 |
Staying Cool
Jason was determined not to use drugs. He practiced ways to say no and avoided all the common places he might be pressured to do drugs. He didn’t hang out with kids who did drugs either. Then one evening after he finished babysitting for a neighbor in his apartment building the woman lit up a joint and offered it to him. Jason was shocked; this woman had been friends with his parents for years. She was an adult and a responsible figure in his life. What should he do?
Jason is already off to a great start—he decided before a situation came up that he wasn’t going to use drugs. He even practiced ways to say no and worked hard to avoid situations in which he’d be pressured to use drugs. That’s really important because if he leaves the door open to using alcohol or drugs, it’s much more likely that when an offer does come, he would cave under the pressure and try the joint.
However, when a trusted family friend offers you a joint, it does put a new twist on the situation. After picking his jaw up off the floor, Jason can still use the same skills he’s already practiced when saying no to kids his own age. The easiest response is just to say “No thanks” and walk away. There are lots of variations to this response, with a few imaginative ones being “No thanks, I’m into reality”; “No, my imagination is good enough already”; or “No, but if you have any chocolate . . . ” (many more creative and sometimes hilarious ways to say no to drugs are found by Googling “60 Ways to Say No to Drugs”). If his neighbor continues to push him to try the joint, Jason can again say no and give some reasons why he has decided not to try drugs. Finally, he could change the subject by asking for his babysitting pay and saying that he really needs to get home.
Probably Jason’s toughest decision is what to do after he refuses the marijuana and leaves his neighbor’s apartment. The odds are high that if he tells his parents about the offer, he’ll probably lose his babysitting job, and it could damage or even destroy his parents’ relationship with the neighbor. In the end, however, it’s probably best for Jason to tell his parents what happened. There are probably other kids in the apartment building, and it’s not good for anyone in the building to be exposed to illegal drug use. His parents can best judge how to handle the situation on an adult-to-adult level. Even if Jason loses his babysitting job, it’s better than continuing to face future pressure from his neighbor to use marijuana or to expose others to the same temptation. Staying strong with his convictions in this situation will make Jason even stronger when other temptations come his way in the future.
__________________________
Curt VanderWaal, M.S.W., Ph.D., is chair and professor of social work at Andrews University, where he has taught since 1990. He is also associate director of the Center for Policy Research at the Institute for Prevention of Addictions. He teaches classes in drug and alcohol addiction and treatment, group therapy, and values and ethics.
Curt likes travel, skiing, basketball, photography, canoeing, and eating Thai and Indian food. He knows an insane number of pirate jokes, checks e-mail obsessively, and hates squash. |
|
|
