LOVING TO GET HIGH SYNDROME

In five short days, eleven people died on Minnesota Highways, eight of them teenagers. It would be of no surprise if the teen drivers were under the influence of alcohol or another drug, but they weren’t. But intoxication was not far away. In the accident that caused 6 0f the deaths, the passengers had been drinking. They were having a party.

Loving to get high is more than just being under the influence, it’s all about the thrill of the moment, no matter the consequences.

It’s Two AM, you’re partying with your friends, they’ve been drinking, it’s your job to drive and keep them safe. No one is wearing a seat belt, there’s loud music, everyone is having fun  and bam you hit an SUV head on. All of your friends are killed and you survive. What a horrible scenario.

This moment can not be taken back, it happened in a split second and caused six deaths. Lives and families and communities changed forever. It seems so unnecessary. Why do things like this happen?

In an interview, one of their friends said “We live in a small town, it’s boring, there is nothing to do, so we drink”. A great excuse, but what’s going on is more than boredom. It’s how we deal with boredom.

Being entertained is a expected in today’s society. “Loving to get High” is “Entertainment without Limits”! Loving to get high is not limited to  just  drinking and using drugs. It also includes; driving fast, staying out late, hanging out with friends, loud music, having sex, gambling, risky behavior, lying to parents, skipping school, bullying, driving drunk and the list goes on.

Loving to get high is the whole package of fun, thrills and risky behavior. All with little or no consideration of the consequences.

Parents, our kids have high expectations when it comes to having fun, and to  some degree we stand by and watch it happen. It’s time to start asking questions. Where are you going? Who are you going with? Where are the other parents? What is curfew? Who’s driving?

More importantly we need to be asking these questions: What’s important in your life? What makes life worth living? How are you dealing with stress? What can I do to help? How do you make tough decisions about risky behavior? Who do you talk to when you’re really stressed out?

Our kids need our help. Society has created a dangerous precedent for their emotional high, but no consideration for their emotional wellbeing.

That’s our job.

When parenting a teen it is important to consider the possibility that they might be up to something that you don’t want to know about, like getting high or drunk. It is important to ask yourself; Is this possible? How did this happen? Why didn’t I see it? Now what do I do? Here are some questions that will help you explore these possibilities.

• If your relationship with your teen were ideal, what’s one thing that would be different?
• Describe any issues that might be going on: behaviors, attitude, conflicts, suspicions.
• How does your teen push your buttons? Frustrate you? Make you angry, sad, anxious, worried?
• What are you putting up with? Tolerating? Excusing? Justifying?
• What does your gut tell you is going on?

If you find these questions difficult to answer or are confused about what this all means, please e-mail me at coacht@usinternet.com and start a discussion about these issues.

It’s time I give my son some praise.

Christmas Eve is always a big deal at our house. A lot of food, music, family, friends, gifts and games. This year was no exception. We had a Christmas Carole Sing Along with my mother on piano and a friend Rebecca, on Fiddle. Wonderful. The food was spectacular. Our youngest daughter is a Pastry Chef and our youngest son a Food Chef. Their creations were the best they have ever been.

My son, who gave me the inspiration to this web-site, “Wowed” me with his cooking. Short-Ribs and Brussel Spouts, the best I’ve ever had.  He has developed into a talented and successful Chef. His contribution to our family is significant.

Maybe the key to this success is similar to the key to his loving to get high, PASSION. He is passionate about cooking, food preparation, food presentation, his job, his co-workers and his customers. This passion is being directed into something that he is proud of and wants to show-off. For that I am very grateful.

Son, you are doing great, I’m proud of you.

P.S. I’ve discovered that if you want to comment on my blog you need to first click on the “Title of the Post”, which will take you to a page where you can leave a comment. Your comments are greatly appreciated.

No matter who we are, we all have the same Values.

How could this be true? It is not the presence or absence of values, we all work off of the same list, it is how important  they are to us. How we prioritize them? How we honor them?

If your number one value is concern for others and your son/daughters number one value is friendship, you may assume that there would be no conflict. At first glance they seem completely compatible, but when you look more closely, you can see that values can give us something to fight about.

Hidden in your message of “concern for others” may be the opinion, “You are not concerned about me”. His/her value of friendship may communicate the message, “Quit bugging me about my friends!”

List of values.

(Circle your top 5 values and ask your son or daughter to do the same.)

Accomplishment,    Concern for others,    Creativity,    Pleasure,   Spirituality,    Accountability,    Power,    Reliability,    Discovery,   Freedom,   Honesty,   Openness,   Respect,   Friendship,    Independence,   Privacy,   Trust.

Discuss the results. What does it say about your relationship? Do these values reflect behaviors? Resentments? Opinions?

Loving to get high is an intense commitment to values.

Independence, freedom, friendship, creativity, pleasure, spontaneity are easily honored values in the life of a young person who loves to get high.

As a parent let’s not assume that “I have good values and you don’t”. It’s not true. What we need to look at is what we’ve attached these values to.

As a parent you need to ask, “Have I attached accountability, honesty and trust to trying to control my kid”?  Has your teen attached independence, privacy and freedom to getting high?

We all have the same list of values, let’s start talking about what they mean to us. Let the learning begin.

Being bummed by life; stressed, unhappy, miserable, desperate, is all too common for young people. What do our kids do with this stress? How do they deal with this emotional ups and downs? Do they talk to you about any of this? Who do they talk to? Who’s giving them advise on how to cope? Is it possible that they have actually taken steps to deal with stress on their own, with the advice of their friends?

One very common way to deal with this is to experiment with a M.A.C. (Mood Altering Chemical) Some kids try it and find out that they don’t like it or they can take it or leave it.

Some will however discover the complete opposite. For them it can be a discovery of a life time, Bliss. They love the way it makes them feel. When I speak to groups of students about shifting from being Bummed to experiencing Bliss, they know what I’m talking about, they get it. They will even site specific times when they experienced this shift.

This swing from Bummed to Bliss is the Critical Point of the Loving to Get High Syndrome. It’s as if the Heavens opened up and they discovered a whole new way of living. What used to be a problem has now disappeared. What caused stress no longer exists, (at least now, at this very moment). This is not figured out on an academic level, they actually  experience the emotional relief  from getting high.

As a parent we can’t compete with this powerful dynamic of swinging from bummed to bliss, if we try we will lose. It is also ineffective to try to talk them out of it. Their mind is set. They love the way this makes them feel.

I’m not saying that it is hopeless. The swing from Bummed to Bliss, comes with natural consequences. It’s our job to let this happen, allow them to feel the pain, to experience the consequences. More than that it’s our job to open our eyes and see what’s really going on. We are not helping anyone by staying in denial, by pretending that our son/daughter is not getting high and loving it.

The path out of this mess takes courage, understanding and tough love. (and of course, attending a support group like Alanon.) Kids deserve a normal life, not the roller-coaster ride that getting high provides, even if the bliss is worth the price of admission.

• When you get a call late Saturday night telling you that your son has overdosed and is in the Emergency Room, your DENIAL is confronted.
• When the Principal calls and tells you that your daughter has been suspended for coming to school drunk, your DENIAL is confronted.
• When you wake up in the middle of the night and your car and your kid are gone, your DENIAL is confronted, or at least it should be.

It can be devastating to all of a sudden realize that your kid is in trouble. Why didn’t I figure this out earlier? What else is going on? Will they be OK? Is this just a one time occurrence?  Which one of their friends can I blame this on? We start asking ourselves a thousand questions, all in a way of coming to terms with this new discovery.

Our DENIAL is confronted by something that happens to our kid, something that we can no longer ignore. This confrontation comes from a consequence. It’s a consequence of their alcohol/drug use, of loving to get high. Up ‘til now they have dodged the bullet, avoided being found out success and fully covered their tracks.

For some kids this has been easy, because we have helped them out. We’ve had our head in the sand. We’ve continued to say things like; “Not my kid!” and “Boys will be boys!” or “At least it was only Alcohol!”

This is what we call Denial. We love our kids and don’t want bad things to happen to them, so it’s easy to understand how and why this happens. But we need to put this idea aside and realize that pretending as if this didn’t exist doesn’t help anyone.

Consequences are a sign that things are out-of-control. Loving to get high is starting to catch up on our kid. This doesn’t mean that problems didn’t exist before; it just means that we didn’t see it or that they were able to keep it a secret.

My hope is that the “loving to Get High Syndrome™” and this blog will help parents wake up sooner, rather than later. And to not experience that frightening phone call in the middle of the night or the embarrassing call from the Principal. Before things are out of control, we need to remember that we are in control of how we perceive things. It’s time to take a deep breath and confront the possibility that our kid might love to get high and they are doing everything possible to keep it a secret.

Reefer Madness? Marijuana, increased potency is the gateway to a debate on addiction and treatment.

“It was as if she woke up one day, and decades of her life had disappeared. Joyce, 52 and a writer in Manhattan, started smoking pot when she was 15, and for years it was a pleasant escape, a calming protective cloud. Then it became an obsession, something she needed to get through the day. She found herself hiding her addiction from her family, friends and co-workers.”

Loving to get high can happen to people of any age, from all walks of life and on any chemical. Your kids may tell you that pot is not addictive. Well it is. With the higher potency of THC, the chance of addiction and the need for treatment is on the rise, according to a 2004 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

It’s time for us as parents to look at pot from a new perspective. The pot that our kid’s parents and grandparents used, (that sounds weird) can’t be compared in “addict-ability” or “Loving to Get High-Ability” to the  pot today’s kids are using!

It’s time to to talk.

It’s hard to imagine that our sons and daughters are getting high. It’s easier for us to keep an image of their innocent childhood, denying the possibility that they are going out and getting wasted. Unimaginable, but true, the experience of getting high, is very real for them; one of the most real things that they will ever experience.

 I still remember the shock and horror that I felt when I watched my 4 year old daughter respond to the effects of Nitrous Oxide. She got this “I’m as high as a kite” smile on her face. Even though I knew that this powerful drug would ease her pain, I still knew that it wasn’t a look that belonged on the face of my little girl.

 Parenting is tough. It’s hard to watch our children lose their innocence and start doing things that hurt them and us. We naturally want to protect them.  As hard as we try, we can’t. What we end up doing instead is protecting ourselves psychologically, by denying that this is actually happening. This wishful thinking doesn’t help us or our kids; in fact the problem gets worse the longer we hang on to this less than accurate picture.   

 Courage, understanding and tough love are the steps we can take in order to deal with the denial of this problem. A parent in one of my groups called denial the silent killer. What an insight for a mom with a son who loved to get high. As painful as it is to realize, it is very important we understand that loving to get high will not just go away.

 I’ve helped train the D.A.R.E. officers in Minnesota for years. I love the program and respect all of the Police Officers who take part in the training. Most of the graduates can’t imagine the thought of getting high. They have made a commitment to saying “No” to drugs. But for many kids, what was unimaginable becomes imaginable.

 Things change; the way young people think changes, their opinions about right and wrong change, their circumstances change, being able to imagine getting high changes. This is a reality that has changed. Now it’s time for us to do the same.

 A couple of years ago, while visiting my son in jail I met a mom who was wearing a sweatshirt that had the Serenity Prayer on it. Because of what was going on with my son at the time, this very familiar prayer took on a whole new meaning.

 God grant me the serenity

to accept the things I cannot change;

courage to change the things I can;

and wisdom to know the difference.

                                                - Reinhold Niebuhr