Them teenagers be saying things like they are not very bussin or pog champ. That it’s kinda cringe tbh and L + ratio. I only can wonder what these words mean.
I feel like pure demonization is such an easy path to distrust and abuse. For the longest time I didn’t know the difference between even weed and other drugs, just that it was “bad”, weed might as well have been crack. I sure as shit didn’t know the harder drugs make you feel unimaginably good and that this in specific was the danger.
I actually had a bad LSD trip that went worse than it should have due to this demonization, I couldn’t stop thinking of all the times I was told or overheard as a kid that such drugs drive you insane. I knew beforehand what I was doing and what that would entail, but it didn’t matter once I had jumped in, the paranoia from years of growing up hearing such things won.
For sure raise awareness, for sure drive home the notion that certain drugs will fuck your life up, but they need to seriously sit down and explain the nuances between all of them, they need to explain risks and dangers (the real ones, not the propagandist talking points) as well as the effects, they need to compare them to alcohol, tobacco, coffee, hell even food since even that is addictive. People will try stuff, they better try stuff with an informed perspective and know which ones are too much to consider.
I just asked my 12-year old, and he says he’s learning about this in his health class right now.
Fentanyl: “Only a very small amount will kill you. They are often laced in street drugs and stuff bought from the internet.”
Opioids: “They’re like painkillers and numb your senses and thoughts. They can make your slower and weird.” (that’s all he was told)
Nothing on the other stuff yet.
He’s said that his teacher had a relative die from fentanyl. She’s very passionate about drug education, from what he says, and notes that she hasn’t ever said that “all drugs are bad” or anything like that.
She’s also apparently brought in nurses and doctors to help with explanations and information about certain drugs. No cops, apparently, which *thank thar. Hopefully it stays that way.
So far, I’m very happy with the kind of drug education he’s getting. I supplement it with more in-depth, one-on-one conversations, as well. Not all drugs are evil, and I let him know that.
We were supposed to talk about drugs for 2 years, but instead talked about bullying
We got a school project about drugs a couple years ago, but it was only one option out of a list of subjects for the project(i think, i dont remember exactly)
I’ve been done with school for a hot minute now but here (Netherlands) they started in the last years at elementary school, around age 11. And then some more later in highschool roughly age 14.
Elementary was taught by a cop. Mostly sensible stuff and the risks. Nothing weird but like “weed isn’t physically addictive but it can be mentally addictive, also you’re probably smoking it and that ain’t great.” or how xtc is not that dangerous on its own but often there’s junk mixed in. They also told us you can get your xtc tested by the government, anonymously. And yeah you actually don’t get in trouble believe it or not.
I think it worked because they made it so unexciting that most people I know stay away from anything but weed and even then lots of people try it and never do it again.
I asked my cousins who are in high school. They don’t seem to be fed as much moral panic bullshit as I was. People who smoke marijuana aren’t doomed to hell, drug users aren’t all “worthless” welfare drags. It goes hand in hand with the improved education they are getting on mental health and addiction.
The main scare push sounds to be around drugs of unknown provenance. Like, don’t take unknown pills offered to you at a party where you can be whisked away by a stranger once you drop unconscious. Or die a painful death due to dirty drugs cut with who knows what.
Their school has Narcan doses in the med station.
Our town used to have a needle program but current leadership tipped back more conservative and they got rid of those types of programs. My cousins think that’s bullshit; they are well aware of the low efficacy of abstinence-only programs.
I asked them if they knew about the old D.A.R.E. program of the 80s and 90s. One had a decent idea of what it was, the other thought it was a meme; she had only ever seen ~millenial-aged casual drug users wear D.A.R.E T-shirts so she thought the whole thing was meant to be ironic.
For context, I grew up in the Midwest, middle school and high school from the late 90s into the early 00s. The referenced cousins and I live in New England now.
graduated not too long ago, it was basically pure misinformation. the typical one touch will murder you, it’ll ruin your life, with a dash of shaming people who have addictions.
Yeah, this is not the best question because you’ll get very different answers from different parts of the world, or even different parts of the US.
I graduated more than a decade ago, and there was a lot more nuance than what you described. They taught us about different types of drugs and what their real effects were. I remember learning in high school that marijuana is less dangerous than cigarettes and alcohol.
In elementary school for me, there were big anti-smoking campaigns, but nothing about alcohol or harder drugs. The “just say no” was about peer pressure and doing anything you felt uncomfortable doing (including inappropriate touching).
There are school-aged people on Lemmy? I assumed the vast majority are older millennials (with a touch of gray), who are also Linux users, not straight, and have some level of obsession with Star Trek and — God knows why — beans.
Commie grey millennial here. I’m a drug and alcohol counselor in a prison. I teach a group on opioid overdose prevention to the inmates, but no clue what they teach in school.
A while ago (soon after the Reddit exodus, but I can’t recall specifically when) it seemed like every other post on Lemmy was just shitposting bean memes. I still see beans referenced periodically. But if your experience on Lemmy was strictly highly curated you may have not experienced the beans.
Me either 😞 I’m 41 and I still remember most of 17 very clearly because it was a very good year for me. But man, the years will just start whizzing by you the older you get. Sometimes it feels like 17 was just 5 or at most 10 years ago.
My advice is if you don’t want to feel like you’re getting older (and it happens to all of us) is stay active and avoid monotony. Doing the same monotonous thing day after day (ie most jobs) means you don’t make as many “waypoint” memories - when you get old like me it’s the big events that move away from the monotony that you tend to remember, and if you don’t have many of those big events it feels like no time has passed at all since you have very little memory of that period. We don’t remember the daily commute to work, the endless meetings, etc., but we tend to remember things like travelling or the first time with a new lover or emotionally-strong events like a death or marriage. In short: make lots of memories!
Oh man. I was miserable in my teens and much of my twenties. The majority of the time that I think back is to unfairly judge myself on data or maturity that I didn’t have and cringe (which is a habit that I’m working on breaving). Overall sound advice, from my experience though.
Mid-30s millenial here. Being an adult, instead of a 20-something young adult is overall pretty great. Having experinence and maturity makes a lot of shit easier, especially dropping uninportant bullshit. Definitely the best decade of my life thus far.
The downside: unaddressed physical, emotional, and psychological “battle damage” is cumulative (I only started treatment for ADHD at 30). So, if you have any untreated issues or trauma, it’s best to take them on earlier so that you don’t have to play catch-up.
That said, enjoy your life and keep in mind that, short of severe injury or imprisonment, you are not going to irreparably damage your future (repair is possible in some of those cases anyway). I didn’t start my career (completely unrelated to my degree) until I was about 26. My wife, who is a year younger than me, earned her union card in her trade last year, after dealing with nearly 30 years of untreated physical and psychological issues. Despite this, we’re both happier on average than any other point in our lives.
Add comment