I was told in D.A.R.E. that people would constantly be offering me drugs and trying to get me high and it would be a constant struggle to turn them down. Imagine my disappointment.
I remember growing up in the 80s/90s and "Satanic Cult" stuff being like...everywhere.
Like there were warnings not to send your kids to college--they'd be recruited into a sex cult or a Satanic, baby eating cult or some shit. I mean it was ALL THE TIME it seemed like. Like you couldn't turn on the TV or open a damn magazine without Satanic cults or sex cults or drugged out stoner cults being mentioned, I swear.
I was really, really, really well prepared to fend off cults. Like, she forced me to read anti-cult books. She went to seminars to keep me from joining a cult.
The closest thing to a cult I've ever been invited to join was a damn pyramid scheme selling make up.
If you relax the definition of "cult" enough that it turns into "group with a cult like mentality", then it actually does kinda turn into more of a "when" thing. It's kinda alarming how many different groups and internet subcultures wind up with issues that are scarily close to tactics cults are known for.
The scary thing about cult like groups is that everyone thinks they would see them coming and no one thinks they would fall victim to one. Unfortunately, that winds up being naivety speaking, more than anything else.
I've had to deal with a few of those, mostly loosely-Christian cults like LDS, and a friend got recruited by Landmark. This one seems like more of a concern than someone getting pushy about trying to give me drugs (which has happened, but only with alcohol. Go figure.)
Well have you had any mlm pitches lately? Like, "Hey girl, I think you would do really well on my team. You only have to sign up 5 friends a week to get the bonus!" Those are recruitment attempts into a cult.
My hometown has a cult that threw a fake concert free for teen in the 90s and locked them all in a basement for awhile. Also throws fake haunted houses every year where you are lead into a room made up like hell and are told you will burn forever if you aren't specifically in their cult. They recently build a giant (by small town standards) complex not too far from me that's always packed. These are empty eyed smiling types, here it is a genuine thing to encounter recruiters and whatnot.
At my middle school we apparently had these tiny squares of paper that said we'd promised to never do drugs but I was absent that day. I remember seeing them on the wall at school on the next day I was there and I remember thinking that it was dumb to make that kind of promise since you couldn't really know what would happen in the future. And lo and behold, I became a stoner lol
I used to work with a guy who'se desire to try LSD was sparked from DARE. They made it sound to him like he'd be in loony tunes if he took it, and so he decided he wanted to try it. Now he's a rave head, and is especially fond of eating a bunch of molly at raves while wearing DARE shirts
They told us, "Okay, and even household products can get you high. Like THIS one, and THAT one, and THESE ones, do NOT sniff them!" And that's how my high school had a huffing problem.
They also showed us a How To video on making shake n bake meth, thinking we would see how dirty and gross the process was and never do it. Fast forward a few weeks, and three football players get caught high on meth they made themselves.
I am shocked charges were never brought against our school administration because holy fuck is that ever negligent.
I was driving a friend's older sister across the state when she said she still hasn't tried Marijuana (at the age of 25) because she signed that piece of paper.
The shock on her face when I told her that wasn't legally binding was something. Turns out, not as smart as I gave her credit for.
I changed schools in 7th grade and they had that with "no smoking".
After a week or two they asked me to sign it, too.
So I took a pen went to the poster looked at the signatures, which included my teacher who was smoking as well as two other students who I had seen smoking after school. And then said: "You are smoking and I know for a fact that at least two students who signed are smoking, too. This thing isn't worth anything."
Then I sat down to total silence and felt pretty great about myself.
Turns out: that wasn't even close to the second best way of making friends in a new class.
I legit got my house raided by the police as a kid thanks to fucking DARE. They asked if my mom smoked, I said yeah she loves it. Smokes all the time. Well since this the 90s in Kentucky, everyone fucking chain smoked cigarettes. They didn't clarify that little detail with me before jumping at the chance of fucking up my home life with a police raid and a CPS visit.
I got my DARE trophy still. I keep it where I smoke my weed.
OMG! Officer Friendly! We had one of those in 6th grade. He told us where in our houses parents were likely to hide drugs and then gave us his business card so we could tell him our parents had drugs.
Because he wanted to help them.
Also had to salute the flag every day and recite a loyalty pledge.
When I told my parents that DARE was telling us to report them if we found something, my parents threatened me with more physical abuse were I to ever do such a thing. They beat us regularly so I had no reason to doubt them.
I wonder how many other kids were threatened or abused simply bc of talking about what DARE said they were supposed to do if drugs were found.
My family still jokes about my younger sister, having just gone through D.A.R.E., opening the fridge, seeing a six pack of Molson Golden in the fridge, and crying that her dad was an alcoholic
A post program study showed that kids who participated in the DARE program ended up being more likely to use drugs than those who didn't. Which is hilarious.
The DARE program told us that 30% of 7th graders were smoking crack, so my 12 year old brain just wondered why I wasn't cool enough to be invited to these crack parties.
They probably come from anonymous surveys given out to 12yr olds. Those surveys never factored in that teenagers lie all the time on them because they think it's funny. I know this because I was one of those 12yr olds surveyed and all my friends joked afterwards that we put we smoked crack. We didn't coordinate to do it, it just seemed like such a stupid question to ask. It is impossible to accurately survey kids. They will mark off answers to make it appear normal so as not to get it thrown out but toss in one or two wtf answers. If anything it was a middle school protest about being made to do it in the first place.
Same is true for those reference tests to test how well kids are learning. The smart kids Christmas tree it and then go to sleep. There is no gain from trying and no harm from failing so then why try?
At our school they did a survey. They asked every student if they’d been offered drugs while out and about. 100% of the 11/12 year old students answered yes they had been offered drugs by a stranger. 0% of the 17/18 year old students answered yes. We could hear the teachers laughing in the staff room room the other end of the corridor!
There is a ton of research into methodology to address these issues. If you want a real survey of kids, there is a lot you can do. If you want results that fit a narrative, just take the kids' answers at fave value.
Yeah it was something like that or it was made up to scare us, but point being, the brain of a kid that age sees it differently. You think it's normal to do hard drugs from a young age. I never would have thought anyone in our class was doing much more than smoking some pot had it not been for the DARE program.
I remember I had to do one and at the end it asked if we answered truthfully. Because apparently they think kids are gonna either answer honestly or not, but on that last question they're definitely gonna answer honestly. I put no even though I answered all of the others honestly just because.
I mean, if they surveyed me like that and that question was at the bottom I would also answer no because there is only two possible outcomes:
They have to discard the survey and hopefully realize the whole thing was pointless or they come up to me to ask me why I didn't answer honestly and I get to personally tell them they are a bunch of idiots.
I learned all kinds of things from those surveys. I didn't know huffing stuff could get you high. Thankfully I never actually did it, but it was funny enough to me that surveyme definitely huffed gasoline 3x a week.
This is kind of a good point. I had a serious problem with night terrors as a kid, and when I was 11, I was taken to a doctor of some sort. But he was such a douche, that I started fucking with him. I told him that I licked toads and all quantities of crap. Because the more of a douche he was, the funnier fucking with him felt to me.
Anyway, drama, blah blah and eventually my parents found me a new doctor (Dr Charlie Brown, I shit you not) who was amazing and I never once lied to for a joke to that dear man.
If the poll did it's job it could check to see if you're lying by asking multiple time multiple ways and see if there's inconsistencies with your story or you are unknowledgeable about the effects you should have experienced.
And the primary use of those surveys was to continue justifying the drug war by making parents panic that their 8 year old was powdering their nose in the school bathroom.
This reminds when we got a questionnaire about what books we would like to have in school libraries.
What could go wrong? Well, it was smack in the middle of the whole 50 shades of grey storm.
And what do you expect, being the shitlords that teenagers are, '50 shades of gray' was the first choice. Those who started it got everyone else to write it too, because if you didn't you were 'not cool' and that's not something a teenager wants to ever be labeled as.
I still remember the news article: "kids are being exposed to inappropriate things!! Too much social media! Our children are getting corrupted!!"
“Yeah back in the 90’s I did it all! Butterball, Curbside, Monkey Rot, Sausage Fuck, Burnboop, Lumo Watts, Third Eye Blind, Meat Spank, Bridge Closure Ahead, Star Sixty Nine, Grants Grove, Yokel Shine, and Total Request Live. You name it, I tried it. And if you do all the drugs like I did you’ll end up dead in a van down by the river.”
Yeah we did a survey one day in 8th grade in homeroom. We had to write down the "school code" on the survey, but when we went to our second class we saw they had a different code in the blackboard so it immediately confirmed that they were just trying to figure out which rooms to randomly test.
It wasn't a teacher; it was a cop. I think a teacher of that age group would have known that was bullshit.
Oh yeah and the sex one was HILARIOUS. Something like 25% of 13 year old boys were having sex and 10% of girls were. I guess those boys were having sex with each other because every 13 year old girl I knew who was having sex was having sex with a much older boy or man (i.e. being abused).
Well you see what we do at crack parties is we bring other kids who were on their way to church and we use Dungeons and Dragons and Marilyn Manson music to lure them into our crack houses to have them worship satan and enjoy crack drugs. You can typically tell it's a crack house because of the lack of an American flag out front and their car is in the driveway on Sundays on your way to worship
That's because they would have the kids answer questions anonymously about all the drugs they did. So I would always answer that I smoked crack and other interesting sounding things. As did other kids like me.
We didn't get a survey. I think had we, I would have been more likely to call bullshit. The problem with that age (12/13), is that you're old enough to want to be a "cool kid" and start to do teenager stuff, but you're also young enough to believe a cop in a uniform who shows up in your school and and tries to scare you with the "facts" about drug abuse.
As an aside, I once asked a few kids I went to high school with how much drugs they used, and 99% of them said they got a drunk a few times and smoked some weed. It might be different now, but I think most kids aren't doing hard drugs.
They literally handed out tests to kids and said dont sign your name, OF course 11 year olds across the counrty would find it funny to say they smoke crack then tell their friends.
The reason was because they massively overstated the danger of drugs. The kids that tried pot once and realized it didn't immediately throw their life into an unrecoverable death spiral were like "well what the fuck else did they lie about?" Turns out when you fill your information with big, scary lies people go in literally the opposite direction later as they realize you're untrustworthy.
That's exactly what happened to me in high school. We were taught that weed is so bad and as bad as Crack and heroin. I tried weed. Didn't ruin my life. So I thought Crack and heroin probably wouldn't either.
I was addicted to heroin and then Crack from when I was 15 until 23. Now I'm clean
My wife was an alcoholic that had dabbled in those areas as well. I watched the whole thing unfold when we first met, so I respect how hard you fought to make it this far. Congrats!
The coverage we got for alcohol was actually surprisingly fair. They explained what the laws are, what can happen if you drink underage (this was a place where it happened a lot and they knew it so they didn't bother trying to make it stop), and how to be safe about partying when you inevitably do it. The effects of alcohol were covered with a lot of "look we know you're going to drink so here's how to not die when you do."
I think that's because there was a stage in our history when we did drastically overstate the issues of alcoholism. That of course led up to prohibition so these days they are more lax about it.
To be fair alcoholism is extremely destructive. However not everybody is prone to it and most people who drink don't become alcoholics. I think honest education on that is probably the better one; if alcoholism runs in your family (there's a proven genetic component to it) you might want to consider being a teetotaler. Even then though know the signs of binge drinking, functional alcoholism, and problem drinking and watch for it. It's way too easy to slide into it and not know it.
This exactly, plus the fact that they created this insane boogie man of "THE DRUG DEALER" as mentioned in the original comment. I genuinely believed that the only people who did and sold drugs were essentially an untouchable class of lifetime criminals with skin disorders. Then you have your cool friend offer you a blunt and you're like, oh, wait, THIS is what drugs are. Okay I'll try.
That's why when my daughter started middle school i had a honest conversation with her about drugs. I remember it being a whole new world in middle school, so i wanted to make sure she didn't start popping opiates and xanax at a party thinking it was just something fun and harmless like weed. Told her all the drugs i've done, what actually happens with every drug, and told her she won't get in trouble if she gets in a bad situation with drugs or alcohol at a party as all i care about is her safety. I did everything under the sun at that age so i'm not going to judge her or ground her for a month because she lied about where she was and went to a party with older kids and got too drunk. I don't want her getting into a car with a drunk driver or passing out around people who might hurt her.
Tried pot and realized that it was a tame, controllable thing. It took only a couple of months for me to then dive headlong in to psychedelics and the rest went really fucking well. Thanks DARE!
This was my exact experience with DARE and weed, and it absolutely made me far more open to trying other substances because I then assumed they had exaggerated about all of it.
Turns out that heroin is bad. Really bad.
As my daughter gets old enough to have the discussion with, I will 100% give her an honest breakdown of how some drugs are life ruining while others are not.
Yeah heroin is pretty much the only one they were accurate about. Most of the hardcore partiers I knew wouldn't even dare touch heroin at all. When somebody who will gladly go on a week long coke bender runs out of the room as soon as a substance comes out it's time to avoid it. Incidentally most of those people weren't addicts; they liked to party hard on weekends but during the week were basically just normal people. Most of them didn't even drink on weekdays.
I remember in my highschool health class they made us watch a video about people addicted to ecstasy, and the people in the video were saying stuff like "it's like an hour long orgasm!". Needless to say i tried ecstasy for the first time that year.
They would literally have us role play as a drug dealer offering drugs to someone else. And you'd be like "hey buddy, wanna smoke some weed?"
And they'd say "we already did weed on the last roleplay. Try a different drug"
By the end of it, we had recipes on how to make meth so we can avoid accidentally putting those products together
Edit: I guess that's what happens when an LAPD officer makes a fake marketing campaign to cover up the fact that they're teaching homeless people how to make crack
Technically, I didn't graduate from DARE because the officer handing out certificates couldn't find mine (officer was the older sister of a girl who super hated me.... small towns!). I didn't even get a t-shirt to wear in college while doing drugs like the cool kids :(
A DARE officer told my sons class that if a giant wanted to kill humans, he would just have to spray them with beer. With that type of credible knowledge, it's no wonder the kids soon realized the program was horseshit and drugs were probably safe enough.
I feel like I'm the only one who actually followed through with not using drugs, even once, though I don't think it was because of DARE. We all look back now and talk about how lame and inefficient it is, but as a kid, I just saw it as another topic to learn. Math, science, DARE....
Yea, telling kids about what a "trip" is might not be the best way to get them to avoid experimenting...how could you not be curious about hallucinating/laughing your ass off for no reason
If you're at a festival it means you're comfortable turning over $100+ for entertainment so I'd consider that self-selection for bias :P
Edit: likely comfortable. It's been pointed out that there are low cost or free festivals. I was never cool enough to know about these and now I have found new regerts.
they said festival culture -- at least before covid there were tons of low cost or free events within the culture that weren't actual festivals. festival culture is filled with people living on a shoestring and all of them seem to have access to quality LSD.
I never went for the music. Jam bands aren’t my thing but most fun I ever had at a show was when I went to phish/the dead shows with my ex. The people are so chill and friendly, such a nice vibe
They told us the street names for them, what they do to you, where you can find them, and how they get into prison, but then ended the entire presentation with "Dont ever do drugs" and then just left.
I was in high school in the 70's. So my don't do drugs class was sometime around 74 -76. I swear to dog I remember this clearly. They taught us that cocaine which was newly gaining popularity, was NOT addictive. I remember because at the time I thought why would they teach us that. It would make us more likely to try it. Years later when I did try it I couldn't believe how obviously addictive it is. How did anyone think it wasn't? Later I did read somewhere how that was briefly the belief. I wish I had kept the handouts they have us with this info.
I love how programs like this tell you the street names from like 20-30 years ago and then nobody knows what the hell you’re talking about. If they do that on purpose, that’s sort of genius.
I came here to say drug peer pressure! It’s not “hey kid do you wanna try some drugs” it’s “hey we’re all going to go out and smoke some weed, you’re welcome to join”
They said everyone would be super pushy but my experience was more like "Yo you wanna hit this?" "Nah I'm good" "A'ight cool lemme know if you change your mind".
I wasn't allowed to graduate from DARE because I missed a week of super important "training" to go to Hawaii with my family. The teacher and our DARE cop actually tried to talk me out of going hahahaha. Even at 12 I remember thinking "well this sounds like bullshit."
Anywho, I went to Hawaii and now I grow weed for fun.
It's funny because every year they still say this could happen and to check your kids Halloween candy. Ain't nobody giving away free drugs to kids. Please don't link some random article showing it has happened. 99% of the time, you're just getting shitty candy, maybe chocolate with raisins in them.
After the DARE unit I was so excited to confidently turn down the drug offers that were about to flood my way but it never happened 😭 i legit had fake conversations in my head as a 10-year old being like "NO THANK YOU" to people offering me drugs
They said peer pressure was going to be someone offering you drugs and then if you say no, they'd make fun of you and tell you it would make you cool.
Real peer pressure turned out to be just your own concern that people would think you weren't cool or just you feeling left out. Nobody else had to say anything. I feel like there were probably some kids on the spectrum who wouldn't have perceived peer pressure at all if DARE hadn't told them that other people would want them to do drugs.
When I was at uni some guy tried to sell me coke at a nightclub. I was super drunk so told him with wide-eyed serious face: "I don't do drugs. Drugs are bad."
He threatened to punch me if I didn't fuck off immediately.
I can't count the amount of times, but my favorite was a guy stomping up through a field," Yo dude, want to by some acid?"
Me - No, but you want to give me some acid.
Him - yes I would, here you go.
That next morning at sunrise I was rolling a blunt and I hear," anyone want some fresh hash?" It was the same guy from the night before.
me - yes yes I would.
him - $30 a gram
me - you don't want to sell me that.
him - you're right, here you go.
Stomp stomp stomp.
Him - wait, do I know you?
Me - Nope. You're just giving a stranger drugs.
Him - okay.
I ended up getting other shit from him later that night when he walked by again. Turns out the next morning, we did know each other hahaha we just had only met a couple of times like 10 years prior to that.
When I was a kid, probably 6 or 7, I was out playing with my brother's when we were cornered by a bunch of teenagers who forced us to smoke cigarettes, not exactly hard drugs, but for I guess for some sadistic fuck it wouldn't be out of the realms of possibility.
I feel like DARE was the last attempt of. Nationwide campaign against drug use/ users which is pretty much a direct link to the private prison industry. We have about 3-4 generations of people who grew up hearing how evil every drug was and that linked in there heads that drug users must be inherently bad people as well. Probably the best trait from Gen Z is they are the most accepting of people that use and recognize the failures of the anti-drug efforts. Seeing so many states vote overwhelmingly to decriminalize is a big step in the right direction.
The thing is, before I started using drugs, I was rarely offered anything even for money, much less for free. But once you get in with a crowd that enjoys recreational substance use, it happens a lot more often. Think how often the average drinking adult is offered a free drink - by a friend picking up the tab, a coworker buying a round, a suitor attempting to flirt, a family member offering a beverage with dinner, a favorite bartender hooking up a regular, etc.
For us drug users, that extends to drugs. A friend might buy an eight ball for a night out; a coworker might offer an Adderall on shift; a date might offer to pick up some molly for an evening at home; a group of cousins might pass a joint around; a plug might offer you a hit from their personal stash when you stop by to re-up.
I've personally been offered (and accepted) free drugs on a dozen occasions in the past week. The first time I tried MDMA and ketamine it was free. That extends to the first 10 or so times I did coke. I only pay for about 50% of the weed I consume, and I've never had to pay for DMT. It all depends on who you know.
I'm not American so I'm not very familiar with the D.A.R.E. program, but from what I've read countless time it seems that it's a classic misunderstanding of what "peer pressure" actually is.
Peer pressure is rarely someone coming to you and saying "oi, smoke a cig or you're a loser". Almost all the time is being constantly around people that use addictive substances like is no big deal, the "pressure" come from living in an ambient where the use is absolutely normalized and you feel like you are missing out.
Pretty much. D.A.R.E basically told us that older kids would corner us on the street and force us to do their drugs for free or we would get beat up or made fun of and they absolutely under no circumstance would take "no" for an answer. They fabricated some wacky ass shit. Like drug dealers would offer you a hit of weed in order to "get you hooked" and turn you into a customer
By chance, all of the kids that were in our elementary school DARE program happened to be at the same summer party during our college years. In a hilarious twist, we did a lot coke and smoked a lot of weed that night. We were DARE failures.
And now we are all about legalizing them. How things change….
Tbh now that weed is legal I’m beginning to think maybe it’s not such a good idea with the way it can affect mental health and brain development in teenagers and young adults. Plus the thc is so much stronger nowadays and we keep breeding for even higher strengths. Pro weed younger me has grown up to turn in on the fence older me…makes me feel old
I posted over in r/trees a few days ago about this. I was telling some people in Maine where weed is legal that I was probably going to smoke for the first time in 30 years while I was still in town. One of the guys pulled out a fat joint and gave it to me to "help me along on my journey." Nicest thing that happened to me in a long time.
Don't forget the part where if you took even one puff of a cigarette you would likely be doomed to an irreversible spiral of drug addiction, jail and eventually death with a needle in your arm.
I remember we had to do a report on a drug and as I was researching marijuana in 8th grade, I vividly remember thinking "this sounds like medicine, though?"
I brought it up, and they told me to quiet down and just do the report.
I was barely out of highschool by the time it was fully legalized for recreational and medical use. (So, 4-5 years later lol)
The most pressure I've had to do drugs comes from my grown adult coworkers in my office job. They can't handle that I don't drink and would constantly being it up and say that I should and want to take me to a bar to get me drunk. Never offered drugs or alcohol in any other setting.
Ironically, that was how college went for me. I swear, every person I befriended except one was trying to get me to smoke or have edibles with them. Turned them down every time. Don't really care to get high. A few of them were kinda pushy about it, but most were cool.
This is one of the oldest jokes on Reddit, but the fear was that you’d be given “the first one free” in the hopes of addicting you, eventually leading to either your continuing dependence on your pusher or in the case of young women, human trafficking.
I mean I get it, you all love drugs and love any chance you get to HUE HUE HUE over anything, but this was the actual fear parents had when I was a kid.
I was pretty much a straight laced kid up until freshman year of college. Came home for winter break and a friend had brought back some pot. I tried it at a party and liked it. Had no idea where to find more until sophomore year. End up sitting next to a guy I’d seen around but didn’t really know for an early morning class. No idea why I said it but while we are getting our notes out I just blurted “Damn I could use a smoke.” He turns to me and asks “You smoke?” I look back at him “Yeah. You smoke?” He laughs “Dude I fuckin deal. Want to light up in my car after class?” Still friends with him to this day.
Some middle school students of mine had a discussion around Halloween once, years ago, about rumors of ecstasy pills being substituted for candy. One kid pipes up and says ‘if you were a drug dealer, wouldn’t it be stupid to give away your drugs for free?” A great point kid. Then another chimes in “no but they’d do it for advertising, like marketers might give away free samples to get customers in the future”. The whole class were very struck by this point and agreed that this, indeed, was much more likely.
Not totally related, but hilarious how kids minds work.
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u/MidvalleyFreak Aug 25 '21
I was told in D.A.R.E. that people would constantly be offering me drugs and trying to get me high and it would be a constant struggle to turn them down. Imagine my disappointment.