Young people and drugs

I love Bill Plotkin.

Reading Nature and the Human Spirit on the tube this morning:

"Consider teen drug use, for example. Common prevention efforts include drug education, telling teens to 'just say no,' teen-centre drug alternative activities, addiction counseling, positive and negative reinforcement (bribes and threats), and incarceration. All of these 'treatments' are reactions to the symptom of drug use itself; they are attempts merely to eliminate the symptom, to get teens to stop using drugs. A holistic approach to drug use, by contrast, does not focus primarily on drugs but offers teens the opportunity to address their developmental deficits through a great variety of experiences, deficits that might have no obvious relation to drug use or abuse.

For example, one of the common wholeness deficits among the drug abusing teens is the unfulfilled and utterly natural longing to directly experience the mysteries of life. This is a common deficit in Western societies due to the near absence of cultural practices of fulfilling this normal feature of teenage wholeness. An adequate holistic approach to teen drug use must include, among other things, instruction in effective and suitable methods for altering consciousness and exploring the mysteries of nature and psyche."

p22

I dislike this whole notion of deficits. It's still rooted in the pathology/ fix a problem mentality.

I prefer the language of needs; development needs, not development deficits. You're fine as you are. Now would you like to take the next step?