What impact has this constant barrage?

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Dr. Crossley/neurochemistry/addiction

Last week I attended a lecture, 5 hours worth, by Dr. Harold Crossley, DDS., Ph.D., entitled: Street drugs and their effects on you, your family, and your dental practice.

He invited everyone in attendance to visit him at his home or else to e-mail him with any questions and concerns. He really, really wanted all his contact information published so people can contact him. If he does not reply in 48 hours, he did not get the message and one should try another way.

His e-mail is: askmypalhal@gmailcom.
He teaches policemen in Baltimore among other activities.

The resources he listed were: www.drugfree.org, www.drugabuse.gov, www.streetdrugs.org

The concepts he really wanted to stress were the biochemistry of addiction, neurochemicals and neurotransmitters. It was very helpful. I explained to two smokers today, how nicotine addiction works at the synapse level. Now I think that I don't know enough about it.

Recently, I heard a presentation on teen sexual promiscuity, where the issues were discussed in a similar biochemical context--dopamine and serotonin, etc. The book to read, which I have not done yet, is: Hooked by Joe S. McIlhaney.

I am not sure what good any of it does, but perhaps it helps to de-romanticize harmful behavior and motivate some to get their mood elevation from healthier sources. In schools and health offices you have to speak in this manner. Of course, it is just one aspect.

All of it made me think how someone famous (Marx?) said: Religion is the opiate of the people. Well, it looks like the people abandon religion for the opium. That is certainly not an improvement.

All of it also works on the neurochemical level.

Is Youth Culture worse than before?--evidence

We've had this little discussion recently, here, if the youth culture is worse than before, at least when we are talking about our own local area. My sense recently has been that things are much, much worse around here than before.

Yesterday, I read some stats that would back up the opinion that things have indeed changed. The Edmonton Journal was reporting on the gang shootings in Vancouver, happening in broad daylight and the alarm they cause. Essentially, it all has to do with the drug trade. The drugs (and weapons) that come into Alberta come via Vancouver and drug use in all of Canada has doubled in the last 10 years. Doubled! That's up 100%. That's a lot in a short time.

I remember reading something: even the Pope said that the drug culture is putting tons of young people out of reach of the church. Well, I hope that's not so; but it is a very devilish thing. I think we need to be even more alert.

Contradictions

Often, I find I contradict myself with what I write. I suppose it's good to find out where you're inconsistent. Or maybe, after you've explored one side, you then move on to the other side.

For example, the other day I wrote that I've let a sheltered life. Of course, that's a relative thing. I've moved from one continent to another at age 15, adjusted to a new culture. I went to public High School. I lost my mother right after that. I got married pretty soon. Then in more mid-- life it seemed everyone around us was having divorces of varying levels of nastiness. Some very nasty. And so on. People kept their drug use quiet.

Now, the awareness of the prevalence of drug use, violence and partying around us, is new to me. At first, it seemed random and outrageous, now I'm shocked by the prevalence and in-your-faceness, the normalcy. The kids say, Gibbons was a good town to grow up in. Everyone took and believed in the drug awareness program (DARE course). They all knew drugs were very, very bad, but once you hit the grade 8/9 onward, it's a different world.

What is it that's new to me?
-- that I see things that were there before, but I did not know about or did not pay attention to
-- that are new
-- that have changed in character and frequency?

Barack Obama's book

All weekend, it's been me with the flu and Barack Obama on the living room sofa (Dreams from My Father).

There is much detail, much evidence, so that we can make our own independent judgments. That must have been the lawyer's approach. Tedious but effective in its own way.

There are four things that are sticking with me the most: 1) the changes in the youth on the Chicago South Side; 2) the search for home and identity; 3) the role of faith in working for change; 4) polygamy in African society.

CHANGES IN YOUTH
this is from chapter 14, which did not help me sleep the other night.

"No, it was more a change of atmosphere, like the electricity of an approaching storm. I felt it when, driving home one evening, I saw four tall boys walking down a tree-lined block idly snapping a row of young saplings that an older couple had just finished planting in front to their house. I felt it whenever I looked into the eyes of the young men in wheelchairs that had started appearing on the streets that spring, boys crippled before their prime, their eyes without a trace of self-pity, eyes so composed, already so hardened, that they served to frighten rather than to inspire.

That's what was new: the arrival of a new equilibrium between hope and fear; the sense, shared by adults and youth alike, that some, if not most, of our boys were slipping beyond rescue. Even lifelong South Siders like Johnnie noticed the change. 'I mean, things ere tough when I was coming up, but there were limits. We'd get high, get into fights. But out in public, at home, if an adult saw you getting loud or wild, they would say something. And most of us would listen, you know what I'm saying?

'Now, with the drugs, the guns--all that's disappeared. Don't take a whole lot of kids carrying a gun. Just one or two. Somebody says something to one of'em, and --pw!--kid wastes him. ... After a while, even the good kid starts realizing ain't nobody out here gonna look out for him. so he figures he's gonna have to look after himself. Bottom line, you got twelve-year-olds making their own damn rules.'"

"The idea of physical assault just never occurred to me. Same thing with the distinction Johnnie made between good kids and bad kids--the distinction didn't compute in my head. It seemed based on a premise that defied my experience, an assumption that children could somehow set the terms of their own development... Where did he sit along the spectrum of goodness? If he ended up in a gang or in jail, would that prove his essence somehow, a wayward gene...or just the consequences of a malnourished world?"

"That night, well past midnight, a car pulls up in front of my apartment building carrying a troop of teenage boys and a set of stereo speakers so loud that the floor of my apartment begins to shake. I've learned to ignore such disturbances--where else do they have to go? I say to myself. But on this particular evening I have someone staying over;... As i approach the car, the voices stop, the hears within all turn my way. 'Listen, people are trying to sleep around here. Why don't y'all take it someplace else.'

The four boys inside say nothing, don't even move. The wind wipes away my drowsiness, and I feel suddenly exposed, standing in a pair of shorts on the sidewalk in the middle of the night. I can't see the faces inside the car; it's too dark to know how old they are, whether they're sober or drunk, good boys or bad. One of them could be Kyle. One of them could be Roy. One of them could be Johnnie.

One of them could be me. Standing there, I try to remember the days when I would have been sitting in a car like that, full of inarticulate resentments and desperate to prove my place in the world. The feelings of righteous anger as I shout at Gramps for some forgotten reason. The blood rush of a high school brawl. The swagger that carries me into a classroom drunk or high, knowing that my teachers will smell beer or reefer on my breath, just daring them to say something. I start picturing myself through the eyes of these boys, a figure of random authority, and know the calculations they might now be making, that if one of them can't take me out, the four of them certainly can.

... The engine starts, and the car screeches away. I turn black toward my apartment knowing that I've been both stupid and lucky, knowing that I am afraid after all."

I think, as a female, I really cannot understand anything about this testosterone driven stuff. I can listen and try.

Have things changed? Are people more or less bad or good, more or less violent, more or less out of control?

My opinion: yes, things have changed. There are things going on that are very sinister.

I don't know much about the United States, except I'm sometimes scared to go there.

But my own town is developing a side that's similar. Maybe part of it is that a lot of army personnel lives here now and many have seen action in Afghanistan. They are said to have had personality changes. I think that's a minor side issue, but it has resulted in violence. Even Stefan had taken a hit on the side of the head and a broken driver's side window on his truck by an out-of-control father. Maybe the father was scared/mad at a truck full of perceived punks.

Martin was beat up when he tried to write down licence plate numbers at the party next door, when the neighbor was gone. They pushed him down and took his glasses. I went over there and told them, he was the dentist and he needed his glasses. They gave me his glasses. Maybe they did respect the fact that he was the dentist.

A boy I taught at Lutheran school was involved in the beating death of a young man. One group had been excluded from a party. This group returned with weapons and killed the young man who answered the door.

Enough examples of that. Sorry, I never heard of stuff like that when I was growing up in Germany or here. In Canada, there were bush parties, drinking, noisy kids on camp grounds, but not beatings of adults and killings.

PS: I'll get to the other subjects in the next post.

Local Social Conditions

I have lead a sheltered life, even though we dealt with the public and their health every day for nearly 30 years.

Visiting with some people from around here, coming to my house, sitting across from me on my sofa, sharing all kinds of stories and experiences--all kinds of people being more honest and vulnerable than usual--has been a bit shocking.

It is easy to be shocked and easy to be uppidy. But this is something different.

I don't know where to begin.

From the drug use, to the alcohol use, to the living together, to the changing partners and allegiances, to the deception involved in drug testing in the trades and oil industry, to the ostracism of non-smokers in workplaces (because they don't go out with others on smoke breaks), to the sitting around watching TV and eating ice-cream and getting humongously fat, to the babysitting of little children that nearly choke to death because the self-same sitters/relatives are watching TV and eating ice cream, to the depression, schizophenia and medications required... Unsettling revelations of all kinds.

Gibbons/Bon Accord, I am told, is a slum. Sherwood Park and St. Albert are hardly better, only the drugs are more expensive and harder.

However, since Stefan's funeral the approach to stop signs is said to be executed with more care by many and the partying this weekend was subdued, apparently, I am told.

What is one supposed to do with this? We used to go to youthgroup, sing, do bible study, hike, play soccer, go camping with no sex, no alcohol, no drugs. That sort of thing is unimaginable at this point for many -- boring, staid, "unsociable".

shocking news

Over the weekend, I learned from seemingly reliable sources, that in a small neighboring town/village 30 students had been expelled for drug use from the medium size Elementary/Junior High School, during the last year.

We had heard such things from the regional large Senior High School, but now the small Elementary/Junior High!

I find it extremely sad and frightening. What is our youth coming to? With all my praying, talking, cell-phoning and text messaging, effort into child rearing, I have a hard time figuring out where my children are. My children have had rarely any friends from stable families. The young adults are always hanging out unsupervised and with people whom their families don't know. There is a lot of sleep and joy lost over worrying about them.