Hi all,we are having a very hard time figuruing out what to do with our 16yr old son. He started Alternative school in Jan. and got a job. Yesterday, he was caught with some of his friends "snorting perscription pill" of his friends. So now he is kicked out of school for 2 weeks and left home to do not much of anything. I told my husband that it makes no sense, it is like we are rewarding him for screwing up! So today, I shut all the TV's off and gave him a list of chores to do. But all other suggestions are very much appreciated!!!!

That was pretty lame of the school but I suppose they're more worried about liability than anything else.

You're doing the right thing by not letting it be a holiday. I would maybe add doing some community service someplace where he can see severe addiction up close and personal.

I'm wondering what conversations you've had with him so far about drugs and what your general attitude is toward it... I tend to wince when people tell their kids that people who do drugs are "bad" or "failures" or "stupid" or whatever else, because as soon as they meet someone who does drugs and still has their wits about them, it discredits everything that's been said and they no longer trust their parents.

I remember one conversation with my Dad in my teens after my parents learned of my own experimentation (after the above tactic had obviously failed ). What he said to me really made me think about what I was doing and stuck with me. He said, "The story goes like this: You meet a bunch of people who are into something and they seem like decent enough people... So one day you decide to try it. You have a blast! It feels great. Then when it wears off, you take a personal inventory over the next couple of days and you're still the same as you ever were, plus an amazing experience. Wonderful! Why doesn't everybody do this? So you try it again. And one more time. And maybe start doing it more often. But then one day you're NOT fine. You're NOT yourself anymore, something feels "off" and you're paranoid, and uncomfortable, and disconnected from the rest of the world somehow... And while you may be keeping your head above water you realize that you're not all you could be, that you've JUST been "getting by" and that it's a little bit harder to do things that came easily before. Then maybe what you've been taking lets you feel "normal" again, so you get on that road, taking it more and more just to feel yourself. And the problem is that you never get yourself back. You can quit but you will always feel a difference, and you will always wonder what you might have achieved in your life if you hadn't been wasting time wrecking yourself. More importantly, no-one knows how much or how little they can take before it affects them this way, because everyone is different."

While this conversation really struck a chord and made me think, it didn't stop me dead in my tracks. I did still experiment through my late teens. But I think I was much more careful about it than I might have been otherwise. In the end, I did end up feeling a bit of the truth in his words. And I knew to stop there.