So, what’s the deal?

We can point to lots of things. Rap and Reggae music, Michael Phelps, Paul McCartney (at least he quit toking), politicians admitting to marijuana use, the national conversation about legalization and medicinal marijuana, Pineapple Express – the list could go on endlessly, and all of these things contribute to overall attitude. I hear many adults casually comparing marijuana to alcohol. Getting drunk every time you drank would not be considered healthy or safe – since the goal of recreational marijuana use is always impairment, I don’t equate it to social drinking. I have my own theory…1978 was the highest ever recorded year for adolescent marijuana use in the history of time. Where are those people now? Parenting middle and high school age children. This doesn’t mean today’s parents are doing bong hits with their kids or that they even still smoke pot. It just means kids are perceptive and intuitive – think about that jumpy limbic system inside of them and how keen they are to understand and interpret their worlds. Youngsters have done the math; they know that plenty of adults smoked weed in the psychedelic seventies and went on to have fulfilling lives. They don’t have this kind of model for crack or heroin. So, teens just aren’t that afraid of pot and when fear goes down, use goes up.

Getting back to boys…I wish I knew more. I enjoy the company of boys immensely in class and they sometimes even react more naturally than girls to my seminar, as that impulse control isn’t always quite there. Unfortunately, boys don’t take as many emotional chances in classroom discussion as girls do, so I end up not knowing them as well. It’s delightful to see so many girls and young women go to college and start successful careers, but why is this happening to a lesser degree for American males? And what kind of men are these smart, happening (heterosexual) women going to have as potential mates? If boys are struggling in the classroom and have higher rates of learning differences and attention disorders all this pot smoking is bound to compound or eclipse the original problems. I have to fix my face when people claim that marijuana isn’t addictive – Students tell me this every day when I ask them what they know about marijuana. It might be the most pernicious myth out there right now. An unemployed adult who smokes daily and lives in their parents’ basement isn’t addicted? For a 15 year old who lacks a clear set of coping/social skills, discovering marijuana can be the beginning of the end. These days, puberty begins earlier and adulthood starts later. I have never seen drugs speed up or enhance maturity, so marijuana will now elongate a phase that already takes too long! As usual, I have many more questions than answers, but would love to hear thoughts on boys from readers. Male readers are heartily invited to comment!

I am hired by schools to deliver alcohol and other drug education, but it’s becoming clear that pornography feels like a bigger threat to kids. I recognize pornography, whether it’s rated XXX or Kate Moss advertising Calvin Klein products, as sexually explicit images that lack human feeling or connection. Pornography is high intensity, low emotion.  Women (or select parts of women) with little or no clothing on are sprinkled all over magazines, billboards, televisions screens and Internet sites. Girls are given the message that above all, they need to be “hotties.” This also raises male expectations that women will be wildly attractive and totally available. I get emphatic nods from girls when I observe out loud that they seem more stressed about sex than drugs. They are more worried about the world of sex and see it as inevitable in a way that drug use isn’t. In this landscape of Viagra, breast implants and Internet Porn, it makes sense that kids are rather baffled by it all. When sex comes up in conversation during my health classes, the girls sometimes look at me in a pleading sort of way – they want some sort of assistance, but can’t really articulate it. It’s like there is a killer hiding in the closet and they are trying to tell me with their eyes. I am not there to give them a moral education and I am neither conservative nor religious. I care about their health and want them to feel knowledgeable and supported enough to delay sexual behavior until they are truly ready. This is our wish for boys, too. Males can also get hurt or overwhelmed by sex and all its mysteries. I don’t know what boys are thinking and I don’t want to guess. The nice, thoughtful boys are quiet and the goofballs act jerky out of discomfort, I suppose.

I keep a folder on the desktop of my computer called Gallery of Offenders.  Every time I come across a particularly offensive ad, I add it to the folder. Students are curious about it and when I share it with them, we have pretty riveting discussions. This is a conversation where the boys will join in with insights and questions, too. Here are a few images from the Gallery Of Offenders – they speak for themselves. It’s hard to watch kids struggle through this sexually hostile environment.

I never thought I would write a blog about football. This isn’t really about football; it’s about how money and power eclipse our concern for kids in this country. A heinous example is the Penn State situation where outright abuse of children was allowed or ignored to protect an institution and its football program. That is just sad. And gross. Another less vile, but grotesque feature of football and other major league male sports is the spectacular glorification of alcohol in the form of commercials and fan behavior. Again, not in the same category as pedophilia, but uncomfortable similarities exist. We allow goliath companies to have more power than they deserve, even at a cost to our nation’s children. Alcohol is not harmful to everyone, but it is harmful to kids, who make up a significant percentage of viewers. Many boys play these same sports and eagerly watch their heroes play punctuated by beer ads. After a young boy has seen thousands of examples of handsome, successful, “cool” guys get the babe of their dreams while having all kinds of fun with booze, it actually seeps into his hard drive. Beer = Manhood. I teach middle school aged boys and they go wild when I show them beer commercials during the media literacy part of my workshop. They often know them all by heart. Kids get their ideas about alcohol from these images and the messages are all positive with lots of glitz, humor and sex appeal.

As an athlete, I appreciate all kinds of sports and believe that moving your body is a good thing. Teamwork is also a powerful experience for a young person and I couldn’t be more supportive of athletics. I just wish we could separate sports from alcohol. It’s a crazy combo – alcohol is a potent central nervous system depressant and would be detrimental to any sports performance. I am a distance runner and luckily my sport is not at all associated with alcohol. Coverage of the Boston Marathon does not typically include any beer commercials. You won’t find ads for alcohol in women’s tennis, either. It seems that all male organizations have the biggest issues with binge drinking – men’s sports teams, fraternities and the military are all associated with heavy alcohol use. It’s a shame, as these organizations also have a lot of positive features. How can we show the young men of tomorrow a healthier view of manhood? I get it that advertising in the super bowl is all about money, but I don’t accept that. Tobacco is also about money and we kicked them off TV a long time ago. There are safe uses of alcohol, so perhaps forbidding all advertising isn’t necessary, but could we not impose a limit on how many ads or have restrictions during certain programs and time frames? Some people think me a heretic when I suggest this…Money and football shouldn’t be more important than kids – we are seeing that play out in excruciating ways with the Penn Sate scandal. Perhaps we can apply this painful lesson to other areas where we are failing kids.

Healthy kids don’t resent their parents and actually understand the meaning behind the rules. These households appear to be pretty serene and the family spends time together. Kids will generally keep their parents norms, especially if they make sense. I was recently working with parents and I could tell some of them were frustrated with my message. They kept asking for more strategies to keep their kids safe and happy that didn’t involve them having rules or ever saying no. One parent described how her son didn’t “allow” her out of the kitchen when he had friends over. I don’t want to judge these parents, I want to learn more so I can be more helpful to all parents. Most parents love their children and want the best outcome…Alcohol feels like a big Goliath and there are many forces at work. Booze is everywhere and made to look wildly attractive – here is one of the latest Heineken ads that I use in my seminar to spark conversation with students http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLgetLmlggA&feature=player_profilepage. It speaks for itself.

So, Anyone reading this, adult or kid, who is experiencing high school sober or had that experience after 1970, please leave a comment here or email me at bconlan@capecod.net. I want to know what role parents play in that decision – even if you don’t think your story is interesting, I will!

Ella, an emerging teen

So, it’s been a while. I didn’t think about alcohol and other drug education this summer – I let my mind rest and raised a puppy. I don’t believe I missed any remarkable new findings in the field and it enabled me to begin the Drug Lady World Tour in Ecuador feeling relaxed and enthusiastic about my work.

It might even be true that living with a new pup gave me much insight and compassion for the parents of young humans. After 2 nights of listening to Ella, an 8 week old Australian Shepherd, wail inconsolably in her crate, I was ready to return her to the breeder. My 14-year-old Collie mix died in April, which left me mute with grief. This new puppy was such an affront after living for years with a well-behaved adult dog. My spouse talked me out of taking her back to Pennsylvania. That morning Ella and I held paws, looked into one another’s eyes and promised we would learn how to live together – I never considered dumping her again, even though there was no chance of her growing up and getting a job. All summer, her cuteness kept me from throwing her away. I reckon this is why all parents keep their offspring initially…She ruined my sleep with middle of the night outings, bugged me the whole time she was awake (don’t puppies take naps?) and sank her needle teeth into me every chance she got. She even bit the stone statue of Buddha in the head every time we walked by – this is when I decided not to take anything she did personally. I spent the summer wearing my brother’s shorts that I found in the garage, as she destroyed all of my clothing with her hooligan antics. All of my pants have holes in increasing elevation as she learned to jump higher with her mouth snapping like a piranha. I was sharing my home with a devilish gremlin, who I actually…loved. One day, when she was 14 weeks old, I recognized that she was no longer biting me or whizzing on the floor whenever she felt like it – she was getting civilized and mastering the basic obedience commands. My hard work and heavy lifting during puppyhood was paying off!

Like a toddler, this little being needs more shaping – anything I don’t want her to do as an adult dog, I don’t let her do now. I am learning that I can be firm without being unfair or harsh. Consistency is key and it’s important to have fun. Secure love will produce the best outcome, along with encouragement for positive behavior. Obviously, raising a human child is oceans more complicated and important than having a dog. I don’t mean to trivialize the crucial distinction between animals and people, but I enter this new school year feeling freshly informed about the joy and pain of caring for a young one.

I had lunch yesterday with fellow teachers. We talked about kids and how challenging it can be to manage a room full of teens that don’t have that “tender “kind of sorrow – that special, youthful pain doesn’t always present in attractive ways. I don’t know what it says about me that I have such empathy for this age group and their behavior really never gets me down. I chalk it all up to the idea that young people do young things – hasn’t this always been true?

*Art by Sharon Harper

I spend my time trying to help kids think about their lives and care for themselves. At its worst, alcohol abuse causes trouble, illness and death – at the least, it is at the root of a lot of pain and disrupted relationships. The message teens get in the world is that alcohol gives you your spark, makes you sexy, creates more fun, enables you to feel closer to people and needs to be there or life is a big snore. I was disappointed that the producers of Glee didn’t show more courage and intelligence by delivering a show that would inspire its many fans to think about teen alcohol use in a meaningful way.

Our kids are doing better than many in other countries – we have fewer drinkers and our society (police, shopkeepers, schools, etc) actually speaks with one voice on teen drinking – at least officially. In the developing world, it is mostly lawless and ex-pat kids have lots of money, and in many cases, no supervision. Their parents are jet setters and leave them home with servants for long stretches – these kids are at enormous risk in ways that a typical suburban kid here in the states isn’t. So, it isn’t perfect anywhere, but a shift in our cultural concept of teens as young people with manners certainly wouldn’t hurt!

We are working towards the best-case scenario here, not seeking perfection or something completely unrealistic. When parents consistently send a health message about avoiding alcohol until emotional and physical maturity has been reached, the kids will likely end up intact. No other sentence causes more combat in a parent meeting than when I ask parents to help their children postpone drinking as long as possible. There is at least one parent in every audience who insists that kids drink because it isn’t allowed and that mom and dad take away the mystique by allowing their children to drink before the legal age. This “forbidden fruit myth” is one of the more destructive belief systems today. There is a recent, compelling study that successfully dispels this very myth by Dutch researcher, Haske Van der Vorst.http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127222042 When I see how excited some of these parents become, I wonder what is really at stake for them to lower the boom on this one issue. I have started posing a question to these doubting parents for them to just reflect on as they think about alcohol and child rearing. I don’t expect an answer live in the meeting but I send them all home with this query: Since research shows that there is nothing in it for your child, what’s in it for you to let your child drink in high school? Who is it actually benefitting for you to be lenient about drinking? It might be helpful to examine your message about alcohol and make an honest cost/benefit list. Is it just easier or friendlier to let your child drink? In the end, whose needs are you addressing with your rules and what will the ultimate outcome be? Unanswered questions make great traveling companions and these questions are vital to the health of any family.

I had the pleasure of teaching all boys last week. What fun! Being with boys is like playing the kazoo; there is something totally whimsical about the experience, yet they respond in a natural and earnest way. They aren’t focusing on the ultimate outcome of the Prevention seminar; they truly live in the moment, which gives me the freedom to do the same. My ultimate goal in all of my work is to give people, all people (students, parents, everybody), the feeling that they have more options than they think they do. Most destructive behavior is related to the idea that there isn’t a better way or simply another way to cope. A boy who goes home with the belief that he is capable of change is an incredible victory and I am grateful to the woman who took the time to tell me about it.

Speaking of gratitude – a lovely Thanksgiving to all!