FORWARD TO THE ORIGINAL DRUG MANUAL FOR KIDS

The idea for this manual came to me after one of my cynical suggestions that drug policy reformers would further their cause better by promotion of education of children about drug abuse and addiction problems in the school – rather than waste their efforts on minor drug law changes. This was an easy assessment when one considers that 98% of drug abuse and addiction problems are not related to illegal drugs – and less than 20% if one includes alcohol. Our local school had just discontinued its DARE program and one school board candidate made an issue about the lack of drug education in our schools. The problem was that DARE – like all other anti drug programs – tended to blame the drugs and equated simple use to the problems of abuse and addiction, which is not a useful tool for children who are constantly exposed on TV and the mass media to drug ads that equate drug use to instant relief from problems and instant fun. The simple fact of life is that it is not drug use – but abuse – that causes the problems.

The problem was that there is no educational curriculum available in our schools to teach our children about the problems of drug abuse and addiction; that is a skill that they have to learn on their own or from parents and their community. While this should not have come as a major surprise to myself, since I’ve maintained for years that our policies toward drugs are not meant to even attempt to solve any real problems, I did delude myself that this was a golden opportunity. I could either market the manual to schools or present the lack of market as irrefutable evidence that people in power were absolutely not serious about dealing with real problems. Either way it would be a success! In any event I was determined that the first comprehensive drug manual for kids would deal with real issues and offer real solutions to real problems that real kids faced in their everyday lives and their everyday futures.

This manual has little to do with drugs and I make no apologies for that. Drugs are only one of many tools we have in dealing with life and its problems. I show zero respect for drug prohibition, its adherents, or their attitudes and I make no apologies for that either. Prohibition is an inherently abusive policy, it has no basis in truth, and its adherents’ arguments can’t stand up even to the slightest scrutiny. The purpose of this manual is not to illuminate you about the benefits or costs of drug use. If you decide to use drugs it will be your responsibility to educate yourself on those matters. I will tell you how to get useful information and warn you of misleading claims – but you will have to get that information yourselves from reference materials and highly trained specialists. More importantly, I will tell you of other more useful tools and strategies to deal with the problems of stresses and abuse in everyday life.This manual claims little to no expertise in treating addictions or dependencies, most professional treatment programs are successful with less than half their patients - and most of those are due to the personal resolve and support network of the addict. Besides, drug treatment programs typically treat less than a third of the total problems ignoring socially acceptable addictions and medically prescribed dependencies of a long-term nature. Drugs will neither ruin your life nor solve any long-term problems; how you use them will determine their value in your life. Ultimately all that is worthwhile in life comes from within yourself and the sooner you take control of your life the easier life will become for you.

I will apologize for my sesquipedalian tendencies. I hope and trust that you will be able to get the message without too much referral to dictionaries and other reference books and I’ve repeated and rephrased my more important points. My editors [if I am somehow published] may attach a supplemental dictionary to clarify some of my larger words [like sesquipedalian – tendency to use big words]. I was raised in an upper middle class home, went to a US service academy, and then spent most of my adult life working in low wage jobs with poorly educated colleagues and clients. I have been a dedicated runner and somewhat competitive distance runner for over 30 injury free years. My email address is rimchamp77@juno.com; I won the 1977 Crater Lake Marathon – which is part of the ‘rim runs’ that include 2 shorter races – which fully explains my choice of rimchamp77 for my Internet identity.

My parents were – and are only to a lesser extent - ‘functional alcoholics’ and lifelong nicotine addicts; even today they are in denial about their drug problems. I had two siblings who met with early deaths due to drug abuse. Needless to say I have had to learn coping strategies in my life. While I have done very well in IQ tests, I am not very good at solving complicated problems. I am excellent at solving simple problems and have a ‘flair for the obvious’ that will undoubtedly mystify many of my readers who will state “Well duh! Anyone should be able to figure that out”.

I would hope that this would not be the only drug manual available in later years. It should be rather easy to write a more easily understood and readable manual. That could be a task that any one of you can take upon yourself when you have better control over your life. I will publish any and all variations at my website: http://www.geocities.com/rimchamp77 under some appropriate subcategory. At some point in our futures I would hope that one of these manuals would be taught in schools to your children. This manual is meant as a prototype and it will be out there as a basis for comparison whenever those in power lie to you and promote alternatives that don’t deal with real issues.

I have written this manual for a younger me. I wrote this manual to deal with the kinds of problems that caused heartache and misery for myself – before I figured out useful coping strategies. This manual is precisely what I would have wanted available to help me through the difficult people and situations. I might have made better choices or avoided the abusive behavior that I have inflicted upon others in my life. While it may be too late to undo the mistakes of my youth, it isn’t for you. Besides, as old as I am, I still have a LOT of productive life ahead of me.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction – an overview of drugs and ten simple rules about understanding the problems related to drug use.

Chapter 1 entitled “Lies, lies, nothing but lies” describes how people lie about drugs and their motivations for doing so. It also describes how you can get accurate information about drugs, the types of questions to be asked and the people most likely to be able to give you accurate information. It also mentions the nature and content of lies put forth by both those supporting drug prohibition and reformers.

Chapter 2 entitled “costs and benefits of drug use” mentions that each drug offers benefits and that the costs are usually related directly to the benefit derived. It also describes the various drug delivery systems and the reasons for using different drugs in different manners. It also describes natural drugs such as adrenalin and endorphins, which are related to stress and exercise. The various forms of emotional abuse connected with stress are described. There is a simple 3-step strategy for coping with stress by unilateral elimination of factors and suggestions about effective adoption of a lifelong exercise regimen.

Chapter 3 entitled “recreational use of drugs” describes the pressures to use drugs in a recreational manner and in a recreational setting. It includes simple rules for ‘responsible use of drugs’ that will minimize harm done by recreational use – including the all too important ‘transportation’ problem facing most recreational users. There is a lengthy section on sex and sexual relationships including the expansion of principles introduced in Chapter 2 and the avoidance of pitfalls such as rape, abortion, and emotional abuse.

Chapter 4 entitled “families, abuse, and drug abuse/addiction” expands the coping strategies described in prior chapters to that of parenthood and dealing with the raising of children as a parent. It then goes into strategies for children to deal with the abuse of parents and helping their parents cope with outside pressures. Finally it transitions from severe parental abuse to severe abuse in general offering a lot in terms of recognizing abusive patterns and a lot less in terms of effective counter measures, recognizing the difficulty in responding to abuse – without becoming abusive and worsening an already bad situation. While drug abuse is a factor early and often in this chapter we get into the specifics of drug addiction and abuse [including dependency] and reaffirm that drug abuse is merely one of many symptoms of another problem.

Chapter 5 entitled “other considerations” gets into the real problem of unilaterally giving up abusive behavior in a give and take world. This chapter has a lot to do with legal principles and how they interact with moral principals and righteousness learned in prior chapters. It acknowledges that historically there have always been injustices and hypocrisies – but that the give and take world at least pays lip services to higher principles.

Chapter 6 entitled ‘alternatives to drug use’ mentions drug use as a ‘coping mechanism” for emotional and physical problems that one encounters in real life. In this chapter we get into alternatives such as religion, meditation, exercise regimens, along with political and social activism as a means to improve the quality of one’s life.