New Advice to Parents: Tell the Truth About Your Past Drug Use

Moms and dads who grew up in the 60s, 70s and 80s have long struggled with a fundamental question of parenting: what do say when your children ask you about your own drug use?

In the past, parents have been advised to dodge the subject, “just say no,” or take a do-as-I-say-not-as-I-did approach without going into details about their not-so-spotless past. On the other end of the spectrum, a group of California educators advises marijuana-using parents to discuss drug dangers and encourage abstinence, but also address responsible use in case their kids decide to drink or use illicit drugs, anyway.

The latest research from the Hazelden Foundation, however, comes down firmly on the side of truthfulness when it comes to discussing drugs with kids. “With 54 percent of students admitting to using drugs by the time they leave high school and 50 percent using alcohol by eighth grade, it’s vital that all generations break through the stigma and speak openly about addiction and the benefits of treatment and recovery,” said Hazelden CEO Mark Mishek.

Hazelden’s Four Generations Overcoming Addiction survey finds that about half of parents admit that they got drunk or high as teens, and one in four teens say they have seen their parents get drunk or high. Still, more than 90 percent of both parents and teens see parents as role models on drug-use issues, whether or not the adolescents were aware of their parents own drug use.

Moreover, 63 percent of teens believe that hearing the stories about their parents’ past use of alcohol and other drugs would make them more responsible, in turn. In fact, half of the teens surveyed said that they would be less likely to use drugs if parents shared their past drug experiences.

Of the two-thirds of teens whose parents had spoken to them about their own experiences, 95 percent said that they appreciated their parents’ honesty. And 68 percent of teens whose parents had not had such a frank discussion said they wished they would.

Three-quarters of parents who did not talk to their kids about their past drug use said they avoided the topic because they didn’t want their children to emulate their behavior. However, Hazelden researchers found that most kids viewed their parents as the best source of advice on drug use, even if they had seen their parents drunk or high themselves.

“The responses Hazelden received from hundreds of parents and teens suggests that it’s time for parents to rethink what being a ’role model’ really means,” said Marvin Seppala, chief medical officer at Hazelden. “It’s not enough to cling to ’Just Say No’ and pretend that today’s parents didn’t have their own experiences with alcohol and other drugs when they were younger. Teens say they want their parents to be honest and that such openness will lead these teens to be more responsible about their use.”

A recent report from the Partnership for a Drug Free America makes clear that one thing parents should not do is avoid talking to their kids about alcohol and other drug abuse. The 2008 Partnership Attitude Tracking Study found that 37 percent of teens surveyed said they had learned a lot from talking to their parents about drug use, and PDFA President and CEO Steve Pasierb said that adolescents appear to be “more open to talking about the drug issue than kids in the past.”

Researchers at Brigham Young University also reported that children with parents who let them know they disapprove of drug use are less likely to use.

The PATS study also found in recent years that fewer parents are talking to their kids about drugs. However, the Hazelden study suggests that “a major shift has occurred in the course of one generation, as parents of today’s teenagers are much more open with their children about their early use of drugs than were their own parents at the time,” according to a press release on the survey.

“Sixty-three percent of parents said that when they were teens, their parents told them ’nothing’ about their use of drugs when they were teenagers,” Hazelden noted. “In contrast, among the 47 percent of parents surveyed who said they’d used alcohol or drugs to get drunk or high as a teenager, over three quarters (77 percent) said they had spoken with their teenage children about it.”

The Hazelden study, conducted by Ipsos Public Affairs, also found that:

• Teenage girls are more likely than are teenage boys to wish their parents would share information about their past drug use (74 percent vs. 61 percent).
• 83 percent of teens said that they expect to someday tell their own teenage children about their use of alcohol or drugs; only 17 percent said they would withhold such information.
• 63 percent of parents who withheld information about their own drug past said it was none of their children’s business, while 62 percent said they feared such a disclosure would make their children think that drinking or using illicit drugs is okay. Additionally, 26 percent of non-disclosing parents said their children were too young for such a talk, while 21 percent said the subject never came up. Only 6 percent of parents said they didn’t talk about alcohol or other drugs because they felt unqualified to do so.
• Just 2 percent of teens said that parental disclosure of past drug would make them act less responsibly.

The conclusions were drawn from national samples of 603 boys and girls ages 15-18 and 620 parents of teens ages 15-18.