While far from perfect, we’ve always been happy that we can count on one hand the number of times our 17 1/2 year old daughter has come home inebriated. She is a small kid (and pretty open with us), so it’s pretty clear when she is under the influence — its been twice on alcohol; twice on pot — and it’s been very obvious to us.
The first time, it was actually both pot and alcohol and she was a wreck. We were pretty upset and came down hard on her — significant grounding and we made her install a locator app on her phone. To be honest, it was the pot that bothered us more than the alcohol. At that age — 17 — we had both been going to parties and getting quite drunk, so that seemed normal for the age. Pot was/is harder for us to wrap our heads around, but we are trying.
In any event, 4 times in a year and a half seemed not too bad.
But then yesterday, she asked us to get some clothes out of her knapsack to wash. As we were grabbing the clothes, a dab pen fell out of the bag. For those of you not familiar, a dab pen is a like an electronic cigarette or vape pen, but with THC oil inside. It delivers a small hit of pot with each inhale. Not enough to make you totally high, but enough to feel a bit floaty.
That scares me. I’m not a pro on this — in fact I’m pretty naive. But I know a lot of kids are doing pot daily, and that really scares me. We had a friend whose daughter started doing that and it turned into a train wreck. Her grades tanked, she was lying to them non stop, she fell out with all of her friends. And she was miserable. She ended up needing to change schools. Fortunately, she got it together again, but it was a Hellish year.
I would hate this to happen to our daughter. She had a really hard time during the pandemic lockdowns, and she was really happy and in a great place since things began to open back up. But, since her girlfriend dumped her, she’s fallen back in with a group of friends who we know do a lot of pot. It worries us. She’s told us that she does not, but the dab pen worries us.
We will try to confront her with this in a constructive way. 17 1/2 is a tricky age. She is near independent and we need to prepare her to make her own choices. I’m a little torn on this one.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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Photo credit: Wesley Gibbs on Unsplash
