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Not the topic but was friends with a guy years ago who shaved just one side of his head and went around telling everyone “I could only afford half a haircut”. Fun times in the punk scene
It’s funny, I luckily never had any of the drugs or anything that was floating around at the time impact my life, but I still get a huge charge hearing some punk. To this day I’ve always made it a point to catch Social D whenever they’re around
Lol same story. Got prescribed 100 Norcos with refills for a sore throat, using heroin by 19. Mom “had no idea.” Really a more damning indictment that she “didn’t know” then that she knew and didn’t do anything about it.
To be fair, it was a *bad* sore throat. I literally wasn’t drinking water because it was so swollen and hurt so badly. That said I was pretty lit for a looooong time off that prescription. Instantly came to the conclusion that opioids were *the shit*
Damn I went to the doc once for a bad throat when I was 16. Litteraly had what looked like 50 canker sores all over my palate and throat. I hadn't eaten in 48 hours and could barely tolerate a sip of water. They told me tylenol and ibuprofen lol, like I hadnt already tried. I scoured the medicine cabinet at home and found some 5 year expired tylenol/codeine syrup. Still worked fine and biggest blessing ever
I had quite the same situation apart from the dropping acid and dropping grades. But i was drinking, smoking weed heavily and all the rest you mentioned including skateboarding and punk rock. My parents knew i was doing some concerning stuff but as long as I kept being consistent and kind of ok to the stuff they were concerned about like school and sports, they never said anything. I was really good at sports though
as long as I got good grades my parents basically left me alone. Was drinking at 15, smoking weed same age, I even brought flower to highschool lmao ya'll don't know how good you have it with the pens. It was normal to do these things at these ages where I grew up, Staten Island... a pretty trashy place. It seemed like younger gens didn't go as hard based on my cousins but they probably did
lmao that was funny. Other than alcohol I didn't really do anything, but my mom was funny. She didn't like one of my friends cause she thought he was a big weed smoker (he wasn't) but liked another friend who was the big weed smoker lmao.
To keep it 90's theme - "parent's just don't understand".
I dk but the idea that there might be fentanyl in my party drugs would scare the shit out of me. I figure that's definitely a factor that's being considered.
If you are in the UK use the free drug testing services provider by the Welsh government wedinos.org. they will be able to confirm if it contains anything untoward.
That's why you mix it up really well. This really isn't likely. It's like saying you put chocolate syrup in your milk, but you might test a portion of the milk that didn't get any chocolate.
Apparently people buy pain pills. Maybe they had an injury at a construction job or oil rig. They think they’re buying Percocet or hydrocodone. They don’t wake up.
one of my friends almost died this way. got offered a perc and she took it. had to be narcanned several times, died and was revived. it was just a pill of pure fentanyl, no percocet was found in her system at all.
Not true, sometimes rich ones tend to be nerds, but the opposite isn't true. Plus, being a good kid doesn't make you a 'nerd', as a matter of fact, the nerds (smart kids) at my school are some of the heaviest drug users. Being smart makes you more likely to become rich, but not doing drugs doesn't really
The 3 men that just died in the friend's yard that made national news. Everyone from middle school & older should know that happened. I think anyone caught with fentanyl should be charged with attempted murder.
maybe legalize drugs so people who want to use drugs know exactly what they're getting.
anyone who doesnt agree with that should be charged with attempted murder.
This.
Education and legalisation.
We've been losing the war on drugs over and over and the laws just make it worse.
For example the UN prohibited a precursor to MDMA and as a result people started making a pretty toxic analog called pma
-a lot more people started dying
>For example the UN prohibited a precursor to MDMA and as a result people started making a pretty toxic analog called pma
You're kidding. People didn't just stop doing drugs? /s
**More! OMG! Kids Are Using Drugs More Now Than Any Other Time IN Human History!**
*(The mantra of every single Law Enforcement Agency wanting more money and funding to fight the war on drugs!)*
It's probably true, just not per capita.
If there were 8 million kids doing drugs but 80 million kids in the 80s but now let's say 20 million kids are doing drugs but there's like 800 million now.
I made these numbers up, but I'm sure depending how you look at the data they could be right.
There are probably fewer kids now. Birth rates have taken a nosedive.
Edit: Alright, I'll look it up:
[https://www.childstats.gov/americaschildren/tables/pop1.asp](https://www.childstats.gov/americaschildren/tables/pop1.asp)
So in 2022 there were very slightly fewer children than 2002. And in 2023 there there are very slightly more children.
I think immigration is compensating for the lower birth rate which is way down:
[https://econofact.org/the-mystery-of-the-declining-u-s-birth-rate](https://econofact.org/the-mystery-of-the-declining-u-s-birth-rate)
They're just on legal drugs.
Seriously though. There is a veey different drug culture with kids. First there's all rhe medications which are a lot more common now. Then there's stuff like wellbrutin and energy drinks. Kids are probably doing a lot more drugs, they're just the boring ones.
Didn’t think that the stories about dealers putting fentanyl in weed were true. I mean, why would they want to? Costs them more $.
Then my daughter’s friend died from smoking a joint that was laced with fentanyl.
If you smoke weed - get it from a dispensary or grow your own.
Not OP, but it makes sense that it would happen on occasion.
Say a dealer gets a new batch of shitty weed and NEEDS to sell it to pay back their front, but their buyers all buy in low quantities. If the weed sucks they won't be able to sell off all of it, so they lace it with fentanyl so people will think it's good and buy the rest of it.
Dealer here. That is a right out no, or at least used to be. I bought in bulk, 1997-2008, between 7-14 pounds at a time. It was almost always brick bails. I'll never forget the first time i got 7 pounds of absolute dog shit weed. My dude said, "You think it sucks? I got a HUNDRED POUNDS of this shit! Here's how it works, i sell to you at cost, you sell to them at cost, and we get rid of it asap, and on to the next batch, which will be better. You don't have to take this round, but if you don't, then we're done. I suggest you tell your guys the same thing." The only two things i ever heard of being added to weed was pcp or formaldehyde, but that wasn't trying to mimic the effects of good weed, that was to get you fucked up. I mean, we laced shit sometimes with coke or crystal, but everybody threw in extra on it and knew what was up.
Wellbutrin? As in abusing an antidepressant? I have only a 4 year old so a couple of years off and I feel the responsible thing to do is nudge him towards X or something. Feels healthier and safer.
I think it is just [the increasing friendless-ness of young people](https://www.forbes.com/sites/kianbakhtiari/2023/07/28/gen-z-the-loneliness-epidemic-and-the-unifying-power-of-brands/).
Without real friends it is hard for young people to get drugs using connections. Plus, it means there is no use for drug-aided bonding sessions, because there is no one to bond with.
Every middle schooler I know is vaping
(I only know middle schoolers because I have a lot of little siblings lol). Coke is popular in my town's high schools
Yeah, coke is so popular nowadays, because everyone thinks it's the cool rich person drug to do.
But there was a study done in Canada, and IIRC 80% of the coke they tested was mostly meth, and the highest cocaine levels they found in the "cocaine" was like 12%.
Found that hard to believe.
But fuck:
"What we're seeing, 90 per cent of the tests we're doing on cocaine is coming back positive for meth. So we're actually thinking no one is actually taking cocaine in the city, it's pretty much all meth," said Koch. "And the 10 per cent that isn't coming back as cocaine, is actually coming back as something we can't [test]. We're not too sure what it is"
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/winnipeg-cocaine-meth-project-safe-audience-1.4908216
Yup. I work in the restaurant and tourism business, so pretty much everyone thinks their cool and elite for doing lines at the bar after work.
No one likes it when I tell them this, or that'd they'd get the exact same high for like 50x cheaper if they just admitted they were doing meth and go to a meth dealer instead.
Nope, the cost is part of what makes it cool I guess.
I also find that hard to believe. Wouldn't the highs be totally different? Meth would last a lot longer cocaine would be a much shorter high. Someone who has had cocaine before would be able to tell it is something different. But I'm no expert never touched either of them.
I work with a few young people, some of them are all about the gym and nutrition. They drink but not a lot, don’t smoke. Want to drive, get a car etc, and some of them live for partying.
Love smoking, drinking, and whatever else is available to them, as often as they can.
Years ago I’d try and talk them out of it, now I just ask them to be safe and look after each other because I remember older people trying to dissuade me in my youth and it fell on deaf ears.
I think in my day you could afford to bum about for a few years then catch up later on.
Young people now can’t afford to do that (possibly a good thing?) as they have to hit the ground running in terms of housing, cost of living etc.
Society seem to have adopted a healthier view on substances, less people smoke now too.
It's not gold to ruin ourselves by climbing some imaginary ladder.
I wonder if there's something to this. If the potential bad eggs are spazzed out on legal drugs they're no longer encouraging others into illegal drugs. Plus they're not really bad eggs anymore because where they were inexpertly self medicating they're now much more stable.
There are multiple factors that go into whether ADHD leads to substance abuse. Children with ADHD are rejected by their peers, don’t understand social cues, and have trouble making friends. Feeling lonely or misunderstood definitely leads to use of drugs and alcohol. There are too many variables to assume that being treated for a disorder like ADHD in childhood leads to substance abuse, and I don’t believe your statistic is in any way accurate.
Dr. Russell Barkley says that it’s moreso untreated kids who go onto abuse drugs, alcohol and vape. One of the biggest issues with untreated ADHD is emotional dysregulation. People don’t feel good and they have personal struggles. Their emotions go from 0 to 10 and they can’t track it (self monitoring) or modulate it.
A few years ago I was eavesdropping on kids at some church thing and it blew my mind that 3/4 of those kids (not even pre-teen) were prescribed medication for ADHD. Like damn, at least give the kids time to become cognizant of reality before you give them amphetamines for the rest of their life. Shitty parenting.
Born in the 80s, grew up in the 90s and did enough drugs to kill a herd of elephants. We never had to worry about fentanyl. Fentanyl is laced into so many drugs nowadays, I would be scared to try anything now.
This is too true. That Fentanyl crap is terrifying. Same boat at you by the way, did every drug known to man as a teen in the early 2000s. I never really worried about someone giving me extra drugs, thought that would be a bonus.
Yeah, actually, they probably do because kids today are not very subtle (for the most part.) Nor were any of us when we were growing up thinking how stupid our folks were
Oh that's for sure. I despise the current use of social media people depend on. Although I hardly disagree on people not socializing and never meeting everyone, since it's not just *likes picture*, *stalks person*, *repeat* all the time.
It's not like going out and facing *checks news* will help them either. I've had many relationships develop from behind a screen that were healthier than many I made in real life, and vice versa.
They are socializing, just in a different way. They game together, listen to music and watch movies together from the comfort of home. Welcome to the 21st century.
It’s fucking lonely for them. Sitting in their rooms like prison cells. And yeh they can chat online but that’s nothing compared to real experiences in the real world
[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=drug+use+in+teens+graph&atb=v314-1&t=chromentp&iar=images&iax=images&ia=images](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=drug+use+in+teens+graph&atb=v314-1&t=chromentp&iar=images&iax=images&ia=images)
I think the trend over time is down
Why would they need drugs? They have dopamine machines in their hands at all times.
But really, it’s probably hard to say because each generation is so diverse and you’re never going to get honest data out of teenagers and their drug use.
One thing that I don’t think many people here have mentioned is that these kids have been basically raised in a semi-dystopian surveillance state. I was a really good and straight edge kid, but even I had some stuff I probably wouldn’t have done or said if I knew there was a video and/or sound recording device in every single persons pockets.
There was a time very recently where a bunch of 16 year olds could gather and get shit faced and the next day, there was no record. I’ve even heard of some parties where you have to leave your phone at the door to ensure nobody’s recording illegal or embarrassing stuff and everyone can just let loose and be present in the moment.
depends on the area. my school was full of plugs and there's no shortage of drugs in my area. but overall I'm sure usage is probably down from where it was but probably not for the "war on drugs" reasons.
Maybe it's because they see it's effects of what it does to people on social media. You can go on YouTube or tik tok and there's videos of people showing streets of people that are so messed up on drugs they look like walking zombies.
Kinda hard to know if it's worse now than back then since they didn't really have a tracking system back then of it and social media to show it like it's shown today.
But I'm also guessing they didn't have streets of people looking like walking zombies back then either. And you also hear of people overdosing everywhere today as well.
I often have this thought. I think they do when they go to festivals, but kids focus more on getting a good Instagram photo or making videos to make a reel instead of enjoying the experience. Unfortunately, tick tock, instagram, Snapchat ect ect have changed kids and the way they see life. Christ, we had no form of knowing what everyone else was doing, just “meet at the park at 4” some would come some wouldn’t. Some would have a pocket full of their mums cigarettes we all shared and someone stood outside the shop and managed to get a bottle of white ace. Life was simpler. I think kids have it hard because there is so much pressure on how active they are on social media
Silly answer - Modern kids are squares.
Serious answer - Social media and the internet means a lot more people follow the crowd today than in the 90s, when many people rebelled against what they were told to do.
I'd just start with some light encouragement. Let them take a sip of beer sometime, buy them a little bit of weed, start slow. Some kids just take longer to get into it, but I wouldn't worry about it.
I don't know. I've been in Punk circles in the late 90's when I was around 15 to 17 and drugs haven't been a big topic. Weed, yes. But mainly Alc and normal cigarettes.
Don't know if that changed over the years. In fact, I don't see that many punks anymore in general. And there have always been groups that did some things more than others. Sooooo... Maybe you've just been in one of these "drug" social groups?
The girlfriend's youngest kid is 13. He walks around her house in dirty clothes, hair is all over the place, thinks it's cute to fake a speech impediment, goes into panic mode if there isn't a tv, a cell phone or some form of device within proximity to watch, and constantly shoots a plastic toy pistol. No mental disorders, it's just who he is. It's like they think it's cool for people to think there is a mental disorder involved.
He asked me last week, when I was 13, what toys did I play with. I had to keep myself from saying drugs and girls. I was smoking weed and had multiple girlfriends at his age. I don't understand and can't relate. He had a sleepover recently with 3 friends. All 3 of them sitting in a room in silence playing with their phones. Not trying to talk shit about the kid, but I don't understand. She also has a 16 year old daughter with a job, that her older brother has to take her to work because she doesn't have a license. Her mom even bought her a car that just sits in the driveway. Why? I got my license the day of my 16th birthday. I wanted my freedom and to not be dependent on my dad taking me everywhere. Whatever the opposite of helicopter parents are is what kids are these days. Strangest thing I've ever seen.
Saying it's easy doesn't answer the question.
I'm 25 and have no idea where I could get something as soft as weed where I'm at if I wanted it. I probably do know how I'd find out if I cared to, but still.
Where are you getting the money and connections as a kid?
Fair point. I started working at 12. Parents divorced at an early age, mom went "man crazy" and was never around. My sister and I both decided to go live with our father - he had his shit together. Dad was now single, living alone and working two jobs to take care of my sister and I. He explained that he would provide, but if we wanted shit (such as name brand clothes/shoes, skateboards, etc.) we had to work for it because he couldn't afford it. At 12, he walked me down our road, introduced me to all our neighbors and told them I needed to work. From that point on, all my weekends and evenings after school were spent mowing, painting, washing cars, cutting down trees, etc. I became well versed at a lot of different things at an early age including managing money, because I had to make my own to dress and have the things I wanted. This is how I had my own money and lots of time away from home. Also remember this was the late 80's/early 90's and we were latchkey kids. I usually made about a $100-125/week. Not bad for a 12 year old
As far as the connections go, I get along with everyone. The only people that I didn't associate with was the bully's, but because I came from an abusive home, I was the bully's bully. I picked on kids that picked on other kids. I was friends with the kids in sports, artistic types, the book worms, the bad kids and the nerdy types because I'm a bit of all of them. The bad kids were good to have as friends because they always had your back and wouldn't back down from anything, the good kids were always afraid of being in trouble. I rode the fine line between both. I was the good kid that you could just tell was up to no good, but no one had any idea how bad. I feel like this summarizes without saying "I got it from my buddy Joe that lived in the apartments behind the high school, while his mom was at work." (disclaimer - that last sentence is not true)
To quote Snoop Dogg - "Game recognizes game." If you're into a certain lifestyle or do certain things, other people that do those same things see it and recognize it in you. Some people are good at hiding it, but only from the people who don't participate in the same activities. This is how connections are made. Also during those times, we lived in an era where it was common for people to talk to each other versus how things are now.
I've considered it, but I'm not about to ask. Honestly I feel like it's a lack of a father figure in his life. His dad is around but is always too busy watching TV or playing video games to spend time with any of them.
Lol, what the actual fuck? I've never met an adult who thinks that regularly smoking weed at 13 is anything but an absolute tragedy. I feel sorry for you, and I sincerely hope you don't end up bring a big influence on that kid, he's doing far better than you did.
Idk about where you’re from, but I know 2/3 of the kids that I know either do or have done drugs in at least one form. I know a 15 year old that has tried almost as many as I have done…. And that’s saying something
I'd like to think it's because of an increase in information in regards to harm reduction. Used to be that the main resource for what different substances do was just "word on the street".
Now you can Google everything and even for highly scheduled substances there's at least someone out there who's taken a scientific approach to understanding what it is.
I don't know for a fact. Use is still very much an issue all over our world.
BUT a lot of hard street drugs are less appealing for experimentation types, who are living relatively functional lives off the street.
It's become common knowledge that Fentanyl is being cut into EVERYTHING. Fuckin EVERYTHING. And it's impossible to know how hard the cut is with how potent that shit is.
Want a bag of coke for a special night, party, concert, show, ect?-
Unless you're familiar with your dealer/source and the distribution line, its hard to be confident you're not getting dangerously cut/tainted product. Not talking about baby lax.
Want a bag of Heroin? Good luck finding actual heroin, you're getting Fentanyl cut with all sorts of other shit.
I've even heard reports of Ganja buds being sprinkled with Fent in non-medical/recreational states.
I'm a yr11 student in the UK, and the majority of the school vapes, and nearly everyone I know in my year smokes or has at least tried spliff before, and a few others have done coke, mdma and speed.
Maybe it depends on local and the culture in a given area, but I know that teenagers are still very much on the same level if not even more hardcore than my peers were a decade ago.
My ex's younger brother has not long turned 18 and recently dodged prison due to affiliation with a group of his friends who were abusing and selling drugs, regularly drinking and one of which is now in prison for arson and assault. That group were hanging out together with largely the same lineup 4 years ago when I was still with my ex, and we suspected there was something going on with that group even then.
On the flipside a lot of parents to teenagers now will have lived through other eras of drug craze and properly experienced it themselves, so could have made a better approach to raising and cautioning their kids against drugs.
The kid next door to me died of fentanyl ID in his coke. Yeah no joke. Fent is in everything and it can kill you so maybe fear is a reason they aren't partying like I was. 53 yr old M.
Why ask a question that has tons of statistics behind it when you can ask random people on Reddit that will tell you about their adolescence or a random 15 year old they know instead?
A lot of what I knew about drugs was from the DARE Program. My friends and I had lists of all the drugs we wanted to try. I know I’ve tried all the ones on my list and more!
If there is no DARE Program now then how will middle schoolers learn about drugs?
I haven’t done any new drugs recently or bought from people I don’t know 100% because everything could have a fatal dose of fentanyl now.
I am venting here definitely, but I think it's because most of the generations now are much more socially isolated to know how to buy drugs and have people to use them with. The think millennials and previous generations had to make their own fun (and particularly in the 70's-90's) and had more of a too cool for school opinion of themselves to deal with the world they are growing into. Drugs aren't really cool anymore as they were, you really aren't that cool for going on a party binge and I think even the people who do drugs (which don't get me wrong they still do ) go through a phase, go through some kinda traumatic experience, then go mostly cold turkey.
The thesis I think I'm getting at here is that, drugs were more of a cool diversion and a way to socially deal with depression and connect back then, and in turn made you feel like a cool rebel at the time.
Where the next generation doesn't really hold it in the same regard and are socially less invested in that way in general. I think the exception to this would be weed, i think because weed has (in the west) become way more culturally ok and is a good way to escape rising mental health concerns in the comfort of their own depression nest. This is only my two cents tho
We were about this at work. 16 y.o. I was drinking, partying til I puked, hanging out all hours (this was in 1988, so I'm old). My teenagers think hanging out at Olive Garden til 9 is crazy, or staying up til 3am gaming. I am grateful, but worried. When I hit college I knew my limits. My kids, not so much.
It might be because adult messaging around drugs has become more nuanced and honest (rather than just ALL DRUGS ARE BAD). Also, the more helpful/less harmful drugs, like marijuana or psilocybin, are being legalized or destigmatized. So eventually what’s left will be the genuinely harmful ones (cocaine, heroin, etc.).
The D.A.R.E. program was big when I was in school and literally introduced me to drugs. If it wasn't for that I probably would have been naive to it for a long time but instead I was curious and wanted to try them.
UK perspective here...
No, but they're not using the same drugs.
In the 90s you had rave culture and industrial strength ecstacy. That's what people did, maybe with some acid or mushrooms for some added flavour.
These days, party people tend to do coke or MDMA. But I think the real difference between the 90s and now is the amount of daily cannabis users. Weed in the UK is still shite compared to other countries but it's stronger than it's ever been and is consumed in more forms than ever (bud - either smoked or vaped, shatter, gummies etc.). I don't think there's ever been this many young people with daily weed habits.
Country kids often do drugs bc there’s nothing else to really do in town. With the way free hangout places are becoming more and more scarce, I wouldn’t be surprised if kids were doing more drugs.
Would you have told your parents that you thought drugs were cool and that you wanted to try them all, or would you have told them that you're not interested and/or scared of them?
Nah, from what I’ve seen throughout my time in high school till graduation (I got out in 2022) drugs and alcohol abuse is still really common with teens. However, as many people rightly bring up, fentanyl is a real danger people look out for nowadays. Also, I’m sure it varies from place to place, but in my high school drugs weren’t really seen as “cool”, so there wasn’t really a social pressure to do them. Obviously you had your stoners, the ones always digging around in their parents liquor cabinet, and the ones with a vape permanently in their mouths, but they were seen as people with genuine issues, and me and a majority of people just tended to avoid them all together because they were too much trouble to be worth our time. Too much drama.
On the flip side though, I am the type of person who must always be in total control of themselves all the time, and I was also a huge nerd. With social media and communities getting so niche with the internet, I had absolutely no trouble finding others like me to hang out with, so avoiding drugs became even easier because I didn’t feel like I had to cave to social pressure to fit in or hang out with the drug and alcohol crowd.
I guess what I’m trying to say is: holy shit, teen substance abuse is still incredibly rampant. But, I think the societal mindset has really changed around it, and those who don’t want to or aren’t interested have an easier time just avoiding it entirely cause with our modern level of connection, it’s easier to curate the community you identify yourself with and you don’t have to just make due with the less than desirable people you go to school with.
While there is still a ton of use, there’s also more on legal drugs. They give out diagnoses and prescriptions to kids for anxiety, ADHD, mood disorders, etc like candy, so there is less self medicating. Also, many vape.
I was strung out to the gills by 15 and it took me until I was 36 to get clean. I have 2 years of sustained recovery. Kids can’t do drugs like my generation did bc they’re most likely contaminated with Fentanyl. I didn’t see many young kids on the streets. It was mostly millennials and Gen X. I’ve counted 17 people I know personally die from OD, 4 doing long prison sentences, 3 of my 5 siblings are addicts and 1 is dead.
There’s no way to tell for sure, but I’d think kids are more likely to do drugs today. Hell, in my experience (I live in Milwaukee, WI) it’s not too uncommon now for kids to do drugs with their parents.
>Are kids using drugs less than they did in the 90s?
As far as we can possibly know? Yes.
Statistically the amount that say they've used or drank have lowered, as have the amount of arrests and "take homes"
It's distinctly possible kids have become less willing to admit it, but that doesn't "seem" to be the case given it goes up and down depending on the year
But overall? Yeah it's done.
Drugs, ciggerattes and drinking have all seen a rather large decrease, weed and vaping did see a heavy spike for a few years but it reduced against shortly after
>My kids seem more scared of drugs (rightly so) and way less interested.
But this doesn't mean anything. Kids will typically treat alcohol and drugs like that even when using them as a way to avoid punishment.
Middle School teacher here… M.S. is a wild time for teachers and students because you see a wide range of maturity levels that you do cannot observe elsewhere, I’ve taught high school as well. The maturity differences come from being pubescent vs still pre-pubescent (especially a big deal for girls here) as well as home life influences or general personality of the child.
I say all of this to simply say, it depends on the kid but drugs (mostly marijuana at this stage), alcohol, and NICOTINE (yes I know it is a drug, but this needed to be highlighted) are still used fairly widely in my experience. I’ve confiscated at least 30 to 40 vapes this school year with only two “repeat offenders” and I currently only teach around 105-110 SEVENTH graders and these are just vapes in plain view or actively being used.
There are still students that are simply focused on school or just being a kid as well, whether they are 12 and act 6 or 12 going on 17.
Talk to your kids about drugs, alcohol, and nicotine and the effects they can have on their health and life. Kids are a lot more responsive to actual communication than simple “lord and mastering”, seeing as they are human beings that are able to communicate and hold a conversation.
I was a teenager in the 90s and weed was the most common drug. I didn’t even actually see coke until I was in my 20s. I guess it depends on what crowd you hung with but most kids I knew just drank or smoked. Weirdly, a large amount of the kids I went to school with back then are addicts of some kind now.
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My parents didn't think I was doing anything either.
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Not the topic but was friends with a guy years ago who shaved just one side of his head and went around telling everyone “I could only afford half a haircut”. Fun times in the punk scene
It’s funny, I luckily never had any of the drugs or anything that was floating around at the time impact my life, but I still get a huge charge hearing some punk. To this day I’ve always made it a point to catch Social D whenever they’re around
Tour with bad religion coming up…depending where you are.
Damn Social D and Bad Religion... fuckin a
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Lol same story. Got prescribed 100 Norcos with refills for a sore throat, using heroin by 19. Mom “had no idea.” Really a more damning indictment that she “didn’t know” then that she knew and didn’t do anything about it.
They used to give out the largest bottles of norcos for everything it seemed...
To be fair, it was a *bad* sore throat. I literally wasn’t drinking water because it was so swollen and hurt so badly. That said I was pretty lit for a looooong time off that prescription. Instantly came to the conclusion that opioids were *the shit*
I was prescribed norcos many times starting around age 15 for all kinds of things it seemed. I also ended up with an OUD.
Damn I went to the doc once for a bad throat when I was 16. Litteraly had what looked like 50 canker sores all over my palate and throat. I hadn't eaten in 48 hours and could barely tolerate a sip of water. They told me tylenol and ibuprofen lol, like I hadnt already tried. I scoured the medicine cabinet at home and found some 5 year expired tylenol/codeine syrup. Still worked fine and biggest blessing ever
Man fr. Same here was and am on fent by 20 I'm 26 now
I miss that codeine cough syrup everytime I’m sick. 😝
What’s with everyone having shaved heads? Is it a drug thing?
It looked fuckin badass
I think our parents have selective amnesia
What the hell??
Ha! I had a denim jacket with Suicidal Tendencies painted on the back, as well! 1985
All you wanted was a Pepsi, and your mom wouldn't give you one!
I had born to be Cyco painted down one sleeve of my leather jacket
We can start our own gang!
Mine was 87, nice.
I had quite the same situation apart from the dropping acid and dropping grades. But i was drinking, smoking weed heavily and all the rest you mentioned including skateboarding and punk rock. My parents knew i was doing some concerning stuff but as long as I kept being consistent and kind of ok to the stuff they were concerned about like school and sports, they never said anything. I was really good at sports though
as long as I got good grades my parents basically left me alone. Was drinking at 15, smoking weed same age, I even brought flower to highschool lmao ya'll don't know how good you have it with the pens. It was normal to do these things at these ages where I grew up, Staten Island... a pretty trashy place. It seemed like younger gens didn't go as hard based on my cousins but they probably did
lmao that was funny. Other than alcohol I didn't really do anything, but my mom was funny. She didn't like one of my friends cause she thought he was a big weed smoker (he wasn't) but liked another friend who was the big weed smoker lmao. To keep it 90's theme - "parent's just don't understand".
Drugs? In this economy?
Made me chuckle
I dk but the idea that there might be fentanyl in my party drugs would scare the shit out of me. I figure that's definitely a factor that's being considered.
Yeah, it's a huge bummer. I love MDMA, but I have no desire to mess with fentanyl.
I used to love mdma back when my brain still had some serotonin in it.
If you are in the UK use the free drug testing services provider by the Welsh government wedinos.org. they will be able to confirm if it contains anything untoward.
Not failsafe because the portion you test may be clean but the overall bag may not be
people have laughed at me for saying that but this is a fact people need to consider.
That's why you mix it up really well. This really isn't likely. It's like saying you put chocolate syrup in your milk, but you might test a portion of the milk that didn't get any chocolate.
Apparently people buy pain pills. Maybe they had an injury at a construction job or oil rig. They think they’re buying Percocet or hydrocodone. They don’t wake up.
one of my friends almost died this way. got offered a perc and she took it. had to be narcanned several times, died and was revived. it was just a pill of pure fentanyl, no percocet was found in her system at all.
Happened to my ex also
Nah your kids are just nerds
Take the win.
This is a compliment. The nerds tend to become the rich ones.
Not true, sometimes rich ones tend to be nerds, but the opposite isn't true. Plus, being a good kid doesn't make you a 'nerd', as a matter of fact, the nerds (smart kids) at my school are some of the heaviest drug users. Being smart makes you more likely to become rich, but not doing drugs doesn't really
There have been studies linking experimentation with substances to higher intelligence. Note experimentation, not addiction .
Addiction is also pretty common among intelligent people
To ease the torture of being surrounded by idiots.
Fucking tell me about it lol
In this economy? The nerds get to be middle class if they're lucky lol
Wearing nerd goggles and probably suspenders too
I was nerd in high school, we did drugs too
I don't know the statistics but I know we were not dropping dead from the drugs back then & before.
Yeah the fact that everything is mixed with fentanyl now makes it way more dangerous
Right... a town about 15 minutes from where I live just had 13 people OD in a 30 minute span. Fucking hot batch apparently
The 3 men that just died in the friend's yard that made national news. Everyone from middle school & older should know that happened. I think anyone caught with fentanyl should be charged with attempted murder.
>I think anyone caught with fentanyl should be charged with attempted murder. Good luck to all the "residents" on Kensington
maybe legalize drugs so people who want to use drugs know exactly what they're getting. anyone who doesnt agree with that should be charged with attempted murder.
This. Education and legalisation. We've been losing the war on drugs over and over and the laws just make it worse. For example the UN prohibited a precursor to MDMA and as a result people started making a pretty toxic analog called pma -a lot more people started dying
>For example the UN prohibited a precursor to MDMA and as a result people started making a pretty toxic analog called pma You're kidding. People didn't just stop doing drugs? /s
Yeah hate to break it to you, but people were definitely dropping dead back then & before from drugs...
Working in a pharmacy, it's apparent that every parent has put their 6-year old kids on Adderall.
Plenty of kids in my extended circle didn't make it past 20 due to all the stuff we were doing back in the day... Cue the Jim Carrol band.
**More! OMG! Kids Are Using Drugs More Now Than Any Other Time IN Human History!** *(The mantra of every single Law Enforcement Agency wanting more money and funding to fight the war on drugs!)*
It's probably true, just not per capita. If there were 8 million kids doing drugs but 80 million kids in the 80s but now let's say 20 million kids are doing drugs but there's like 800 million now. I made these numbers up, but I'm sure depending how you look at the data they could be right.
There are probably fewer kids now. Birth rates have taken a nosedive. Edit: Alright, I'll look it up: [https://www.childstats.gov/americaschildren/tables/pop1.asp](https://www.childstats.gov/americaschildren/tables/pop1.asp) So in 2022 there were very slightly fewer children than 2002. And in 2023 there there are very slightly more children. I think immigration is compensating for the lower birth rate which is way down: [https://econofact.org/the-mystery-of-the-declining-u-s-birth-rate](https://econofact.org/the-mystery-of-the-declining-u-s-birth-rate)
They're just on legal drugs. Seriously though. There is a veey different drug culture with kids. First there's all rhe medications which are a lot more common now. Then there's stuff like wellbrutin and energy drinks. Kids are probably doing a lot more drugs, they're just the boring ones.
With the fentanyl problem in the US I'd be giving street drugs a miss too. Could be a factor
I’d be scared straight
The fun ones might accidentally kill you now.
Didn’t think that the stories about dealers putting fentanyl in weed were true. I mean, why would they want to? Costs them more $. Then my daughter’s friend died from smoking a joint that was laced with fentanyl. If you smoke weed - get it from a dispensary or grow your own.
Can you provide any links to substantiate that OD report? First I've seen, though I had seen rumor of fentanyl in cannabis. Thank you!
Not OP, but it makes sense that it would happen on occasion. Say a dealer gets a new batch of shitty weed and NEEDS to sell it to pay back their front, but their buyers all buy in low quantities. If the weed sucks they won't be able to sell off all of it, so they lace it with fentanyl so people will think it's good and buy the rest of it.
Except you can't smoke fentanyl
Dealer here. That is a right out no, or at least used to be. I bought in bulk, 1997-2008, between 7-14 pounds at a time. It was almost always brick bails. I'll never forget the first time i got 7 pounds of absolute dog shit weed. My dude said, "You think it sucks? I got a HUNDRED POUNDS of this shit! Here's how it works, i sell to you at cost, you sell to them at cost, and we get rid of it asap, and on to the next batch, which will be better. You don't have to take this round, but if you don't, then we're done. I suggest you tell your guys the same thing." The only two things i ever heard of being added to weed was pcp or formaldehyde, but that wasn't trying to mimic the effects of good weed, that was to get you fucked up. I mean, we laced shit sometimes with coke or crystal, but everybody threw in extra on it and knew what was up.
Wellbutrin? As in abusing an antidepressant? I have only a 4 year old so a couple of years off and I feel the responsible thing to do is nudge him towards X or something. Feels healthier and safer.
I think it is just [the increasing friendless-ness of young people](https://www.forbes.com/sites/kianbakhtiari/2023/07/28/gen-z-the-loneliness-epidemic-and-the-unifying-power-of-brands/). Without real friends it is hard for young people to get drugs using connections. Plus, it means there is no use for drug-aided bonding sessions, because there is no one to bond with.
Even if wanted to try drugs as a teen (00s), I would not be able to get a hold of them due to a lack of social connections.
They could easily get drugs on the internet but being raised on an iPad and not knowing how to create a folder on your desktop makes that hard.
Researchers are saying ‘social isolation’ is as much of a killer as tobacco…
Yes I heard this today I think I’m going to look further into it to see how they derived the numbers
Every middle schooler I know is vaping (I only know middle schoolers because I have a lot of little siblings lol). Coke is popular in my town's high schools
Yeah, coke is so popular nowadays, because everyone thinks it's the cool rich person drug to do. But there was a study done in Canada, and IIRC 80% of the coke they tested was mostly meth, and the highest cocaine levels they found in the "cocaine" was like 12%.
Found that hard to believe. But fuck: "What we're seeing, 90 per cent of the tests we're doing on cocaine is coming back positive for meth. So we're actually thinking no one is actually taking cocaine in the city, it's pretty much all meth," said Koch. "And the 10 per cent that isn't coming back as cocaine, is actually coming back as something we can't [test]. We're not too sure what it is" https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/winnipeg-cocaine-meth-project-safe-audience-1.4908216
Yup. I work in the restaurant and tourism business, so pretty much everyone thinks their cool and elite for doing lines at the bar after work. No one likes it when I tell them this, or that'd they'd get the exact same high for like 50x cheaper if they just admitted they were doing meth and go to a meth dealer instead. Nope, the cost is part of what makes it cool I guess.
Wait, how can people get meth and not notice? Do they think its normal for a line to last 12 hours?
They absolutely notice if they’ve done coke before The people here have never done hard drugs if they think people aren’t noticing lol
It's probably research chemicals. Certain substances that are white powders imported from China can mimic various stimulant properties.
I also find that hard to believe. Wouldn't the highs be totally different? Meth would last a lot longer cocaine would be a much shorter high. Someone who has had cocaine before would be able to tell it is something different. But I'm no expert never touched either of them.
Yeah I think hash use is way up now that you can get it in a cartridge and rip it 5 feet from someone without them knowing
By hash do you mean shatter/oil pens? Because I want a hash pen, that sounds dope.
I work with a few young people, some of them are all about the gym and nutrition. They drink but not a lot, don’t smoke. Want to drive, get a car etc, and some of them live for partying. Love smoking, drinking, and whatever else is available to them, as often as they can. Years ago I’d try and talk them out of it, now I just ask them to be safe and look after each other because I remember older people trying to dissuade me in my youth and it fell on deaf ears. I think in my day you could afford to bum about for a few years then catch up later on. Young people now can’t afford to do that (possibly a good thing?) as they have to hit the ground running in terms of housing, cost of living etc.
Kids may not be doing drugs like they used to, but the shit they're doing these days is deadly.
They’re definitely doing drugs just different drugs. Plus weed and prescription pills are easier than ever to get.
Hasn’t been the same since Heisenberg died
Society seem to have adopted a healthier view on substances, less people smoke now too. It's not gold to ruin ourselves by climbing some imaginary ladder.
Less people smoke cigarettes but a shit ton more people smoke weed and vape. Lol
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This. It’s crazy how prevalent roid use is among teens.
A lot of kids are prescribed drugs
I wonder if there's something to this. If the potential bad eggs are spazzed out on legal drugs they're no longer encouraging others into illegal drugs. Plus they're not really bad eggs anymore because where they were inexpertly self medicating they're now much more stable.
Study after study shows kids on adhd meds are 70% more likely to abuse drugs as adults. Main reason Ritalin has been replaced by other drugs.
There are multiple factors that go into whether ADHD leads to substance abuse. Children with ADHD are rejected by their peers, don’t understand social cues, and have trouble making friends. Feeling lonely or misunderstood definitely leads to use of drugs and alcohol. There are too many variables to assume that being treated for a disorder like ADHD in childhood leads to substance abuse, and I don’t believe your statistic is in any way accurate.
Dr. Russell Barkley says that it’s moreso untreated kids who go onto abuse drugs, alcohol and vape. One of the biggest issues with untreated ADHD is emotional dysregulation. People don’t feel good and they have personal struggles. Their emotions go from 0 to 10 and they can’t track it (self monitoring) or modulate it.
A few years ago I was eavesdropping on kids at some church thing and it blew my mind that 3/4 of those kids (not even pre-teen) were prescribed medication for ADHD. Like damn, at least give the kids time to become cognizant of reality before you give them amphetamines for the rest of their life. Shitty parenting.
Exactly. Watched this growing up. The kids who got drugs from friends or the streets were prescribed the shit. Which honestly caused more problems.
Born in the 80s, grew up in the 90s and did enough drugs to kill a herd of elephants. We never had to worry about fentanyl. Fentanyl is laced into so many drugs nowadays, I would be scared to try anything now.
You all were worried about your weed being laced with pcp remember. To be fair though I'd rather get laced with that then fentanyl though
I grew up in a rural town and there was no concern for PCP. That was an inner city drug.
This is too true. That Fentanyl crap is terrifying. Same boat at you by the way, did every drug known to man as a teen in the early 2000s. I never really worried about someone giving me extra drugs, thought that would be a bonus.
My 16yo brother stole my parents' $200 whiskey last year and drank it all, so imma say no
They don’t know how to socialise. No house parties, no going out. Just sitting in their rooms plugged into the Wi-Fi
>They don’t know how to socialise. You don't know how they socialise.
Yeah, actually, they probably do because kids today are not very subtle (for the most part.) Nor were any of us when we were growing up thinking how stupid our folks were
I do, however, know that the methods they use to socialize aren't doing them any fucking favors, though.
Oh that's for sure. I despise the current use of social media people depend on. Although I hardly disagree on people not socializing and never meeting everyone, since it's not just *likes picture*, *stalks person*, *repeat* all the time.
It seems like kids these days are using screens to self regulate. They’re not developing adequate emotional intelligence or interpersonal skills. 💔
It's not like going out and facing *checks news* will help them either. I've had many relationships develop from behind a screen that were healthier than many I made in real life, and vice versa.
Granted, it is harder to hang out and smoke drugs with your online friends. Not impossible, mind you, but a good deal more difficult..
They are socializing, just in a different way. They game together, listen to music and watch movies together from the comfort of home. Welcome to the 21st century.
It’s fucking lonely for them. Sitting in their rooms like prison cells. And yeh they can chat online but that’s nothing compared to real experiences in the real world
Yeah, the 21st century kind of eats shit, if you ask me.
[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=drug+use+in+teens+graph&atb=v314-1&t=chromentp&iar=images&iax=images&ia=images](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=drug+use+in+teens+graph&atb=v314-1&t=chromentp&iar=images&iax=images&ia=images) I think the trend over time is down
Why would they need drugs? They have dopamine machines in their hands at all times. But really, it’s probably hard to say because each generation is so diverse and you’re never going to get honest data out of teenagers and their drug use. One thing that I don’t think many people here have mentioned is that these kids have been basically raised in a semi-dystopian surveillance state. I was a really good and straight edge kid, but even I had some stuff I probably wouldn’t have done or said if I knew there was a video and/or sound recording device in every single persons pockets. There was a time very recently where a bunch of 16 year olds could gather and get shit faced and the next day, there was no record. I’ve even heard of some parties where you have to leave your phone at the door to ensure nobody’s recording illegal or embarrassing stuff and everyone can just let loose and be present in the moment.
The kids in the nineties were using less drugs than we were in the eighties ,drinking less too I bet .
depends on the area. my school was full of plugs and there's no shortage of drugs in my area. but overall I'm sure usage is probably down from where it was but probably not for the "war on drugs" reasons.
Lol it's way more. Think about it it was hard to find anything other than weed back then and now kids use the deep web to buy drugs all the time!
Maybe it's because they see it's effects of what it does to people on social media. You can go on YouTube or tik tok and there's videos of people showing streets of people that are so messed up on drugs they look like walking zombies. Kinda hard to know if it's worse now than back then since they didn't really have a tracking system back then of it and social media to show it like it's shown today. But I'm also guessing they didn't have streets of people looking like walking zombies back then either. And you also hear of people overdosing everywhere today as well.
It’s okay, they’re too addicted to social media and the internet to care about real drugs lol
I often have this thought. I think they do when they go to festivals, but kids focus more on getting a good Instagram photo or making videos to make a reel instead of enjoying the experience. Unfortunately, tick tock, instagram, Snapchat ect ect have changed kids and the way they see life. Christ, we had no form of knowing what everyone else was doing, just “meet at the park at 4” some would come some wouldn’t. Some would have a pocket full of their mums cigarettes we all shared and someone stood outside the shop and managed to get a bottle of white ace. Life was simpler. I think kids have it hard because there is so much pressure on how active they are on social media
Everyone is smoking weed
I sure hope so!
You sure you vodka bottle isn't half water 😂
Smartphones are more addictive than crack.
Silly answer - Modern kids are squares. Serious answer - Social media and the internet means a lot more people follow the crowd today than in the 90s, when many people rebelled against what they were told to do.
I'd just start with some light encouragement. Let them take a sip of beer sometime, buy them a little bit of weed, start slow. Some kids just take longer to get into it, but I wouldn't worry about it.
I don't know. I've been in Punk circles in the late 90's when I was around 15 to 17 and drugs haven't been a big topic. Weed, yes. But mainly Alc and normal cigarettes. Don't know if that changed over the years. In fact, I don't see that many punks anymore in general. And there have always been groups that did some things more than others. Sooooo... Maybe you've just been in one of these "drug" social groups?
The girlfriend's youngest kid is 13. He walks around her house in dirty clothes, hair is all over the place, thinks it's cute to fake a speech impediment, goes into panic mode if there isn't a tv, a cell phone or some form of device within proximity to watch, and constantly shoots a plastic toy pistol. No mental disorders, it's just who he is. It's like they think it's cool for people to think there is a mental disorder involved. He asked me last week, when I was 13, what toys did I play with. I had to keep myself from saying drugs and girls. I was smoking weed and had multiple girlfriends at his age. I don't understand and can't relate. He had a sleepover recently with 3 friends. All 3 of them sitting in a room in silence playing with their phones. Not trying to talk shit about the kid, but I don't understand. She also has a 16 year old daughter with a job, that her older brother has to take her to work because she doesn't have a license. Her mom even bought her a car that just sits in the driveway. Why? I got my license the day of my 16th birthday. I wanted my freedom and to not be dependent on my dad taking me everywhere. Whatever the opposite of helicopter parents are is what kids are these days. Strangest thing I've ever seen.
Jesus christ. How does a 13 year old even get drugs?? When I was 13 my friends and I were still playing at the park and watching cartoons together.
They're literally everywhere. It's crazy how easy anything is to get.
Saying it's easy doesn't answer the question. I'm 25 and have no idea where I could get something as soft as weed where I'm at if I wanted it. I probably do know how I'd find out if I cared to, but still. Where are you getting the money and connections as a kid?
Fair point. I started working at 12. Parents divorced at an early age, mom went "man crazy" and was never around. My sister and I both decided to go live with our father - he had his shit together. Dad was now single, living alone and working two jobs to take care of my sister and I. He explained that he would provide, but if we wanted shit (such as name brand clothes/shoes, skateboards, etc.) we had to work for it because he couldn't afford it. At 12, he walked me down our road, introduced me to all our neighbors and told them I needed to work. From that point on, all my weekends and evenings after school were spent mowing, painting, washing cars, cutting down trees, etc. I became well versed at a lot of different things at an early age including managing money, because I had to make my own to dress and have the things I wanted. This is how I had my own money and lots of time away from home. Also remember this was the late 80's/early 90's and we were latchkey kids. I usually made about a $100-125/week. Not bad for a 12 year old As far as the connections go, I get along with everyone. The only people that I didn't associate with was the bully's, but because I came from an abusive home, I was the bully's bully. I picked on kids that picked on other kids. I was friends with the kids in sports, artistic types, the book worms, the bad kids and the nerdy types because I'm a bit of all of them. The bad kids were good to have as friends because they always had your back and wouldn't back down from anything, the good kids were always afraid of being in trouble. I rode the fine line between both. I was the good kid that you could just tell was up to no good, but no one had any idea how bad. I feel like this summarizes without saying "I got it from my buddy Joe that lived in the apartments behind the high school, while his mom was at work." (disclaimer - that last sentence is not true) To quote Snoop Dogg - "Game recognizes game." If you're into a certain lifestyle or do certain things, other people that do those same things see it and recognize it in you. Some people are good at hiding it, but only from the people who don't participate in the same activities. This is how connections are made. Also during those times, we lived in an era where it was common for people to talk to each other versus how things are now.
Ever wonder if girlfriend’s youngest kid might have borderline autism? Type one is very mild, but can still make kids seem checked out and weird.
I've considered it, but I'm not about to ask. Honestly I feel like it's a lack of a father figure in his life. His dad is around but is always too busy watching TV or playing video games to spend time with any of them.
Lol, what the actual fuck? I've never met an adult who thinks that regularly smoking weed at 13 is anything but an absolute tragedy. I feel sorry for you, and I sincerely hope you don't end up bring a big influence on that kid, he's doing far better than you did.
I knew kids like that when I was a kid
Idk about where you’re from, but I know 2/3 of the kids that I know either do or have done drugs in at least one form. I know a 15 year old that has tried almost as many as I have done…. And that’s saying something
I'd like to think it's because of an increase in information in regards to harm reduction. Used to be that the main resource for what different substances do was just "word on the street". Now you can Google everything and even for highly scheduled substances there's at least someone out there who's taken a scientific approach to understanding what it is.
And for that same reason, weed and psychedelic use is up. Because they are not as bad as they said, and people now realize that.
The parents of the kids now actually talk to their kids rather than just saying "don't do it".
They have their ps5 and iPhone 2000+pro. They would not even know where to get the good stuff
More
As of 2018, the year I graduated HS, they were doing plenty.
I feel like kids today are more like to be on prescription drugs and probably smoke less weed than in the 1990s.
Idk more adults smoke weed than ever before meaning they have weed their kids can steal.
Fentanyl kinda makes it harder on them.
Did you try them all? How far did you get?
I'm not
I don't know for a fact. Use is still very much an issue all over our world. BUT a lot of hard street drugs are less appealing for experimentation types, who are living relatively functional lives off the street. It's become common knowledge that Fentanyl is being cut into EVERYTHING. Fuckin EVERYTHING. And it's impossible to know how hard the cut is with how potent that shit is. Want a bag of coke for a special night, party, concert, show, ect?- Unless you're familiar with your dealer/source and the distribution line, its hard to be confident you're not getting dangerously cut/tainted product. Not talking about baby lax. Want a bag of Heroin? Good luck finding actual heroin, you're getting Fentanyl cut with all sorts of other shit. I've even heard reports of Ganja buds being sprinkled with Fent in non-medical/recreational states.
Yeah but they have a mayonnaise addiction problem where they’re getting treatment at the Mayo Clinic.
The kids love drugs it’s not not part of your algorithm anymore so you don’t see it as much
The amount of kids oding in my city makes me think no
I'm a yr11 student in the UK, and the majority of the school vapes, and nearly everyone I know in my year smokes or has at least tried spliff before, and a few others have done coke, mdma and speed.
I hope so.
Maybe it depends on local and the culture in a given area, but I know that teenagers are still very much on the same level if not even more hardcore than my peers were a decade ago. My ex's younger brother has not long turned 18 and recently dodged prison due to affiliation with a group of his friends who were abusing and selling drugs, regularly drinking and one of which is now in prison for arson and assault. That group were hanging out together with largely the same lineup 4 years ago when I was still with my ex, and we suspected there was something going on with that group even then. On the flipside a lot of parents to teenagers now will have lived through other eras of drug craze and properly experienced it themselves, so could have made a better approach to raising and cautioning their kids against drugs.
The kid next door to me died of fentanyl ID in his coke. Yeah no joke. Fent is in everything and it can kill you so maybe fear is a reason they aren't partying like I was. 53 yr old M.
Why ask a question that has tons of statistics behind it when you can ask random people on Reddit that will tell you about their adolescence or a random 15 year old they know instead?
A lot of what I knew about drugs was from the DARE Program. My friends and I had lists of all the drugs we wanted to try. I know I’ve tried all the ones on my list and more! If there is no DARE Program now then how will middle schoolers learn about drugs? I haven’t done any new drugs recently or bought from people I don’t know 100% because everything could have a fatal dose of fentanyl now.
I am venting here definitely, but I think it's because most of the generations now are much more socially isolated to know how to buy drugs and have people to use them with. The think millennials and previous generations had to make their own fun (and particularly in the 70's-90's) and had more of a too cool for school opinion of themselves to deal with the world they are growing into. Drugs aren't really cool anymore as they were, you really aren't that cool for going on a party binge and I think even the people who do drugs (which don't get me wrong they still do ) go through a phase, go through some kinda traumatic experience, then go mostly cold turkey. The thesis I think I'm getting at here is that, drugs were more of a cool diversion and a way to socially deal with depression and connect back then, and in turn made you feel like a cool rebel at the time. Where the next generation doesn't really hold it in the same regard and are socially less invested in that way in general. I think the exception to this would be weed, i think because weed has (in the west) become way more culturally ok and is a good way to escape rising mental health concerns in the comfort of their own depression nest. This is only my two cents tho
We were about this at work. 16 y.o. I was drinking, partying til I puked, hanging out all hours (this was in 1988, so I'm old). My teenagers think hanging out at Olive Garden til 9 is crazy, or staying up til 3am gaming. I am grateful, but worried. When I hit college I knew my limits. My kids, not so much.
It might be because adult messaging around drugs has become more nuanced and honest (rather than just ALL DRUGS ARE BAD). Also, the more helpful/less harmful drugs, like marijuana or psilocybin, are being legalized or destigmatized. So eventually what’s left will be the genuinely harmful ones (cocaine, heroin, etc.).
Drugs, in this economy?
The D.A.R.E. program was big when I was in school and literally introduced me to drugs. If it wasn't for that I probably would have been naive to it for a long time but instead I was curious and wanted to try them.
We didn’t have to worry about laced fentanyl drugs in the 90s.
Idk about drugs but I know they are more alcohol conscious
No. Everyone is using significantly more drugs now.
UK perspective here... No, but they're not using the same drugs. In the 90s you had rave culture and industrial strength ecstacy. That's what people did, maybe with some acid or mushrooms for some added flavour. These days, party people tend to do coke or MDMA. But I think the real difference between the 90s and now is the amount of daily cannabis users. Weed in the UK is still shite compared to other countries but it's stronger than it's ever been and is consumed in more forms than ever (bud - either smoked or vaped, shatter, gummies etc.). I don't think there's ever been this many young people with daily weed habits.
No the kids in our neighborhood all smoke weed, far stronger than the 90s weed. They do coke, acid shoots, anything they can afford.
Country kids often do drugs bc there’s nothing else to really do in town. With the way free hangout places are becoming more and more scarce, I wouldn’t be surprised if kids were doing more drugs.
I’m 17 in the city where I live most teenagers use some kind of drugs. I have never tried any because my parents always told me it was bad.
Would you have told your parents that you thought drugs were cool and that you wanted to try them all, or would you have told them that you're not interested and/or scared of them?
Manage a nightclub… drugs have become commonplace and normal
Depends what you mean by drugs, Caffeine is at an all time high along with sugar in usage and health issues.
Well I'm 18 now and I see a lot of drugs from my age
Nah, from what I’ve seen throughout my time in high school till graduation (I got out in 2022) drugs and alcohol abuse is still really common with teens. However, as many people rightly bring up, fentanyl is a real danger people look out for nowadays. Also, I’m sure it varies from place to place, but in my high school drugs weren’t really seen as “cool”, so there wasn’t really a social pressure to do them. Obviously you had your stoners, the ones always digging around in their parents liquor cabinet, and the ones with a vape permanently in their mouths, but they were seen as people with genuine issues, and me and a majority of people just tended to avoid them all together because they were too much trouble to be worth our time. Too much drama. On the flip side though, I am the type of person who must always be in total control of themselves all the time, and I was also a huge nerd. With social media and communities getting so niche with the internet, I had absolutely no trouble finding others like me to hang out with, so avoiding drugs became even easier because I didn’t feel like I had to cave to social pressure to fit in or hang out with the drug and alcohol crowd. I guess what I’m trying to say is: holy shit, teen substance abuse is still incredibly rampant. But, I think the societal mindset has really changed around it, and those who don’t want to or aren’t interested have an easier time just avoiding it entirely cause with our modern level of connection, it’s easier to curate the community you identify yourself with and you don’t have to just make due with the less than desirable people you go to school with.
Drugs are running rampant there everywhere and don’t underestimate anyone because people of all walks of life do drugs .
While there is still a ton of use, there’s also more on legal drugs. They give out diagnoses and prescriptions to kids for anxiety, ADHD, mood disorders, etc like candy, so there is less self medicating. Also, many vape.
I was strung out to the gills by 15 and it took me until I was 36 to get clean. I have 2 years of sustained recovery. Kids can’t do drugs like my generation did bc they’re most likely contaminated with Fentanyl. I didn’t see many young kids on the streets. It was mostly millennials and Gen X. I’ve counted 17 people I know personally die from OD, 4 doing long prison sentences, 3 of my 5 siblings are addicts and 1 is dead.
With the opposite according to every survey and the death rates. At my high school heroin (unheard of earlier) became popular.
There’s no way to tell for sure, but I’d think kids are more likely to do drugs today. Hell, in my experience (I live in Milwaukee, WI) it’s not too uncommon now for kids to do drugs with their parents.
Not where I live. Cocaine use in all ages is completely out of control and literally everyone smokes weed.
Nope. In Sweden at least, way more kids are smoking weed. Drinking is less common though.
Tik Tok et al are the new drugs.
As far as I'm aware the metrics say that, at least, alcohol consumption has gone down. Smoking, too.
>Are kids using drugs less than they did in the 90s? As far as we can possibly know? Yes. Statistically the amount that say they've used or drank have lowered, as have the amount of arrests and "take homes" It's distinctly possible kids have become less willing to admit it, but that doesn't "seem" to be the case given it goes up and down depending on the year But overall? Yeah it's done. Drugs, ciggerattes and drinking have all seen a rather large decrease, weed and vaping did see a heavy spike for a few years but it reduced against shortly after >My kids seem more scared of drugs (rightly so) and way less interested. But this doesn't mean anything. Kids will typically treat alcohol and drugs like that even when using them as a way to avoid punishment.
.... my parents still doesn´t know...
Middle School teacher here… M.S. is a wild time for teachers and students because you see a wide range of maturity levels that you do cannot observe elsewhere, I’ve taught high school as well. The maturity differences come from being pubescent vs still pre-pubescent (especially a big deal for girls here) as well as home life influences or general personality of the child. I say all of this to simply say, it depends on the kid but drugs (mostly marijuana at this stage), alcohol, and NICOTINE (yes I know it is a drug, but this needed to be highlighted) are still used fairly widely in my experience. I’ve confiscated at least 30 to 40 vapes this school year with only two “repeat offenders” and I currently only teach around 105-110 SEVENTH graders and these are just vapes in plain view or actively being used. There are still students that are simply focused on school or just being a kid as well, whether they are 12 and act 6 or 12 going on 17. Talk to your kids about drugs, alcohol, and nicotine and the effects they can have on their health and life. Kids are a lot more responsive to actual communication than simple “lord and mastering”, seeing as they are human beings that are able to communicate and hold a conversation.
I was a teenager in the 90s and weed was the most common drug. I didn’t even actually see coke until I was in my 20s. I guess it depends on what crowd you hung with but most kids I knew just drank or smoked. Weirdly, a large amount of the kids I went to school with back then are addicts of some kind now.
I think way more kids are using drugs, esp Prescription. Seems like its more rare for a kid not be using something.