Psychological Conditioning

Psychological Conditioning and
The Impact of Drugs on Children

Our children are our future. More accurately, they represent our immortality. it is to our children that we must look for extention of our lives, our names and our fortunes.

When we seek to discuss the impact of drugs on our children and young adults we must, therefore, simultaneously discuss that impact on our future and our survival potential as a people.

We must first note that the impact of drugs on our children and young adults is insidious. It comes like a thief in the night, under cover of the ill-formed darkness of ignorance. It's impact devastatingly subtle. By impact we mean the power of an idea to produce change, whether the change be negative or positive.
In this context, the idea that has such great impact and has produced such dramatic change in our children and our society is one the that we still do not fully understand.

The idea, simply put, is that of the "good life", poplularly embodied n the notion of the American Dream. A dream, it should be remembered, is a set of images perceived while the dreamer is asleep. A dream is, therefore, an illusion. While asleep, a dreamer's senses are in a state of reduced activity. The American Dream is, therefore, an illusion by definition and to begin with.

The change that this idea, this dream, this illusion, has occasioned is wholly detrimental and applies itself on may levels. Perhaps the most important is the psychological level.

At the psychological level our children and young adults have been caused to believe that one acceptable method of raising themselves above the level of their parents and unsuccessful peers is to be entrepreneurs in the high risk, illicit drug trade.
In America it is the acquisition of material gain and advantage, and its tireless pursuit, that is recognized as the be all and end all of existence. America is a place where we repetitiously remind our children that they must work hard to succeed. Their young impressionable minds translate our admonitons as you must succeed at any cost. To do otherwise is to live life as a hopeless failure. We inform them, honestly, but naively, that success is found only in material acquisistion and advantage. We advise them to stay in school, get a good education, but, for what purpose? So that they can be someone, to make something of their lives, to attain the finer thing in life. In short, so they can do more, accomplish more, than their forebears. We tell them to get a good education so they can earn good money in order to buy all of those finer things in life. Mainly to own and possess the things we did not have or could not give them.

When we do this we give our children, we implant in their minds, we create for them the mind-set of the risk taker--the entrepreneur.

An entrepreneur is, by definition, a person who undertakes a business venture assuming high risk for high profit. By nature, the entrepreneur, takes risks that the average person will not.

By our training, such that it is, we confront our children with a jarring reality. The good life, the illusionary American Dream, by whose larger-than-life images are children are constantly bombarded through videos, telelvision, radio and motion pictures, requires money cold hard case, in abundance.

The money required is not, however, the amount of money their parents settled for. It is not the wages of a mail carrier or civil servant. It is not even the wages of most professonals. What our children see depicted everyday and that which is held up to be the necessaries of the good life, is out of the reach of the average Black family. Only two groups of people in America accomplish that level of material success. They are athletes/entertainers and drug dealers.

Most parents discourage their children's pursuit of athletic careers, and justifiably so, because there will only be a few giants in that field. Statistically, a Black child has as much chance of becoming a NBA star as he of winning the Power Ball lottery.

The entrepreneur field is no different. Although some have made considerable fortunes at that elusive enterprie far, far more have wasted their valuable time and energy in pursuit of success in rap and hip-hop.

As you can see the field quickly narrows for Black youth who have an entrepreneurial inclination and bent of mind. In many, far too many cases, the lure of high risk in the drug trade is offset by the even potentially higher profits. Unfortunately, it can and often does logically appear the only opportunity to obtain the good life available to our your--based upon the guidelines that we have taught them.

The drug trade, it must be remembered, is a business enterpreneur, the fact that it is an illegal enterprise is apparently irrelevant. The drug requires little skill for the product literally sells itself. The drug trade requires minimal capital investment. Some entrepreneurs start with as little as one hundred dollars, many have leads to high profits and the good life, virtually guranteed, almost instantaneously. The good life on the quick -- for a time. But when have young, of any nation, ever given thought to tomorrow?

This then is the psychological impact of drugs. Not always evident but always a reality to our children and young adults. Parents too must understand the dynamics of this unavoidable fact or they will never be able to devise programs and policies to combat the scourge of our communities.

In the business enterprise that is the drug world there are two groups of people -- equally addicted. They are the drug dealers, entrepreneurs all, and the users.
As we have seent the dealers are motivated by the good life that only large sums of money can buy. The users, in symbiotic association with the dealers, are also in pursuit of the good life, albeit on another, but no less tragic level.

To the user the good life is manifested in the high and the good times associated with it. It is the hedonist philosophy at work. It is the age-old belief that pleasure is what life is really about. Enjoy today and give no thought about tomorrow. But, let us not forget, that this philosophy too derives from the flawed notion that we must pursue a good life as it is defined by others.

Our children and young adults are pressured to join those who seek the euphoria associated with the good life. Psychologist refer to this phenomenon as pressure. But, the pressure applied by peers, itself, social pressure resulting from the constant bombardment of the media over the entire course of their developmental lives.

We seem to forget that alcohol is a drug, one of the world's most legal drugs. Yet, we celebrate all of the life's successes and accomplishments, no matter how minor, with a toast. We wind down from a hard day's work with a drink. In many homes the very symbol of hospitality and welcome guests is the proffered glass of scotch. All of our problems are met or overcome with the drug solution. Depressed? Take a Prozac or Valium. Hyperactive? Give the kid a dose of Ritalin (known as soft cocaine). And we would be remiss if we failed to mention nicotine -- the most addictive substance known to man. Our children learned to smoke from us. Crack, cigarettes, weed.

These are the societal pressures that underly the peer pressure to which our children often succumb. We cannot make drugs central to our lives and expect that our children will reject them out of hand. We cannot expeect our children to ignore the lure of high profits and the good life when we have raised them.

This is not an indictment of our parenting skills. It is a expose' that reveals the psychological underprinting of the problem that we now confront. Our children are our future. The future that they choose is, in large measures, determined by the values we have taught. Remember that history teaches that behind every great fortune there is a great crime. Money, the good life and crime go together. The only variable is the type of crime. Bootleg liquor in the twenties -- crack cocaine in the eighties. Always the pursuit of the good life, always a tragic results.

This is my perspective. What your's?

Terrance "Gangsta" Williams