There’s a lot of talk about peer pressure and its role in causing people – especially young people – to start using drugs or alcohol. And it’s true – one’s peers can influence one to reach for that first drink, joint or pill. But peer pressure doesn’t have to mean that a person’s friends and associates twist his arm to participate in the substance abuse. It can be far more subtle than that.
Peer pressure can simply consist of walking into a room where everyone is drinking or smoking pot and not feeling like it’s possible to turn around and walk out. Or it can be just wanting to join in because it looks like everyone is having so much fun. And it seems like they are not coming to any harm – at least, not at the moment.
I looked over some recent interviews where we asked some of our graduates how they had started using drugs. Sometimes, the influence of their peers was extremely subtle.
Here’s some of their comments:
“The very first time I experimented with drugs was in college, mainly because I had a lot of friends I was living with in the dorms. They started smoking marijuana, they made it seem like so much fun. I thought, “Oh, you should try this too, you’ll have fun.'”
“I was in middle school, around 12 years old, didn’t really know who I was as a person. I looked around to see what I wanted to be like, what I wanted to strive to be. I wanted to fit in, I wanted to be a social person. And that’s one of the reasons I started using marijuana.”
“I had moved from Las Vegas to North Carolina, I found new friends and they were already smoking weed and drinking, and they invited me to go. Of course I wanted new friends and to be accepted so it seemed fun enough so I did it.”
In this case, the comments of her friends did influence her to start: “In high school, I started smoking marijuana with my friends. They told me there was nothing wrong with it, that it was kind of normal and everybody was doing it. So I just kind of joined in and started smoking marijuana.”
And in this case as well: “I started smoking pot to fit in with everybody. And it looked like everybody was having a good time. And they told me ‘Nobody’s died from smoking pot.'”
In all these cases, this was the start of a serious problem. Each of these people went on to use strongly addictive, damaging drugs like cocaine, heroin or methamphetamine. Each one of these people needed drug rehabilitation to get back on their feet after being knocked down by their addictions.
If you have young people you care about, it’s important to let them know how subtle peer pressure can be.
This blog post from a mom with a teenaged kid explains how you can teach young people to say “No” without their feeling threatened by their peers. Even strong, intelligent young people may have difficulty rejecting drug use without making their friends feel rejected and this article provides some “escape clauses.”
This mom worked with her teen to develop escape clauses they were both comfortable with. So this teen had pre-practiced lines to help him at those moments that his own self-determinism might fail him. You can read this excellent and useful article here: http://momastery.com/blog/2014/06/11/conversation-save-teens-life-and-own/#sthash.NMZkNDz7.uxfs.
The subtle relationship between peers and drug use (specifically, prescription drug abuse) is supported by some recent research from Purdue University. The news release announcing the results of this study states: “We find that friends are not actively pressuring them, but it’s a desire to have a good time alongside friends that matters.”
You can find that study here: http://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2014/Q3/study-peers,-but-not-peer-pressure,-key-to-prescription-drug-misuse-among-young-adults.html
Children are precious but we can’t always be there with them. When they start going out on their own, it’s vital that they have the skills to reject drug or alcohol use. Or, given the subtle nature of peer pressure, they could just find themselves slipping downstream with the drug-using flow – an action that looks harmless at first but could mean the eventual loss of everything of value – including their lives.
Their only protections, really, are their own understanding of the dangers of drug abuse and sufficient personal skill in getting out of these subtle situations of peer pressure. Therefore it’s important to help them develop these skills to get them out these troublesome situations. That one time when they say yes could lead them down the path to becoming an addict.