I know not about other schools, but 'the cool' kids in my high school were largely perceived to be the ones most into drugs, but mostly just weed AFAI ever Knew.
I was most certainly not in the cool group.
Kids wanting to be cool, thought drugs and drug use must also be cool, and would make for being cool.
I was rather shocked by exactly who dabbled, and then took it to levels well outside their previous personalities would have dictated.
Years after I graduated, I heard that several of these 'uncool' kids, who so desperately wanted to to be in sitting at the popular cool kid table at lunch, self destructed with drug/alcohol addictions.
How much of our western culture of the Youth, trying to be cool and popular, are responsible for the experimentation that leads the susceptible into addiction?
If this is a factor, how could it be mitigated.?
Teen age rs.
I would hate to be one again,
would hate to be a parent of one, especially while drug use is somehow perceived as being 'cool'.
What I do remember from being that age, was how out of touch the teachers and parents were, as to what was really going on, how the kids were thinking, how good they were at hiding undesirable behavior, and how great they were at lying and deceiving, all the while the parents completely clueless, about how their little angels, were sociopathic demon fiends, when they were in no danger of being observed by a parent/teacher.
I highly doubt that has changed in the subsequent 30 years, and with modern tech, and social media, mordern drugs and Big pharma legally pushing everything the whole news cycle, could be several fold worse.
I think anybody who believes they understand what is going on between kids in high school, should know they are likely completely deluded. The times have changed too much, too quickly to compare one's own experiences at that age, to that of Today's youth.
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I've lost a friend to opiates. He got hooked on pain pills after shoulder surgery.
I was 3k miles away and did not know the extent of his addiction, but he succumbed to pneumonia at 33 as it just ravaged his body.
The guy was the picture of health a few years prior. Had things together, goals, was achieving them, then kept dislocating his shoulder and had several unsuccessful rotator cuff surgeries.
RIP BKR.
Last time I saw a doc, he wrote me a scrip for Oxy. I was like 'no thanks', he was like 'take it anyway, just in case you change your mind.'
I tore it up once outside with zero regrets. My Girlfriend at the time was very upset with me when I told her, and I extricated myself from that relationship almost exclusively because of her reaction to me tearing up the oxy scrip, as I finally saw what was underneath, and it was ugly.
She really tore into me, just like those 'cool kids' in high school would do 30 years earlier.
Years later , I ignored that 'friend request' when it came, and recently deleted that whole platform from my life, as self marketing is worse than product marketing, and social insecurity dictates most decisions, usually for the worse.
I don't have answers, but my suspicions are that a large percentage of people who succumb to substance abuse issues, desperately wanted to be in the 'cool and popular' groups in their youth, and drugs were the easy way 'in', and once in, there was no way out.
Their addictive personalities were nurtured/formed at the worst possible time.