The article places a lot of blame on the state of Texas:
> Directing blame at Mexico is also a way to avoid looking at how Texas fails children.
But also includes anecdotes like:
> When Noah awoke from his coma, he was tearful and apologetic. He thought only a few hours had passed; it had been four days. Janel and her husband called treatment centers, but none would take Noah without his consent, and he insisted that he didn’t have a problem. Even so, Janel was hopeful; that summer was one of the best they’d had as a family. Noah was dating a sweet girl, and when he wasn’t with her he seemed happy enough to hang around the house doing TikTok cooking challenges. Then, the first week of school, sixteen days after Janel gave birth to another son, Noah overdosed at his girlfriend’s house.
It seems to me that if a child overdoses, but refuses to accept their parents demand to seek treatment, they should be denied privileges - forbidden from spending time with unapproved friends, denied a cell phone, denied allowance, etc. This case (and a few others) seem to be clear cut cases where a parent could have forced compliance, but choose not to - I can't imagine any kid choosing no friends and no cell phone to avoid going to one hour per week of narcotics anonymous.
Largely, yes. Every aspect of my life was heavily controlled and I had very little freedom to choose how I spent any of my time or efforts. I was still a child then, not an adult. I’ve had no problems with addiction since becoming an adult and being in control of my own life.
Would you blame yourself if your 3-year old overdosed on Tylenol he grabbed from your medicine cabinet? Would you blame yourself if your 17-year old daughter chose to commit suicide by grabbing a bottle of Tylenol from your medicine cabinet?
draconian parenting in a free society leads to incredibly bad outcomes. the parents undermine their own authority and the child doesn't know any better but to rebel. this is why parenting is hard, you need to walk a fine line between 'friend' and 'jailer'.
a lot of immigrants have a tough time with this general concept - they have no idea what it's like growing up in the US, none whatsoever. it produces wildly bi-modal outcomes. the ones that end up on the bottom of the curve are left scratching their heads, because they're ego-driven/stubborn or stupid, or both. and plenty of the outwardly successful kids have issues later on.
also the reason i'm not going to have kids. i don't think i could handle it, and this isn't the sort of thing you get another shot at.
None of my family or friends were aware of my drug use at any point. That choice was not presented to me.
Furthermore, rehab would not have fixed my conditions that led to addiction. I turned 18, my father moved out, I immediately found better things to do with my time now that I was free to plan my own day. And I never struggled with addiction again.
I don’t think rehab would have helped, because it couldn’t solve my actual problem.
I'm glad you're doing better these days, but it's not at all clear to me how your experience relates to my original comment. In that comment, I suggested that parents should use the restriction of privileges to incentivize a non-compliant child to get the appropriate treatment for a substance abuse disorder. You indicated that your father restricted your privileges for such a long time it had a negative impact on your development but that your father was not aware of your substance abuse disorder. Then, the restrictions couldn't have been to incentivize you to get treatment. So how was your dad's strategy similar to my suggestion?
I'm glad you're doing better these days. As a father to very young kids, I'm curious to learn what I can from your experience. Was your father controlling you in a misguided but well-meaning attempt to shield you from "bad" stuff? Or was it more malicious? I don't plan to be the second type, but if your dad was also trying his best, how does a parent balance preventing obvious bad things from happening but also give enough freedom to not stifle the kid?
In my experience, you cannot force or punish someone out of problematic substance abuse. If it was that easy, we'd already have the solution. These kids are engaging in this behavior for one reason or another and the solution isn't to make them feel worse about it than they already do.
I was required to attend alcoholics anonymous for three months to continue in university after passing out from intoxication on the quad. Hearing those stories led me to stop experimenting with new drugs and reduce my drinking - I didn't want to become those people. I don't know that such cautionary tales would necessarily have helped this child, but they might have.
Let's not forget that attending substance abuse classes is the recommend medical treatment for substance abuse, a medical problem. Doctors wouldn't recommend it if it didn't work sometimes. Imagine if the story was about a broken leg instead of substance abuse and the child similarly said they didn't feel like anything was wrong with their leg, and so it similarly went untreated.
> I was required to attend alcoholics anonymous for three months to continue in university after passing out from intoxication on the quad.
That's quite different from consuming synthetic opioids in elementary / middle school. The former is fairly common at colleges and universities in the west. I'm glad that you were able to dodge that bullet though.
> I don't know that such cautionary tales would necessarily have helped this child, but they might have
They certainly didn't for me. Adolescents aren't necessarily known for their ability to accurately weigh long term consequences when making decisions.
> is the recommend medical treatment for substance abuse, a medical problem
AA and NA would like to disagree. Spirituality is the central component of these programs.
> Imagine if the story was about a broken leg instead of substance abuse and the child similarly said they didn't feel like anything was wrong with their leg, and so it similarly went untreated
A broken leg would be painful enough to spur anyone to seek treatment. Consequences from substance abuse and experimenting with drugs often don't manifest as quickly or as obviously.
The bottom line is that putting further shame on a person who is abusing substances, often leads to the further abuse of substances. This was the case with myself, and most people I encountered throughout my trips to AA / NA meetings, rehabs and a halfway house. I didn't start getting better until I began loving myself enough to stop wanting to slowly kill myself. Punishing or shaming a child who is suffering or simply comitting a mistake, is most certainly not the key to ending their suffering or helping them to realize their misstep.
That could as easily have backfired, especially because AA is religious and has cultish vibes. A young person who drinks that much might well end up deciding to say fuck this and drink even more.
We know there are better and more effective ways (Sinclair method, or even just reading The easy way to stop drinking), but they don't have the cultural heft that AA has.
It's not always easy dealing with teenagers you know. That's why you have to treat them like little adults when they're younger, all the way from when they're toddlers really. Children don't usually focus on the long term, so you have to make them see the long term.
> Directing blame at Mexico is also a way to avoid looking at how Texas fails children.
But also includes anecdotes like:
> When Noah awoke from his coma, he was tearful and apologetic. He thought only a few hours had passed; it had been four days. Janel and her husband called treatment centers, but none would take Noah without his consent, and he insisted that he didn’t have a problem. Even so, Janel was hopeful; that summer was one of the best they’d had as a family. Noah was dating a sweet girl, and when he wasn’t with her he seemed happy enough to hang around the house doing TikTok cooking challenges. Then, the first week of school, sixteen days after Janel gave birth to another son, Noah overdosed at his girlfriend’s house.
It seems to me that if a child overdoses, but refuses to accept their parents demand to seek treatment, they should be denied privileges - forbidden from spending time with unapproved friends, denied a cell phone, denied allowance, etc. This case (and a few others) seem to be clear cut cases where a parent could have forced compliance, but choose not to - I can't imagine any kid choosing no friends and no cell phone to avoid going to one hour per week of narcotics anonymous.