You know what I’m retroactively pissed about? DARE.
Well, okay. Probably about half the reason I’m pissed about them is because I had a phobia of mind-altering substances (as I still do) when I went through the program and thus spent the entire time having a panic attack. That kind of soured me on the whole idea.
But the entirety of DARE, as I recall it in between panic attacks, was about how people are going to peer-pressure you into taking drugs. I spent quite a lot of time terrified of this, because basically the only thing I find scarier than drugs is the idea of people pressuring me into things.
As it happens, I attend a college that is one of the top schools for drug use in the entirety of the United States. I lived with a dealer for a while; I’ve slept with multiple enthusiastic drug users. I have experience here.
What DARE Led Me To Believe Would Happen In This Circumstance:
Them: Hey, we’re going to trip. Wanna join in?
Me: No, thank you.
Them: Come on, are you chicken? Don’t be uncool.
Me: Panic attack.
What Actually Happened:
Them: Hey, we’re going to trip. Wanna join in?
Me: No, thank you.
Them: Okay, cool. I have a lot of respect for the straightedge lifestyle, you know. The important thing is that you know what’s right for you and your body. This sort of thing isn’t right for everyone! It’s really great that you know that about yourself.
I suppose that it’s possible all the horrible pressurey people are hiding somewhere and I just happened to run into all the aggressively tolerant drug users. (The previous sentence was not sarcastic. I have a habit of running into nice people. It’s weird. I am the only trans person in the world who never had a friend respond badly to their request to use gender-neutral pronouns.) But most of the people I know didn’t start using because someone peer-pressured them into it; it was more like “hey, want some?” and they were like “sure.”
I feel like this is the problem you run into when you try to construct an entire anti-drug program without acknowledging that drugs are fun. They make you feel good and see interesting colors and feel a deep sense of connection to the universe and stuff. Even the ones that are a bad idea to take are really fun! That’s why people fucking take them. And while peer group does play a role in access to drugs and making drugs seem like a Thing That Normal People Do and there are people who get coerced or worse into taking drugs, most people who take them take them because they’re fun.
If you can’t say that drugs are fun, because that might encourage people to (gasp) try drugs, then you don’t really have an explanation for why people would risk ODing and being arrested and attempting to hug Hell’s Angels and similar utility-reducing consequences of drug use. So you’re stuck with “…peer pressure?”
I think they mistake the way peer pressure works. It’s not about people outwardly pressuring. It’s about the normal human desire to emulate one’s peer group, to fit in. The pressure is applied upon oneself, in one’s desire to be more like those one admires or likes.
-Agreed.
-Have run into one pressure-y drug user, who mostly claimed quite-possibly-true things about how safe the drug in question was.
- I’d say I do find this stuff very frustrating. Unfortunately, attempts to awknoledge how these things are often likable sometimes results in a message that sounds like ‘do not do this cool thing’.
- I think that badassery training would help both this and other issues at the same time by helping people say no.
Question, when were you in DARE? It was (theoretically) reformed to address these issues in 2001. I did DARE in 2001 (IIRC) and it was like what you described, but I think there was a gap between deciding on reforms and actual implementation.
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,99564,00.html
Anti-drug campaigns in general fall into this trap a lot, I think. And the trap of overhyping the negative consequences of certain drugs, so that when people do actually try it and their life doesn’t end, the anti-drug campaign has suddenly lost all credibility with that person.
I also went to an undergrad with a pretty active drug culture, and though I wasn’t straightedge I didn’t partake in most of it, and never really got any pressure. The same wasn’t totally true of my friend group when I was a teenager, but still pretty damn close.
The problem with anti-drug campaigns is that they try and paint everything in a very black and white way. Not only do they fail to acknowledge that drugs are fun, they also fail to acknowledge that some illegal drugs can be used responsibly, and many otherwise successful and healthy people use them (yes, there is always *some* risk, but there’s also always *some* risk with skateboarding or basketball or hockey, too). They cross the line from educating the public about the health risks of drugs into propaganda territory, and (I think) it hurts them in the long run.
All I really recall learning from DARE were the exact effects of all these drugs and how to take them. I’m not that interested in drugs, so I haven’t really used that knowledge, but I’m sure others have.
I remember smoking my first cigarette and being angry that both the school and my parents had flat-out lied to me about them. It felt *nice*. I had always been told that cigarettes would make me cough and throw up and curl up in a ball until I smoked enough of them angling to Be Cool for The Addiction to take over. I still had enough powers of observation to notice all the people standing around smoking and looking miserable in all kinds of weather and conclude that The Addiction hadn’t been a lie, but still… very angry.
Fortunately my parents were smart enough to tell me that people took other drugs/drank because it was fun and mostly the truth otherwise there… I have no idea why cigarettes were the exception.
@LabRat: From what I’ve read, the reaction to one’s first cigarette varies widely; apparently somewhere between twenty and forty percent of people get that relaxed, “nice” feeling that you said you felt. (People can also get withdrawal symptoms after the first cigarette… but it can take over a week before they start to feel them, because the effects of nicotine are very long-lasting in people who haven’t developed tolerances yet.)
I thought that “peer pressure” to do drugs was all total nonsense too, because in high school I was surrounded by people who did drugs, and no one ever, ever tried to pressure me. However, my brother, who is only 2 years younger than me and was at the same school at the same time, was aggressively pressured. My partner was also pressured to do drugs (I doubt anyone ever said “you won’t be cool if you don’t smoke weed”, but there was a lot of relentless “c’mon, do it, it’ll be awesome!”).
I don’t know why this happened to them and not me, but apparently nearly-textbook peer pressure to do drugs does happen.
Actually, I’ve experienced plenty of peer pressure related to mind-altering substances, but only related to one in particular- alcohol.
Seriously, it’s not even like I’m Carrie Nation or something. I just don’t like every fun activity to revolve around drinking, and for that I hear the judgement oozing from their pores.
But yeah, nothing but respect and lack of pressure from the people doing actual illegal drugs,
As a medical student I spent some time in addiction units, and one thing I gathered from it is that heroin must feel fantastic. Because I saw how badly some of these people would screw up their lives for it. Like obviously they were addicts but generally they weren’t stupid or especially irrational, it was just that heroin was a far more attractive prospect than all the stuff that comes with being clean and a functioning member of society. And these were the people seeking help. They knew the harm that lifestyle led to better than anyone but it was still a struggle, even when the chemical side of the addiction was satiated by replacement therapy. Also harm reduction FTW.
In my experience the only time I have ever encountered the kind of peer pressure people associate with illegal drugs is with alcohol. People can react very strangely to me saying I don’t drink, especially if in an environment where people are drinking, getting quite coercive and bullying in convincing me to join in. They can get quite vicious with it, even towards my more obviously Muslim other half. It’s like opting out of drinking = incomprehensible / condemning all who do (which neither of us would). Whereas anyone offering illegal drugs has usually been super polite and never once said “why?” when I turn them down. Booze is so weird, culturally speaking.
Oops meant to mention that lots of people used substances as ways of escaping from trauma or self medicating for mental health issues too, and simply viewing them as people who made Poor Life Choices is some seriously privileged, patronising awfulness.
I remember acing the DARE pre-quiz, being incredibly sick with one-lung-related-thing-after-another for the entire program, then acing the DARE post-quiz. Doesn’t sound like I missed much.
FWIW, my experiences with drug-using individuals have been almost exactly the same as yours, with two notable additions of “Cool! Would you mind being the designated driver, then?” (No, not at all.)
I have a phobia of being around people using mind-altering substances, but that’s not because of DARE. That’s because my step-father was a drug addict and was a physically abusive asshole that would break furniture, punch holes in walls, and throw my mom around.
That said, you’re also wrong about there not being any pusher drug users. Not sure why you’re implementing the “It hasn’t happened to me, so I have a hard time believing that it’s true (disclaimer: it hasn’t happened to me, lol!)” logic, but it’s… not helping you. I lived with another asshole drug user in my post-college days for a year, who happened to remind me very much of my asshole abusive step-father and would constantly try and get his roommates (us) to smoke pot and do shrooms with him, and he was in the habit of being a really big asshole about it to my other dude roommate, who was rather gullible, easily-persuaded, and not manly enough for this asshole’s tastes, and so he would sometimes use physical force to get the weaker roommate to smoke/hot box with him and his friends. It was fucking ridiculous.
So, no. DARE was actually right about that.
I should also like to mention, so that this doesn’t seem like this guy is rare creature, that his entire gang of friends (some of whom who had been to jail, mind you) were also of the same disposition.
So in conclusion: there are mean, fucked up people in the world! Not sure how this is so hard to believe!
I think there must be people who give off “don’t offer me illegal drugs” vibes. Because I’ve only ever been offered pot three times in my life, let alone anything else. The whole time I was in college (a small liberal arts college that must have been stuffed to the gills with pot smokers) I only even smelled pot twice (and as I’d grown up near a public park that was a major hangout for pot smokers, I’d known that smell since age seven or so).
I agree with L, there are definitely people out there who are pushers. The ones I’ve met were either utterly convinced that drugs were the best thing EVER and they HAD to share them with me, or they were insecure about their own drug use and didn’t want to do it alone. My first (and hopefully last) experience with drugs is due to one of them. So yeah, they do exist. Don’t even get me started on peer pressure to drink (can be worse outside of the U.S. though. It’s not as easy to say “no” when it’s your boss-who-is-also-your-visa-sponsor insisting everyone at the table chug their beer.)
I’ve only ever once seen somebody try to pressure another into smoking pot. After the rest of the circle just glared at him, he immediately backed down, and apologised, to boot. It was pretty funny, actually.
Miles away from the behaviour you tend to see with alcohol, unfortunately.
>>Probably about half the reason I’m pissed about
>>them is because I had a phobia of mind-altering
>>substances (as I still do)
I’ve never heard anyone else say that, though I guess I never asked. I wouldn’t even take aspirin until I was in my twenties. I don’t know what I’ll do if I ever have to have surgery.
My kids keep asking about alcohol, they are intensly curious.
RR: Phobic solidarity.
I met exactly one pushy drug user, and, logically enough, he was also pushy about everything else. “Foxglove, how can you never have been drunk?” “Foxglove, how can you still be a virgin?” “Foxglove, but drugs are fun, especially with me! I want to see you incapacitated and helpless! I mean, I want to have fun with you!”
Which is why I just kept saying no over and over* whenever we were alone, but whenever we were around other drug users, he stopped doing it. Because they would shut him down. “Hey man, she said no” is all it took. And that is when I knew those folks were the best, and he was not the best, and Lo, We Were No Longer Friends Who Hung Out Alone.
*I am a bit socially incompetent and didn’t realize that he was trying to pressure me into stuff. I just wondered why he kept asking when he knew I wasn’t going to do it. Sometimes social incompetence is awesome.