Marijuana What's a Parent to Believe (Informed Parent) [Paperback]

MD Timmen L. Cermak (Author)

Book Description

Series: Informed Parent | Publication Date: July 23, 2003

As a parent, if you're not sure what to believe about marijuana, how will you handle the subject with your child? Maybe you smoked pot as a teen, or you use marijuana today. Maybe you never tried pot, or you don't even know what it looks like. Maybe you're simply confused over conflicting claims about the drug whether it's addictive, how harmful it is, why some think it should be legalized. The best way for you to help your teen make healthy choices is to be informed. This much-needed book about America's most widely used illegal drug helps parents sort through the latest facts, the known risks, and the divergent perspectives on pot. The basic message? For teens, marijuana use equals risk. Your basic message? That's up to you.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Is in private practice of psychiatry and addiction psychiatry, San Francisco and Marin County.Medical director and psychiatric consultant, Henry Ohlhoff Programs, SF, CA - 30-day residential, day treatment, 6-month halfway house and full range of outpatient chemical dependence services.Murray Hill Communications - consultant to Recoveryconnection.com, a recovery-oriented websiteB.A., Philosophy, Ohio Wesleyan University, Delaware, OHM.D., Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OhioCertifications:Diploma, American Board of Psychiatry and NeurologyCertificate of Added Qualification in Addiction PsychiatryCertified by the American Society of Addiction Medicine

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

from Chapter 4
Why Teens Begin Using Marijuana:
The Seductive Power of Pot

Have you ever wanted to just get out from underneath all the pressures weighing on you, to stop the world for a few hours, to get away from the routine of who you have become, and to dream about what life could be? Have you ever wearied of having to take life's responsibilities so seriously, wanted to lighten up, take the afternoon off, laugh at your cares? Or are there times you wish you could be a little bad, let loose, and say the hell with trying to do what's right all the time, bend the rules, take some risks? Perhaps more important, have you longed for greater mystery in your life, a deeper curiosity about your connection to the infinite, even a spiritual transformation?

I certainly have felt all these things, and they help me relate to why many teens are attracted to experimenting with marijuana and drugs in general. As adults, we are under a constant barrage of "answers" to these longings: buy a lottery ticket, take a vacation, drive a sporty car, be sexy, order this brand of beer, catch the right mate, take yoga. The quick fixes are alluring, but superficial, and even adults are not always prepared to deal with all the marketing that touts easy answers. The longings are very real, and most of us are familiar with how much power they have. To understand why teens begin to play with pot, we need to understand that they have the same longings, without the experience to help them steer away from easy answers. Underneath these longings are a host of motivations, most of which are completely natural.

Curiosity as a Fundamental Motivation

Adolescence is a time of tremendous change. Too often, adults and teens think the primary task of adolescence is separation. Many consider adolescent rebellion to be a necessary part of the separation process. Indeed, there is a need for teens to begin loosening the connections between themselves and their parents. But this separation is not the most important change required. Adolescence is also a time for forming new connections—to one's peers, to the world outside family, to one's sexuality, to the deeper experience of self coming into awareness, and to one's innate spiritual longings. Separation from family is necessary primarily to open up space for all the new connections teens must forge. Curiosity fuels the drive to find new relationships and to experience the world beyond the confines of home.

Adolescence is life's first really conscious voyage of discovery. Teens are aware that they are on a profoundly important voyage, and this conscious awareness helps in guiding the voyage. Some are terrified and try to remain moored to their home dock as long as possible. Others are cautious and take several short cruises first before striking out for more distant ports. Some respond to the challenge and sail out directly to find their fate, while others are so thrilled by the adventure lying just over the horizon that they charge out like dog soldiers high on adrenaline. Human temperament varies widely, making it nearly impossible to make any universal generalization about teenagers.

Still, we can be sure that the majority of teens who experiment with marijuana are motivated primarily by a desire to satisfy their innate curiosity about the world. Whether they first try pot with trepidation or rush headlong into the experience, they are intrigued by what lies ahead for them. It is one of a thousand ways they are trying on new parts of the world to see how each fits for them. While they may be ignoring or denying the risks, the motivation propelling them is essentially healthy.

Darker Motivations

In many cases, however, adolescents are motivated to try drugs more by a desire to get away from home than to reach any given destination. Poverty, whether emotional, spiritual, or financial, has parched their family and grown sharp thorns on what should be comforting relationships. Cruelty, whether emotional, spiritual, physical, or sexual, has scorched away any desire for family, leaving some kids to stow away on whatever ship they can find. Family problems often contribute tremendously to the urge to find solace in alcohol and other drugs.

Finally, some adolescents are so discomforted by their own sense of failure and internal distress that the distraction that drugs offer is too powerful to resist. Depression and anxiety can bedevil teenagers just as deeply as they torment adults. The stress that kids bear today is far beyond any that most of us experienced during our youth. Success in college seems to be predicated on getting into the correct kindergarten. No wonder that any hint of a learning disorder or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) plummets kids into feeling defective and doomed (see chapter 5). Whatever offers any hope of relief from these stressors is bound to be welcome.

All Dressed Up with No Place to Go

Adolescence, then, is a time of fundamental transformation in perspective, basic connections, and identity. Because this process of transformation takes place over several years, impatience and urgency are common, if not legendary, among teenagers. The experience of being "all dressed up with no place to go" pervades the adolescent's life, especially sexually. Having a driver's license but not owning a car symbolically defines the teen years. On a more abstract level, teens often have a fully formed concept of independence and freedom but still lack some of the basic tools to realize this goal. It is human nature for them to focus more on the barriers placed on their freedom than on the preparatory tasks that lie ahead of them.

It is within this maelstrom of powerful forces that drugs are first encountered, and their effects can be profoundly seductive. The French novelist Marcel Proust wrote, "The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes." I suspect that this advice applies more to wearied adults than to fresh teens, for whom seeking new landscapes is precisely their most important challenge. Their recently developed abstract thinking is all the new eyes they need. Now their job is to seek new landscapes that satisfy their own unique needs and desires and then to connect emotionally to these new vistas.

Marijuana provides much more of the "new eyes" that Proust describes than the "new landscapes" that teens need. Suddenly, with a minimum of effort, a little pot overlays the world with a superficial sense of novelty. Being high seems to transform everything and passively grants teens an experience of great connectedness. This new world is probably nothing like the one Mom and Dad live in, so an immediate sense of separation appears. Almost magically, marijuana seems to leapfrog an adolescent away from childhood. The chemically induced experience substitutes for actual, hard-won psychological development, and it can continue to substitute for emotional growth for years. While giving a teen an illusion of having jumped ahead in development, marijuana, like any drug, can actually delay and distort maturation. The chronic pot smoker may wake one day to find that peers have long ago embarked successfully into their adult lives, leaving him or her behind, without the skills required to move ahead.

+ + +

Developmental Tasks for Parents

Before looking at how the experience of being high on marijuana can substitute for successfully completing developmental tasks, I want to take a moment to point out that as parents we face our own developmental challenges as our children pass through adolescence. After years of taking direct responsibility for managing the risks facing our children, we now need to begin stepping back. If teens are to begin taking greater responsibility for themselves, we have to make space for this to happen. Except in situations that threaten basic health and safety, we gradually have to move into the role of consultants to our kids' lives, where before we had been producer and director. The timing of this shift in roles is critical and difficult. While some of us turn too much freedom and responsibility over to our children too soon, others hold on too long. There is no perfection here, only trial and error.

Shifting into the role of consultant goes beyond a change in child-rearing techniques. It represents a developmental step for the parent as well. Impulses to overcontrol the world that went unchecked during our child's early life suddenly become the focus of intense power struggles with adolescents. To pick battles wisely, we parents need clarity about what lies under our control and what does not. We need to have enough self-worth to feel valuable to our children even when we've been relegated to the sidelines of their lives. It helps to be solid in our faith, whatever form that might take. Without faith that the universe provides the support teens need to mature into healthy adults, the next few years are going to be filled with anxiety. It is a rare parent who understands that anxiety about his or her teen is not the teen's fault. Anxiety about the normal process of separating from our partially-matured teenage child is our responsibility. It is not the child's job to soothe our fears or our dislike of "losing our babies."

Different Views on Why Teens Experiment with Drugs

The initial experimentation with smoking grass is often a watershed moment in a child's life. Despite all the antidrug messages received in school and at home, many teens and preteens decide to take the risk of getting high soon after the opportunity first presents itself. This single act is a clear step away from the path prescribed by most parents. In households where the importance of not using drugs has been emphasized, it is a direct act of disobedience. (We're ignoring for the moment kids who are introduced to smoking marijuana by their parents, either directly or by dipping into their parents' stash t...

Product Details

• Paperback: 264 pages
• Publisher: Hazelden (July 23, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1592850391
• ISBN-13: 978-1592850396
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #283,236 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent- great analysis, March 19, 2006

By 

Josephine Gerrard (Albany, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Marijuana What's a Parent to Believe (Informed Parent) (Paperback)

This was recommended by my counselor. My son grabbed it and read the medical detail and we now really actually know what is going on. Its worth every penny. Its not for those who aren't interested in scientific studies because its very well
supported. I now know quite a lot and would never suggest that Marijuana is
an appropriate drug for anyone who needs to study or learn.

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Balanced, nuanced analysis, April 22, 2010

By 

C. Brown - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Marijuana What's a Parent to Believe (Informed Parent) (Paperback)

The author has extensive experience with young marijuana users and can pinpoint causes of using, those at risk, and how marijuana is harmful, especially to young users. As a parent whose child became addicted very early without my even knowing it, what the author said perfectly matched my experience. When marijuana becomes an addiction, it becomes a lifestyle and an obsession and chokes out growth that the adolescent needs in order to reach maturity. It may takes years to repair the damage caused by the tunnel vision of marijuana obsession if the user does manage to tear himself away from using. The best strategy is prevention or at least to prevent use as long as possible, but most parents will say that they had no idea their child would try marijuana at such a young age. The signs can be subtle and not easily detected at first. I would recommend this book to any parent as many kids will try pot, but especially to parents who want to understand what is happening to their children when they abuse marijuana.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Essential information for every parent of an adolescent--and not just about marijuana., April 19, 2011

By 

Marilyn Thatcher, Ph.D. - See all my reviews

This review is from: Marijuana What's a Parent to Believe (Informed Parent) (Paperback)

Dr. Cermak's wealth of well researched and evidence-based information covers normal adolescent development and the interplay with substance use. Interventions and treatment i.e. family therapy, cannot be successful without understanding and addressing the unique developmental tasks of the adolescent (pgs. 169-183). Adolescents are not always gracious as they gain maturity. But understanding the physiological, societal and educational stresses aids parents to be compassionate supporters of their child's developmental pathway versus labeling their behaviors (including drug use) as "pathological, hopeless, slackers etc". and creating a barrier in their relationship.
Dr. Cermak answers all questions about substances, their impact on the developing brain, alternatives for treatment, and outcomes.
It is difficult to envision how this much critical and documented information concerning adolescent development AND substance use managed to be presented in one elegantly written book.

Marilyn Thatcher, Ph.D.