Hello Ladies!

Remember when you would steal some liquor from your parents and get drunk? Me too. Remember when you would illegally buy cigarettes and smoke them not even knowing how to inhale? Me too. Remember when you would buy cough medicine with codeine on the black market or steal your mother’s Xanax? ME NEITHER.

Back in my day, this was dangerous enough!

Now I will say the sentence that I swore I would never say “What’s with kids these days??!” I know that every generation thinks that the generation before them just doesn’t understand. We have heard the stories from the parents “Back in my day…” And we have heard from our grandparents how they had to walk home from school 5 miles in the snow with holey shoes. So it should come as no surprise that here I am now repeating history. But seriously, what’s with kids these days?

Growing up, it was a rite of passage to find liquor and get drunk. My first time was with my best friend Tina and a bottle of Jack Daniels we found in my mother’s bar. My mother is not a drinker, so the bottle was probably purchased so that when a male suitor came by, she would have something manly for him to drink. The bottle was almost full and my friend and I drank the whole thing. The next day, my mother thought we had the flu. Either she was clueless or she just didn’t want to have the “conversation.” Either are completely possible.

I do admit that my school was a bit sheltered. One of the top all girl private schools in the country, partying and recreational activities were hard to come by. So thankfully, we were saved from anything hard-core. One girl had heard of cocaine so she cut up an aspirin and snorted it. She was sick that day from school. Another time, we had heard about pot, so we took Lipton tea leaves and wrapped them in paper and tried to smoke it. Yes, I was a dork. But I’d rather be a dork than a junkie my dear ladies. And you know what? We got high! Well, we were so convinced that the magical tea leaves were doing something, we psychologically made ourselves get to an altered state.

All dorkiness aside, I never heard many stories of other kids having drug problems. Sure, I knew some pot smokers. I had a couple of friends who had dropped acid. But mostly it was kids who were finding solace in liquor. So when did liquor become so goody-goody?

Today, it’s all about weird shit. I cannot believe what kids are trying. Here’s one that’s a real kick:

I have drugs in my house!!

BATH SALT’ DRUG RAISES ALARM : A relatively new type of stimulant drug is causing alarm, and people who take them sometimes turn violent and psychotic. The stimulants, “bath salts,” are sold legally in many states and can be purchased in some convenience stores because of a label that says “not for human consumption.” They come in powder or crystal form like traditional bath salts, but people take them as recreational drugs, snorting, injecting, or smoking them. The drug, which has turned up in the past year, has already been banned in at least 28 states, mostly in the South and the Midwest.

WTF??!! I have bath salts right now next to my tub! Should I go party?? Who thinks up this stuff? What kind of desperate state do you need to be in to say “I’m going to go inject my grandmother’s bath salts into my body for kicks? And it doesn’t stop there:

Ever since the scandalous video of Miley Cyrus taking bong hits and “tripping out” hit the web, sales of a South American plant, called salvia divinorum, have jumped and L.A.-area head shops have reported many customers asking for “the stuff Miley was smoking,” according to TMZ.

Aren’t the internet, texting, schoolwork, friends, boys, and “American Idol” enough to keep kids entertained?! Apparently not. What do we need to do to keep kids out of this stuff? What kind of willpower do you need to say “No thanks” to a handful of pills? Is it the parents’ fault? Society? The internet? I think it’s a little of all of the above.

And thanks to the increase in psychiatry and it being cool to go see a shrink, and the overzealous prescription pads, it seems that every adult and their dog is on medication. Which in turn means that kids are taking medication. Why? Because they copy their parents of course. I don’t think kids found Xanax and all of that on their own. I think they looked in mommy and daddy’s medicine cabinet and found some shit. The hardest drug in my mother’s cabinet was Midol. Oooh, the party I could have! The use of prescription drugs by youth is appalling:

They look just like candy!

Over-the-counter (OTC) and prescription drugs are becoming the new “party” drugs among teens, especially younger teens. In fact, one in every five teens has abused a prescription pain medication, prescription stimulants, or tranquilizers. And at least one in 10 teens reports using cough medicine in order to get high. Some of the kids say they could have likely found other drugs to feed their habit, but prescription drugs were not only legal but much easier to get.

So ladies, what’s all this going to lead to? Are kids just growing up too fast and that’s why they are trying all this stuff? Are they disenfranchised? I think kids are kids, no matter what generation, and that means that if they get guidance, they won’t do this stuff. It’s easy for me to say I guess because I never did hard stuff, and I’m sure there are parents out there who are the picture perfect couple with a drug-infested teenager. But drugs and alcohol are used to fill a void and then it becomes an addiction, so how do you keep it from even entering your kid’s life?

This is a tough topic and is sure to be a problem for a while for our society. I think it’s also one of the scariest things about being a parent – you can think you are doing the right things and still the kid can be f’d up. I had a friend in college who tried cocaine once and became an addict. His life when downhill fast and last I heard, he was a stripper. So sad. I didn’t try it with him because I was scared. Scared I would like it. And I sure the hell am glad that I didn’t try it. I wish I could turn back the clock and go back to that night and convince him not to try it. But I can’t.

Ladies – if you know a teen, talk to them about drugs. I know this sounds like an afterschool special but seriously, it’s crazy times. Just yelling at them or threatening them to not do drugs won’t do anything. In fact, tell a teenager NOT to do something and they will see it as a challenge to do it. Aren’t teenagers fun???