Substance Abuse on the Rise: Who Bears Responsibility?
The recent death of Eric Siegel, a student at the Neveh Zion Yeshiva, of a heroin overdose, coupled with the arrest of four American students from Jerusalem area yeshivot for selling marijuana to an undercover policeman, should lead every Jewish parent to ask a simple question – why send my child to learn in Israel after high school?
The question is a good one, and it is an important one not only for those of us who believe that the year-in-Israel experience is a crucial part of contemporary Jewish education, but also for everyone concerned with the future of the American Jewish community.
This question demands that we consider whose responsibility it is to deal with the rise of substance abuse in the Orthodox community and what those responsible can do in response to this issue. While Yeshivot in Israel and day schools in North America have been in the news because of their students’ high profile arrests for substance abuse, the problem neither begins nor ends on their doorstep.
Who is responsible to deal with the increasing incidence of substance abuse in our community?
Personal Responsibility – obviously, when we deal with adults, it is ultimately the individual’s responsibility to learn what are accepted communal norms and to enter into an agreement to live up to those norms. Over the long-run, an individual cannot lay the blame for anti-social behavior on parents, schools, teachers, Rabbis or social workers. Nevertheless, this does not relieve community members from the obligation to present appropriate role-models and opportunities for remediation for young people growing up in the community. The message to young adults must be that they understand the dangers of substance abuse and make appropriate choices when confronted with opportunities of drug use.
Community Responsibility – at this point it is an open secret that the Orthodox community is not immune to the plague of substance abuse. Recent drug busts in the New York metropolitan area that have netted Yeshiva high school students are clearly a “wake-up” call to the community that this is a problem that cannot simply be swept under the carpet. Unfortunately, ours is a community that prefers to hit the “snooze” button in the hope that the problem will just “go away”. It will not. The world has changed, and the no-longer cloistered Jewish world has changed as well. In a recent NY Times article entitled “New to Capitol Hill? 10 Tips to Avoid Ruin” by Elisabeth Bumiller, the following appeared:
“Fred F. Fielding, the White House counsel for Ronald Reagan, who vetted the current President Bush’s cabinet nominees during the 2000 transition, heartily agrees. Nominees have to be prepared, he said, honestly to answer the awful questions posed by White House lawyers: Have you ever had an affair? Or used drugs? A yes to either of those questions, Mr. Fielding added, was not necessarily a problem. ”
“There’s a difference between somebody having an affair years ago, before their first marriage broke up, and someone having an affair with someone he supervised,” he said. As for drugs, “occasional drug use in college would not be a disqualifier.”
Society has accepted “occasional drug use in college” as something acceptable for the country’s leadership, indicating that it is considered the norm, rather than an aberration. As such, it is incumbent upon our community and educational leadership to be knowledgeable and to accept that even among the “best and brightest” students who are daven in our shuls and are accepted to our Yeshivot there is going to exist a level of substance abuse- not only of alcohol, but of illegal drugs, as well. Recognizing this is the first step to learning how to deal with it – where to find professionals sensitive to the realities of the Orthodox community, how to make parents accept that their child can have a problem, how to direct families to programs that can offer solutions to these problems.
Yeshiva University and the Orthodox Union, representing educational and community organizations with vested interests in the health and welfare of the American Orthodox Jewish community have begun to make headway in this direction. Meetings have been called to make Israeli Yeshivot aware of the interest and willingness of these organizations to play a role in mediating with students. Recognizing that these problems are not unique to Israel programs, and need to be dealt with at the community level, the OU has begun a series of calls to community synagogues to heighten awareness and change behaviors and practices that appear to give license to some of these activities –see http://www.ou.org/other/5765/kcmain65.htm
Yeshiva Responsibility – In my eyes it is unfortunate that the one-year Israel programs are now viewed as a panacea for the problem students coming out of North American day schools. On some level I miss the pioneering days when only the most dedicated students gave up a year of college to study in Israel. Conditions were relatively primitive; there were no cellphones or email, there were barely phone lines at all. People came to Israel because – for all of the political tension there – it was a slower paced, kinder, gentler place. The reality has changed. The apparent success of one-year study programs in broadening one’s religious grounding and commitment prior to embarking on a program of academic study in an American university, brought the masses to learn in Israel. No longer only for the serious student – or the serious seeker- Israel programs became one of the unwritten requirements for inclusion in the Orthodox Jewish community. Who you would “hang out” with, who you would date, the Jewish life on which university campus, have all come to depend on where you went to learn in Israel.
This is the reality today, a reality that is perceived as a sign of success by the Jewish educational establishment, yet one that has caused certain tensions and frictions. As my doctoral research study showed, intense Israel programs are powerful forces in acculturation to religious norms. One manifestation of this is a phenomenon that has been dubbed “flipping out” where the student who back home had little or no interest in developing his or her religious practice beyond that of his community and peer group, suddenly is desirous of rebelling against her parents religious norms and values, perceiving them as being lukewarm, at best.
On the other hand, now that “everyone” goes to Israel, students who already in high school had begun to rebel against community norms and values by frequenting bars or abusing drugs or alcohol, see this as a year of experimentation with no serious academic responsibilities, far away from the watchful eyes of their parents. Such students do not “get into trouble” in Israel; they come “already troubled” from their years attending day schools in the United States.
Most of the Yeshivot in Israel are uniquely unprepared to deal with this. I recently asked a student in one of the more prestigious Yeshivot catering to Americans in Israel whether the school would know if a given student were involved in drugs. His response was “if a kid had spent the last week in an opium den in Thailand, they wouldn’t figure it out.” When I asked a Madrich at one of the Yeshivot Hesder whether the faculty discussed the recent arrest of American programs’ students for dealing drugs, he said that they denied that the problem could possibly exist in their Yeshiva. When he told them that in his years as a student some of his peers not only smoked marijuana, but actually grew it on the Yeshiva’s campus, they were in a state of shock.
Simply put, the “better” programs assume that the students that they accept would not be involved in dangerous or illegal activities.
At the same time, there are Israel programs that claim not to be part of the problem, rather that they are part of the solution. In a letter sent to alumni by Neve Zion, the program where Eric Siegel studied prior to his passing, the Yeshiva describes how they were always the place that gave a student a second chance; how drug use now begins in elementary school; how they added a social worker to the staff to help the educational staff deal with the problems that their students brought with them. With the tragedy of Eric’s death the Yeshiva is now instituting drug testing, and will be expelling students who fail – but, the letter continues, where will those students turn? Who will give them a second chance?
It is important to note, that far from blaming the Yeshiva for what happened to her son, Eric’s mother saw his time in Yeshiva as a step from a turbulent youth to a “blossoming” of adulthood, and called for donations to be made in his memory to the Yeshiva (see http://www.jewishjournal.com/home/preview.php?id=13582 )
The Jerusalem Post story about these programs garnered testimonials from alumni who indicated that they entered these Yeshivot as “at-risk” youth, and were saved by the warmth, compassion and caring that the faculty offered them (see http://tinyurl.com/5e2mq and the responses that follow the article).
The Rosh Yeshiva of Ner Yaakov, the Yeshiva in which some of the students who were arrested were learning, distributed this Jewish Week article to parents and alumni in the hope that it would offer a picture of some of the issues faced by the Orthodox Jewish community – http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/newscontent.php3?artid=10439 . The article quotes the administrator of one of the Israel study programs, comparing the expectations regarding the Yeshiva in Israel with university campus life:
“Parents have a different expectation. They figure they’re sending [their child] to a yeshiva and hope that someone is looking after him. That’s not always the case.” Sometimes, the administrator said, “parents turn over too much responsibility to the schools. That’s especially true of parents of at-risk children, who hope that sending them to Israel will turn them around. Ultimately it is the parents who must be responsible for their child.”
Parents’ Responsibility – for a variety of contemporary cultural reasons, it is now considered poor parenting to set limits on children behavior and recreation choices. Combining a sense of wealth and excess together with exposure to modern values – and a sense that you can “have it all”, (i.e. you can be a committed practicing Jew, even as you enjoy all that contemporary America has to offer) – children are drawn to the apparent pleasures of the fleshpots. With “childhood” in America continuing well into the late teens and early twenties, parents, if anything, have a greater long-term responsibility to direct and offer guidance to their children, a process that is only possible if there is an existing healthy relationship built on a foundation of mutual trust and respect. Unfortunately, parents seem to have largely abdicated their role as guide and mentor.
I once sat in the office of an Orthodox Summer Camp administrator together with a student who had been found with alcohol among his possessions – an offense punishable by expulsion from the camp. The youngster admitted that he had an alcohol abuse problem and expressed a willingness to get help for his problem; he actually said that he was happy someone had finally caught him. When the father was called he denied that a problem existed and insisted that the camp was trying to “frame” his son. More recently, when a young woman in an Israeli program was to be expelled for alcohol use her father flew to Israel to defend her. His comment: “I thought I had taught her how to hold her liquor”.
When I shared these stories with colleagues, every one was able to “trump” me with an even “better” story that they had experienced.
As noted above, interviews with students in Israel indicate that the “at-risk” student brings his problem with him to Israel. A recent article in Haaretz that examined this problem includes the following quote:
“It’s getting really out of control and parents don’t know and are in complete denial,” said B., a second year student who came to Israel with a history of drug abuse. More than half of the students in his suburban religious high school in New Jersey were smoking marijuana regularly, he says, and when he came to Israel last year to study in yeshiva, his goals were simply to relax and continue partying. However, he has since found help at a yeshiva for at-risk teenagers.”
The article in the Hebrew weekly Makor Rishon, entitled “Uncle Sam’s Problem Child” (see http://www.makorrishon.net/article.php?id=3129 ) makes the point even more strongly.
We live in a generation that no one can be certain that their child or their student doesn’t have this problem. We cannot continue to live in denial.
What can be done?
It is easy – and necessary- to call on the Israel programs to be more aware of what is going on. Since the substance abuse problem is clearly not limited to only “weaker” students, Yeshivot need to have a system of supervision – from the dorm counselors through the Rashei Yeshiva – who recognize that Hinukh is not just about learning a daf Gemara. There has to be real concern about the students, and a willingness to refer students for appropriate treatment when necessary.
But the place where an even more serious effort needs to be made is where the problem takes root – back home. Since drugs are illegal substances they are what is in the news, but the North American Jewish community needs to take a step back and examine the myriad of self-destructive behaviors that our adolescents are involved with. This includes not only alcohol abuse but also gambling (see http://www.yucommentator.com/news/2005/02/15/Features/All-In-858228.shtml ), eating disorders (see http://www.geocities.com/CollegePark/union/9516/9features.htm#features4 ) and even self-mutilation.
Why are our students “turned-off” to traditional community values and “turned-on” to these? Are our children’s lives so empty that they need to turn to alcohol, drugs, and gambling? Why do they need to escape? What are they escaping from?
It is time that parents, schools and community leaders brainstorm about these issues, not only on a level of “how can we solve the alcohol/drug/gambling/etc. problem?”, but also on a constructive level – “how can we fill our kids’ lives with meaning?” How can we make sure that our children understand that there is a purpose to their lives – a purpose that is greater than the short-term pleasure that any of these dangerous diversions can offer.
It is important that leaders of the American Orthodox community are discussing ways to deal with these issues and that they are offering to support Israeli institutions in facing them. But one of the main concerns should be a frank assessment and reevaluation of the values and priorities that are being fostered in the homes, schools and synagogues in North America.
thank you for all this information on alcohol and drug problem among the Jewish youngsters. We discuss the same problems (including the older people with their pills)in Finland - but they are probably worse by us (as mentioned already).
Regards
Kristiina
And as you can see by my example above, the hard, real answers are not to be found in platitudes and generalities. My criticism of the article is that it does contain many generalities and speaks in the passive tense. But at least it is a start in the right directions. Even a small movement is better than none.
You should really focus on banning all liquor from Shul functions, including wine. This is where many kids get the idea that partying is cool. Your attack on benign soft drugs is a step in the wrong direction.
Oh how right on target he is! For almost 10 years I supervised, as a volunteer, our synagogue's Teen Youth Program, which usually had 250+ teens active (6th-12th grades). Fortunately, we had an explicit core of values, and ways to implement them, which were developed by our paid staff and our teen leadership, in consultation with our Rav and members of the Teen Youth Committee. This helped us enormously in helping teens abandon self-destructive behaviors and find fulfillment in positive behaviors. (We also had an internal Mental Health Panel, which addressed pathological situations from a professional standpoint.)
Our greatest problem in working with other Jewish institutions (yeshivot, synagogues, and especially broader youth movements)was that with rare exceptions they did not have any articulated core of values and means to implement them.
Instead, sloganeering substituted for serious commitment-something which teens saw through quite easily.
Our tradition is very rich in the diversity with which its core values can be embedded and expressed. No single institution can possibly encompass them all or should try to. More important than "is our way the right way" is that we have a consistent way-a derekh palpable in our own actions and accessible to our youth.
I am a recovering alchoholic and drug addicted. I learned about alchohol and drugs while in university many years ago. University is a great learning ground for decadence. Of course what a child sees at home also teaches decadence.
I found my solution to my substance abuse problems in the 12 step program Alcoholics Anonymous. This program is highly compatible with any of the major religions. The twelve steps of recovery and the principles of the Jewish faith work hand in hand. There are many Jewish people in AA in America. There is also a program called AA for young people designed to help the young alcholic and a program called Allateen designed to help the young person who has a mother or father that is a drunk. Allanon if your mate is a drunk.
I have been sucessfully free of alchohol and drugs for thirty years. I work extensively with adults and young people in AA. This program truly saves lives.
If you would like more information about these programs, or have questions I would be more than happy to assist any of you. Oh, by the way in America and throughout the world there is no money charge for AA, AA for the young or Alla teen for their program. This program is transmitted from the heart of one alcoholic to the heart of another alcoholic. It works best if one alcholic helps one more alcholic.
If any of you want more information or help please do email me at
Good luck. Susan Olbert
P.S. I do not read or write Hebrew.
How are yeshivas and other institutions addressing the issue of child abuse (emotional, physical and sexual abuse)? For more information on this topic go to:
http://www.theawarenesscenter.org
When I went to Israel after 11th grade, none of the schools would accept me, including the ones who usually accept "at risk" kids. Luckily I found a kind Rabbi who was able to help me out for a year, and get me somewhat off drugs, until the next year, when I was finally accepted to one of the yeshivas that accept "at risk" kids.
Though I have seen that particular yeshiva help many people, for myself and others, things only got worse.
Eventually I recovered on my own, after a few of my friends died, and I had a really bad experience with LSD. I realized that drugs aren’t going to fill the hole that I felt inside me. I left the mainstream Yeshivas in search of spirituality. I wasn’t sure that there was “spirituality” in Judaism because I thought I saw it all in my 12 years in Yeshiva. But something deep down told me that if I searched I would find what I’m looking for.
In the 12 step NA/AA programs, the most important tool used to get an addict off drugs or alcohol is to find a healthy alternative. That alternative is spirituality, and a meaningful, personal relationship with God.
In all my years in Yeshiva I was never exposed to anything deep or meaningful in Judaism. Of course there were things taught that for the Rabbis teaching it were deep and meaningful but most of our souls were still left thirsty.
Though some would think that the community and the schools are to blame, I’m not so sure that they could have helped. It is not as if they didn’t want to. I met many people who sincerely wanted to do all they could to help me. They just didn’t know how; they couldn’t give me a taste of something deep because their own relationship with God and Torah was on a very shallow level. Most of the Torah and Judaism understood and practiced today is very shallow. This new generation is searching for something much deeper than what they are being offered. Many tzaddikim foretold that in the generation before Moshiach the souls being put into the world would be coming from a much higher level, would be searching for something, demanding something much deeper. They would blatantly reject everything else, and they won’t be satisfied until they get what they need. This, Rav Kook says, will force the Jewish community to seek deeper into their own heritage in order to give their children what they are looking for. And as many of our Rabbis have written (The Gra, the Baal Shem Tov, The Ramchal, Baal Hatania, Rebbe Nachman, the Arizal, the Zohar, and Eliyahu Hanavi in Tikunei Zohar), that the coming of Moshiach is dependant on the wide-spread studying of the mystical aspects of the Torah.
The “high” one feels from drugs is not much different than the high one gets from an experience of dviekus with Hashem. Only one is from the side of impurity and the other is from the side of purity. Though the drugs also give the impression of filling the hole, it is clear from anyone who experienced both kinds of “highs” that one is fake and the other is real. One will kill you and the other will let you experience life for the first time.
The Gemara in Yuma actually calls Torah a “drug.”
I have seen from my own experience and from the work I now do with teens in my situation that if a person tastes and truly experiences the drug of torah they will keep coming back for more and will no longer need the other stuff. It’s what the psychologists call a “positive addiction.”
The above article ended with a true idea about how to fix today’s drug problem, “one of the main concerns should be a frank assessment and reevaluation of the values and priorities that are being fostered in the homes, schools and synagogues in North America.”
There is a lot of work to be done. In an ideal world the 30-45 minute non-meaningful davenings which are found in almost every synagogue would be replaced by meaningful meditative, musical davenings, and teachings of the kavanot, the deep meaning of prayer. The solely intellectual torah learning would be accompanied by experiential, heartfelt, mystical, and meaningful learning. The popular imposition of fear as a stimulation to do mitzvot would be replaced by Love and Joy. If these changes are implemented in the Popular Jewish-Religious culture, I promise we won’t have a fraction of the problems we are facing today.
Feel free to email me at for questions, comments, or if you know someone in Israel who can use my help.
There are other factors involved in this entire discussion. One is denial, and another is shame. Many among us are afraid to acknowledge the existence of the problem. In conversations with people in the community, I am asked about my work, and a typical response is, “But that doesn’t happen in our community”. People are turned off, sometimes offended if I challenge that perception. The shame factor is equally alarming. To protect themselves from embarrassment, I have encountered many parents who have refused to send the children for treatment, or refused to recognize that substance abuse was part of the problem. It gets tough to treat a condition when the individual, who is in denial, is supported by parents and others in denial.
I am pleased that articles such as this by Dr. Berger are being written and circulated. The more discussion we have, the greater the chances are of helping our children, the most valuable assets that Klal Yisroel has.
Many of the people who abuse drugs in our community today are in junior high school and high school. To call these young teenagers "adults" implies that they are mature individuals who are responsible for their own decisions, and is disingenuous. These children are just beginning to develop their own identities especially as they make the transition from childhood to adolescence and elementary to high school. To place the burden on them to "learn accepted communal norms" is not fair. They are still at the age where they are learning right from wrong and constructing their own moral scale. Especially in such a morally ambiguous society, as demonstrated later in the article, the responsibility is on the community to teach and to emulate what is acceptable and what is not. Left to their own devices these teens are likely to believe that accepted communal norms are the norms of the greater society at large. Today silence is taken for acquiescence and if we are too ashamed to speak about these issues we are doomed to further this vicious cycle of abuse and addiction. If our children are never taught right from wrong, if our children are never given role models to emulate, if our children view Jewish values as "an agreement to be entered to" rather then a set of ethics that are meant to uplift and uphold are lives, who do we have to blame?
As many of the other comments have stated, Judaism, both as a community and as a religion, has to be presented in such a way as to appeal to people. The notion that because they grew up in a Jewish home they will identify with Judaism is archaic in the age of Internet and media where these children are bombarded with different lifestyle choices. In a postmodern society where nothing has inherent meaning, including religion, individuals are lost and are searching for things to fill that void. If the Jewish community is not ready or willing to fill that void in its youth then we should not be surprised when their behavior devolves into substance abuse. The issue isn’t about “the dangers of substance abuse,” the issue is about the loneliness and depression many of these kids face if they don’t do drugs. Any approach to substance abuse that only attacks the superficial problem of the abuse itself without treating the underlying causes of depression, loneliness, lack of meaning, lack of direction, and lack of community, is slated for failure. As a community it is time not only to acknowledge the problem of substance abuse, we must admit our failure to educate our children in the glory of Judaism. Our pride cannot take precedence over the future of our children.
Does this sound cult-like or like apikorsis to your readers? That's what I thought when I first entered the rooms of 12 step programs, but I've found many other Orthodox Jews, both as addicts/alcoholics and their family members, who have found recovery that is totally consistent with Torah values.
Pandora's box has been released, probably more through the internet than any other medium, and to me it appears that there is no turning back the clock or reinforcing the walls that we've relied on for so long to shelter our children from the secular community. As a social worker in a yeshiva high school I feel that now that almost everyone knows what's out there, it is our job as community professionals, parents, and laypeople to not only try to provide programs to fill the spiritual voids in our kids, but to provide them with the tools to help understand and hopefully combat the temptations out there. Kids are increasingly less inspired by adult role models, whom they are feeling are out of touch with where they're at (sounds familiar, survivors of the 60's?), and are more responsive lately to what psychologist/author Ron Taffel refers to as the second family, i.e. their peers. Adults need to educate themselves to the realities of Orthodox and non-Orthodox adolescent values, and then be prepared not to lecture but to be able to listen and begin a dialogue. We're not accustomed to this sort of give-and-take, having been raised on the one-size-fits-all mussar shmooze. But one size does not cut it for the youth of the 21st century, and we need to get on board, fast.
The concept of spirituality is threatening in that it is challenging to define, and a concise definition does not exist. To attempt a long one would put the largest server for the website on overload! I will just note the aspect of values – right and wrong. Everyone has a sense of right and wrong, above and beyond laws or halacha. For us, we recognize and recite the Mishna of Moshe kibel Torah miSinai, and we understand that Torah is G-d given. This blueprint is the defining code of values, rules for how to live. What Hashem tells us is wrong is wrong, right is right. The necessity of this is that if we were left to our own devices to devise a value system, we would be inclined to base this on our instinctual drives. This would follow the animalistic aspect of the human, and it would lack anything we can identify as the defining characteristics of humanity – we would be just another animal species. In order to have such a higher system of values, we need to turn to a Higher Power who dictates these to us. This is otherwise known as kabalas ohl malchus shomayim (accepting the yoke of Heaven). The addict is not responding to the demands of right and wrong but to his/her own preference of right and wrong. Conscience is dormant or hiding somewhere. The addict is missing an acceptance of values. The 12-step program addresses the generic concept of a Higher Power, as a source for values to be formulated and imposed (not exactly imposed, but from where we receive them).
Every parent asks where they went wrong, the other children turned out okay. Yes, they are okay. And the parents may also be good parents. Children are exposed to multiple sources of influence, beyond father and mother. Parents do not treat every single child identically. Sometimes a particular child has needs that differ from his/her siblings. Really, parents should recognize this and adjust their parenting to each child individually. Usually, they do, but not always. One out of a family of several children can be troubled while the others fare well. That child needed the learning of values to be conveyed differently, and we do not always match this perfectly. In 12-step recovery, much of this learning occurs among the fellowship, and this group knowledge is far more flexible than a parent or teacher. This is precisely why addiction responds so much better to recovery fellowships rather than individual therapy or mussar.
I am a young mother (28 years old) who is looking for the right (elementary) school for my two children. I am becoming increasingly frustrated with the quality of teachers and, in general, the nature of the communities that I am seeing. Superficial and fake are the beginning of the descriptions. The community that I currently live in sees no need to demand a deep level of learning and meaning of Chinuch from the teachers being hired (and perhaps from life in general.)
I have gone to the principal of the school where my kindergartner child attends and to fellow parents (of older elementary students.) My concern is for as my child gets older. I asked the principal why he was perpetuating this superficiality of Torah, where everything looks right (black hats, uniforms…) but is hiring teachers and offering programs that are presenting vacuous and meaningless mantras for our children to follow, when Torah has so much substance. An example of this is constantly canceling classes (The Sunday learning program consists of davening and baseball, no learning. One class stopped learning one of the subjects for a week (Social Studies) because one of the kids went away. It was not during a normal Jewish or secular holiday season, that I can understand.) The principal looked at me like I was an extremist.
Learning is a value to be taught, especially in a school. At some point, students start to see that the teachers don’t really want to work and are trying very hard to get out of working. This hypocrisy of the message, i.e. Working hard (or learning) is important, how can I get out of it, is transparent to students, especially as they get older. I’m not just talking about Torah learning, but learning in general. Aren’t these important values? I am prompted to ask, What are the values of our schools in general today?
I am not advocating absolute adherence to class time. A happy medium would be great. (I want my child to be happy and well read. Not stressed out, angry or ignorant.) My point is not just in the example, but the overall message. Meaningful yiddishkeit (through values, middos and Torah) needs to be taught in the elementary school. We can’t play catch up when our kids hit puberty and you catch them making out, or worse. (It’s like the biggest elephant in our collective living rooms, what goes on with teens today.) It is not enough to start jogging backwards.
If this is all that they are presenting Torah as (a game of dress up, just make sure you're wearing the right costume), then some children will seek other means of fulfillment outside of the framework of Torah and Halacha. I was very sad about the principal’s response and personally feel that this blind eye does not belong in the realm of Chinuch.
I pray that we, as parents and teachers, will learn to provide more meaning through positive examples. I do not want a negative result to startle us awake. No one wants to see another person, or child, suffering.
Thank you for your messages.
the music, the environment and the sensory overload is too much for them without parental intervention. i specifically didnt say supervision.we need to let them make their choices and make mistakes but dont hand hold them too long. the 21st generation child needs help even more due to outside stimuli hitting them at the speed of technology.
Drugs provides a hiding place from our problems and then the DOWN is that we come back to them and the symptom maybe solved but the PROBLEM - e.g. MOM or DAD are just not there for me or they just dont see what i am going through - is still there. there are probably alot more reasons of course.
i would never dream of taking drugs personally becuase my parents showered me with the LOVE I needed always. parents today and some from years gone by didnt have the tools for rearing children and their children are results of their inability to strive to be better parents. We have to stop missing the boat. make a difference! really care.
PARENTS need to start acting like adults!
My life in recovery is very different from my life prior to recovery. I had many nice things and many good people in my life. But I did not have a connection to a power greater than myself whom I choose to call G-d. Today for example, I get out of bed with a prayer of thanks. I go about my day with joy. I have few irritations and I try to "overlook" others shortcomings. My relationships are a lot better. I make amends for my mistakes immediately. I don't blame myself for not being perfect and I don't expect others to be. I have a new meaning and purpose in my life.
The following passage from Judah Harris' article is very meaningful to me. 'Yet, in his Sefer HaTodaah, Eliyahu Kitov writes that the person “who never tasted” slavery can’t taste the taste of “geulah,” of redemption. He suggests that if Bnei Yisrael hadn’t been enslaved in Egypt they would never have been able to be free; “it’s the slavery itself that gives birth to the redemption.”'
Would I be the person I am today if I had never been an addict? I think not!!
There is hope!
Neely