I did my share of high school drinking, but I was also a working class kid who knew I couldn’t get into trouble, because my parents did not have the means to bail me out of it.
And when I had kids of my own, I repeated what an old friend who was a drug and alcohol counselor told me: Namely, that their job was to grow up and become adults, and if their response to every little stress in life is to drink or get high, they are only postponing the inevitable. They’re not really learning to deal with things in any adult way. I told them about the people I knew who still couldn’t handle life straight.
That’s why the Mothers Against Drunk Driving position, while to an extent, is practical and certainly well-meaning, does not address the real issue. Teenage kids should not be getting shitfaced as a way of life.
I also told my kids I expected a certain amount of drug and alcohol experimentation, that it was normal. But I reminded them that I didn’t have enough money for a criminal defense attorney.
Anyway, I just finished reading this article about college drinking in the Chronicle of Higher Education, and wanted to share it.
“You’ve gone to all the finest schools all right, Miss Lonely, but you know you only used to get juiced in it…..Nobody taught you how to live out on the street, and now you’re gonna have to get use to it…..Like a Rolling Stone”
I remember that when I was young, puritanical bullshit was primarily the position of Republicans.
Your generation sold out the younger ones. You got rid of all the good jobs. You made college unaffordable. You turned marriage into a fucking joke. Tell me again why ‘becoming an adult’ is so important under those circumstances? We have no futures — none, whatsoever. No families. No jobs. No nothing.
You all did that. Why should I believe anything you people have to say at this point?