drug addict prior to my time spent in The Seed. I had only smked pot a few times, of course nobody believed me. My list grew longer...I had to get "honest" to get out, so did we all I think.

However,later I did "make my list" all too real.I did in fact become an addict. Speed was my main thing....I still miss it and am coming up to my 21st yr of real sobriety.

I am not beating my breast or saying other people can not use drugs recreationally. I just know that I can not do certain things myself, I like certain ones of them far too much for my health.I suppose (I was a 77 lb, 5'3" woman at 23, on a feeding tube in the hospital)I  should just be glad that I survived it.  

I do not participate in AA/NA much any longer as I have no need for that, there was a time I did need it, but not for about the past 12 years. This sober person is who I am now...I am comfortable with it. Although there are many meetings I have attended in the past 3-4 years, because people asked me to take them.  

As a parent I also felt the need to not be a hypocrite, "Do as I say, not as I do" always got to me as a teenager.

However, I was wondering how many of us did have to "make the list real."??

I am also curious about our children.My son (18) opts not to participate in the ritual drinking, drugging and smoking that so many teens do. I raised him with openness and honesty.

He knows of my past (The Seed, all my drugs, and my recovery) and likes to think that he is "smarter than Mom". I have often told him, as he became a teen, that if he were to feel the need to do anything, I'd rather have him smoke pot than drink alcohol.

I happen to believe: alcohol + male teens= violence. I have never seen a pot smoker become overly aggressive and feel the need to prove himself!

I thought a couple of times that he might have gotten high, but did not press it, because he was home on time, straight A's, and treated me with courtesy and respect.So "Good for him", I thought. "Doing a normal teen thing!"

How did everybody else handle these issues? Is our cautious treatment of our own teens due to the mistreatment we recieved by our families and The Seed?? Or are we more permissive?

Thanks for listening.
debi

[Antigen]

As for making one's list real, I think I did pick up a lot of curiosity from my association with The Seed and Straight. I doubt that I would have skipped school those two times or gone cross-country hitchhiking if I hadn't had it beaten into my head for so many years that that's what dirty-rotten-satanic-druggie-teenagers do. It's not asif anyone in my christian school was doing it.

But the only drugs I'd done before my time in the Program had been a little beer, a little pot and one Miltown stolen from my mother's secret stash.

Afterward, I tried operating on speed. It wasn't that I liked the effect it was that I wanted to make up for lost time. I'd never been to a bar or a party or out on a date. So, when I got out, I found a job at a restaurant and accepted every invitation to go do any damned thing with anyone. I wanted to work one shift and party for 2. That lasted about a month till I burned out on the lack of sleep and decided that speed was just not an adequate substitute for sleep.

Later, I tried coke. Wasn't impressed. Had to try acid just once to find out what it was like. Now I know. I suppose if I didn't have kids to look after or other responsibilities I could really get into being an acid head. But I guess I'll never know now, will I?

The only drugs I really enjoy are beer and pot, with pot being much preferred for the effect and lack of adverse side effects but less prefered because of the exhorbinant expense and legal liability.

As for raising our kids, I can't say much yet because my oldest is only just 18 now and I have a 12yo and 5yo daughters coming up behind her. Certainly my experience with the Program has effected the way I raise my kids. I know my attitudes about DARE and the whole drug war culture have effected my oldest. Till very recently, she just wished I'd stow it and let her be just like everyone else. Then she had a chance to talk to some friends who's parents took that course and she called to thank me for protecting her from it.

From what little I know of how my neices and nephews are doing I can see some Program influence at work. Every damned one of them is just as brilliant and wonderful as a parent could hope for and yet all of my brothers and sisters who have kids seem determined to slap some kind of diagnosis on their kids. It's heartbreaking. But, at the same time, though they won't talk about the Program or come right out and oppose the ideology, they won't put their own kids into that kind of treatment either. So I suppose that's progress.

[Anonymous]

Miltown?  Whassa Miltown?  
Excuse my ignorance...
Unregistered User Me

[Antigen]

Miltown is the drug that doctors used to give to bored and distressed housewives in the days before Valium and Queleuds came and went. They have about the same effect as a couple of Midol. The term for such housewives who were addicted to them was "Miltown mama."

[Anonymous]

My drug use, like momidebbie, was far, far worse than before I went in.

I think that as much as I tried to reject the seed, much of their self fullfilling prophecies were coming true.

That is, the part about failing without the seed, that I was a worthless piece of shit without it, and that no one could possibly like me for me.

Images and ego.  Remember the relentless raps on those topics.  They ruined my self image and decimated my ego.

[MommaDebi]

Images and Ego....
I thnk you are so right, during a time that we should have been learning to feel confident, yet secure in the knowledge that we had parental support (a safe haven at home), we were left with a distorted self image.
I guess I should just say "I".... I learned that there was no help out there. Nobody would believe me about anything... I did try to reach out to some teachers but because I was a "drug addict", my father was able to negate anything I said.