Father and Son
Parenting is tricky. Scott is a dad who uses drugs. He tells us about the ups and downs of fatherhood, including his experience giving harm reduction advice to his son.
UN: We’ve previously had UN articles from the perspective of mothers who use drugs. Could you give us a bit of a father’s perspective?
Scott: OK, I don’t know how it’s different from a mother’s perspective. It’s worrying, in a way, thinking of your child using drugs because you know some of the damage it’s done to you and you don’t want to see your child make the same mistakes. You try and pass on your experience to them and hope that they make the right decisions. I guess you think that at least as an informed parent, you can give them some reliable information.
I guess with my son, I try and tell him what I think are the drugs to stay clear of, the ones that can be more destructive than others. I always told him, “Stick to the hallucinogens, they’re fun.”
That’s including pot but pot itself can be a problem. OK, it’s not physically addictive. But myself, I smoked every day for years and years and years. Clearly, there’s a very strong psychological addiction there.
Of course, the 2 that worried me most were alcohol and tobacco. He’s asthmatic, so tobacco really worries me, and alcohol, of course, can be really destructive. So those are 2 that I really wanted to tell him about.
And I tell him about safe ways to use. So, with hallucinogenics, make sure you’re with other people. If he’s going to experiment, that’s fine. Experiment and have fun. Because they are fun. He was going to do it, that became quite obvious. So I said just do it as safely as you can.
UN: Do you think your own experience of having used drugs made it easier to have those conversations?
Scott: Heaps easier. I mean, I don’t know how truthful he is with me about it, because he knows that there are some drugs that I would definitely be upset if he was using. So I sometimes wonder, “Does he not tell me?” If he started smoking tobacco, would he tell me that? But the conversations have been quite easy. We talk about it quite openly, which I think is quite a positive thing.
With my parents, it just wasn’t something we talked about. The only knowledge they had was of cigarettes and alcohol and they didn’t really tell me very much about them. They gave me access to alcohol at quite a young age, but that wasn’t that unusual back in that day.
UN: One thing we often hear from mothers is the anxiety about Welfare stealing your kids if they know you’re using drugs. Have you had any experience like that?
Scott: I guess that’s not something I’ve been that concerned about. I guess that’s maybe because I’m a father and I’m on methadone now — so I’m reasonably stable — I don’t think that would really be an issue. It’s not something I’ve ever really been concerned about. Maybe that’s just me being in denial, but it’s not something I’ve really been that worried about.
I’m sure that it’s the case that there’s more pressure on mothers. I think society is a lot more forgiving of fathers. It’s a terrible situation but there is a lot more pressure put on mothers. It’s supposed to be kind of “natural” for mothers and the expectations on them as caregivers are a lot higher. I think that’s terribly unfair, but I think that’s often the case.
UN: What about with general experience of stigma and discrimination? Have you experienced that, for example, with health and medical services?
Scott: I’ve experienced it myself. It’s not really hit my son much. He’s still at the age where it’s still quite social for him so it’s something that he can hide quite easily. But obviously, being on methadone, it can be a real problem for me. Like trying to get pain medication when you go to hospital can be near impossible. Even with my own prescribing methadone doctor — he’s a doctor, it’s a medication but still there is a whole morality to the way he treats it. He doesn’t treat it like he treats any other form of medication. I think I’ve seen that in almost every methadone prescribing doctor I’ve had, and I’ve had a few, as I’ve moved around a bit.
They put a moral judgement on you. It’s the only medical treatment where you get punished if the medication doesn’t work. If the medication isn’t working and you start using, then you get punished. It’s seen as a moral flaw rather than a sign that the medication isn’t at the right level or the right dose. In one way they talk about it as if they’re treating it medically but then there’s this clear indication that to them there is this whole moral aspect to it.
UN: Do you ever get stigmatised for setting a bad example as a parent?
Scott: Absolutely! And I guess parenthood is full of guilt and worry. And even if nobody says it to you, this goes through your mind constantly — that you’re setting a terrible example. I guess I began by not telling him. I didn’t want him to see me using any drugs, or talk about my history, or anything like that. But when he got to a certain age, it kind of became obvious and we had the kind of relationship where he knew what my view was towards certain drugs. He knew I wasn’t going to get upset if I found out that he was smoking pot or taking acid or things like that.
I do worry that I’ve had that influence on him, but I think it’s more that I’ve put that on myself than others have accused me of it.
There are both positives and negatives about it. Because having that experience as parent means you can help guide your child, but there is also that worry that they can emulate it and it does affect their decision and choice to do it as well. But it also means that you can help them and give them information — that they can learn from your experience and your mistakes. Whether or not they do, I mean some mistakes you’ve just got to make yourself. Like, they’re not going to listen to other people just like I didn’t listen to my parents.
But I like to think that I didn’t listen to my parents because I knew that they didn’t know what they were talking about. That’s what I like to think the difference is. When I talk to my son, he knows that I’m coming from a position of experience and knowledge. Whereas my parents were coming from a position of fear and ignorance. I mean, it wasn’t back in the days of Reefer Madness movies, but it was almost that bad.
The stupid stuff that you heard, and very quickly found out was wrong, made you just disbelieve everything you heard. And that’s why I think it’s so important to give informed information to your children, to be able to say: “This is how things are” and “This is my experience” and try and be as truthful as you can. Then hopefully they’ll listen to what you say when they experience that you’re actually being accurate and truthful. If their experience matches yours, they’ll pay some attention.
So there is kind of a positive side as well as, maybe, also the guilt of: “Has my using affected them?”