Reply to Intervene to Save a Student Life from Suicide or Threat of Violence, Yes, But How About from Drugs?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My sister and I have been having an ongoing conversation on the following question.  If you are a student and you hear a fellow student talk about committing suicide, or discuss plans or intentions to commit violent acts against their classmates or school, you are obviously going to immediately report it to someone so that they can intervene and help.  Why then are students inclined to do the exact opposite when it comes to escalating and/or dangerous drug use among a fellow student?

Her oldest son is currently in college and attended an elite prep school in the Northeast (akin to, or with an even better reputation than, schools like GDS, NCS/STA, or Sidwell).  One of the young men in his extended high school circle (not a best friend, but definitely someone he knew well, socialized with, and was in many classes and activities with) died last year of a drug overdose after dropping out of college.  This was a boy who was supposedly well liked, respected by his peers, one of the academic stars of his class, with a close group of friends, a good athlete, and highly successful in one of his school's academic teams - which is a perennial powerhouse.  His parents are professionals and by all accounts his entire family (brother and sister) is lovely.

After this young man's death there has been a good deal of ongoing guilt and self-recriminations among his former classmates.  The parents supposedly had no idea their son had a drug problem until he started to fall apart during his second year of college (an Ivy), and deteriorated so quickly that he had to drop out by the end of that year.  His high school classmates knew that he smoked marijuana (as some of them did) in high school - often during the school week or school day - and that he had moved on to DXM (cough syrup) and opioid use (smoking from a pipe).  But no one wanted to say anything because (a) they thought it was not affecting his grades or ability to function (great grades and college), and (b) they did not want to ruin his life.  Obviously knowing now the path his life would take (OD injecting heroin), many of his friends wish that they had spoken to his parents about the issue earlier.  This story has affected us both because the circumstances and situation are so much exactly like our daily experience.

As a result I have told my children that they need to report escalating or increased drug use by a friend to me, so that I can contact someone to help.   Or they need to write and mail an anonymous note to the family of the student involved, and/or write and deliver an anonymous note to a school teacher or counselor so that they can intervene to help the student.  I have told them that observing or knowing about an issue of risky drug use among  a student, is like knowing that that student intends to harm themselves or others in the immediate future.

I have defined the types of risky drug (ab)use that should be immediately (either anonymously or in person) reported to the student's family or school as:

(1) selling any sort of drugs on or near school property;

(2) using any drug (marijuana, prescription medicines, over-the-counter drug, opioids, or street drugs) multiple times a week;

(3) showing up high or otherwise altered to school;

(4) progressing to the point where you are either smoking opioids or street drugs from a pipe (pre-injection), or through injection (by which point your are an addict).

Already one of my children has told me that they are concerned about one of their classmates, and would like me to help contact the school (I intend to mail an anonymous note to the family).  I would ask all families to please have similar conversations with their own children.  If you think this cannot or does not occur in your school, you are wrong about that.  And if you believe that it is not your business to intervene when a student has started down a risky path with drugs because "you don't want to ruin their lives", well, you are more likely to "ruin their lives" if you do not intervene to help.  It has been conclusively demonstrated that early-onset (11-16 years) drug abuse is much more difficult to kick (as opposed to beginning drug use later in life), and that once a teenager has progressed to smoking opioids or street drugs it is certain they will eventually turn to injecting them.  And once a person uses injections to get high that habit is mostly impossible to kick.

[/quote]

these GDS booster threads are growing tiresome[/quote]

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