GROUND ZER0, New York, N.Y.--July 16, 2003-- There is no more crippling impact of the Beast of Terror for a parent than to know his or her child is caught in the grips of the Beast of Drug Terror.
    The war in Iraq and the attacks on the United States on Nine Eleven pale in comparison to the death, destruction and overall chaos caused by the infiltration of drugs into the mainstream of our youth, as well as that of other nations.

     Drugs kill reality.   Their effect is to spin a child out of the mainstream of life, to snare the child into a world of emotional dependence to "escape" or "enhance" reality, stunting the child's growth and ability to cope with a world standing on his or her own two feet.
      There are countless causes for a child's experimentation with drugs.  The most common is peer pressure, the idea of being "grown up," of being able to make a decision as an independent person without the experience of age or the wisdom of life's dangers warning the child of the pitfalls of a chemical that will alter their mind and possibly hook them into a false sense of well-being, a world in which they live for the next manufactured "high."
       The problem starts at home.
       Drugs fill the "hole in a child's soul."  They offer the child a vehicle to accelerate maturity in a deceitful manner, sweeping the child away from the innocence of youth and driving him or her like a hammer does a nail into seeking "relief" from the tensions and disappointments of the world.
        Drugs are any industrialized nation's biggest Terrorist threat, for they sneak up when you aren't looking and attack the community in insidious ways, virtually cutting away the safety of society by crippling the young, unsuspecting.
        But what is the real source of a child's thirst to explore the world of drugs?  What really drives a child to seek drugs' seductive illusion, that warms the inner self and paints the world in colors the child feels safe and secure within?
        The answer, I believe, comes from the lack of Parental Vigilance.
         This Vigilance is not just about drugs themselves, but about the child's vulnerability to all shapes and forms of emotional Terrorism.

        The child seeks to fill his or her "hole in the soul" with drugs, to fill the void of feeling "bad" and move into the false world of drug-induced "feeling good."
         Drugs make the skinny kid strong, the Intimidated child bold, the Complacent child washed with a sense of individuality and character strength that he or she hungers for.  Or, most of all they drive away the pain of reality--the suffering of not being "loved," or cared about, or wanted. 
        Like a security blanket to a shivering child running naked in the frightening woods, drugs surround the child in a world woven with falsities, unreal senses of mothership or fathership.

       All drug users seek one thing from their addictions or usage--to eject themselves from reality.
        Whether it is mere experimentation or hard-corps use, the user buys an "E" Ticket to some place other than the world in which we live, and, if he or she finds that place more secure emotionally, then the child remains in that world.
         Sadly, for some what might start out as an experiment or a "choice" to use, quickly becomes a habit, a rut in which the chemical dependencies of the drug interact with the emotional desire to escape.  The child is hooked.
          Adults, despite all the facts of maturity, are nothing more than grown up children.   Haunting them in the hollows of their marrow is their child, those little creatures who rose up out of puberty into  adults, but who still cling to whatever imprints were embossed when they were fledglings.

        Psychiatrists always seek to go back to the nucleus of a person's being to uncover and discover the sources of emotional pain and suffering.    They are almost always rooted "back then," when the child was being shaped by his or her experiences.    Life's path is carved from the crib, for the child is constantly trying to grow up but never can shed the skins of experience when he or she was in the most formative years of life--that time when the desire to be loved, cared for and protected was at its zenith.
         Parents who were "too busy" to spend time with their children, or, were more concerned in living their own lives and thus paid little heed to the child's Fears, Intimidations and Complacencies, alienated the child.
         Some went so far as to beat or abuse their children, or neglected their vulnerability by expecting them "to stand on their own two feet" without putting in the effort to coach and nurture them so their emotional legs didn't wobble.
         It was the lack of Parental Vigilance, the lack of a parent understanding the child's Fear, Intimidations and Complacencies, that opened the child to the world of drugs.   For within the drug world was the escape from the sense of worthlessness, a cleavage from the world of feeling "not good enough," "not smart enough," "not loved enough" that created the "holes in the soul."
         Drugs filled those holes.
         I know.  For more than thirteen years I have chosen recovery from alcohol addiction.  Part of my recovery depends on my daily working with alcoholic/addicts, men, women, boys and girls, who are caught in the snare trap of addiction.    Over the years I have worked intimately with virtually hundreds, if not thousands, of people struggling to overcome the Beast of Drug Terror.

        In every case, the path leads back to a sense of being "unloved," and "unappreciated," stemming from various degrees of emotional and physical abuse suffered as a child.   Sometimes, this abuse is so innocuous as to not seem remarkable, but as the onion of life is peeled as part of a searching and fearless moral inventory of one's resentments and angers, the ultimate source falls back on the parents, the guardians, who, despite what may appear on the surface to be "love," was not.
        Drug addicts are children of emotional neglect.   Their parents, however well educated or lacking it, never became part of the child's world.  They never crawled back into the skin of their own Fears, Intimidations and Complacencies and held those demons in their hands as they walked the child through the minefields of maturity.

       Had they, the child of addiction who grows into the adult of addiction, would not want to fill his or her soul with the false hug of drugs.   There would be no resentments, no angst, no anger toward their parents for failing to "love them" as they sought to be loved.
        Drugs love them.
        At least, in the beginning.
       Then the false "embraces" turn on them, as any feral beast will eventually.   And, they eat them alive, gnawing at the shards of their self-worth, their self-respect, their self-determination until either death, incarceration or recovery occurs.
        Parents, ultimately are the nation's drug dealers.
        They set into motion the conditions that ripen a child for easy pickings by the Beast of Drugs, and most do it unconsciously.  This is expressed by the shocked parent who exclaims:  "My child!  Taking drugs!  No way!  Not my child."
        Another way of putting this is:  "My child!  Unloved and uncared for so much she or he takes drugs!  No way!"
        Parents who lack Vigilance--the constant awareness that the Beast of Terror is stalking their children from the inside out, not the outside in--become Complacent.  They fall into the trap of expecting their children to ward off the Beast of Terror's constant attacks, forgetting that they themselves were scarred and brutalized by their own Fears, Intimidations and Complacencies.
        They forget that as adults, they still live, as all humans, on the roller coaster of emotional ups and downs, and these peaks and valleys are exaggerated dramatically in the mind of a child.
        If they were subscribing Parents of Vigilance who took the Pledge of Vigilance and daily worked to expose and deny the Beast of Terror the freedom of the child's mind, they would work with their child by sharing their own Fears, their own Intimidations and their own Complacencies so their children would trust them enough to share their own Fears, Intimidations and Complacencies.
        And then, the Parent of Vigilance could help teach their child how to use Courage to overcome Fear, Conviction to thwart Intimidation, and the importance of Right Actions in behalf of their Children's Children's Children to battle the nagging gravity of Complacency.

        But this takes work, dedication, and the ability of a Parent of Vigilance to be a Sentinel, wary of the Beast's footprints constantly trying to stomp the child into submission.
        The most important issue related to drug use is teaching the child that drugs are nothing more than the tongue of the Beast of Terror.  Their goal is sweet-talk the child into a world where the child can shed his or her Fear, Intimidation and Complacency with "magic," rather than with resolve of character.

                              A Parent of Vigilance can stop the Terror of drug use at the doorstep by tackling the problem before it appears. 
       But it demands all parents recognize their children are potential victim, and that race, color, creed, economic or social status, has little bearing.    There is no question that the more challenged a parent is with life's burdens, the less time the parent has to spend with his or her child, increasing the risk that the Beast of Drug Terror will sink his jaws and claws into the youth.   But, drug abuse is not exempt from the richest or poorest.   A parent cannot buy a child's happiness, but must earn it with his or her honesty with the child, by addressing the fundamentals of Fear, Intimidation and Complacency and counterbalancing them with examples of Courage, Conviction and Right Actions for future generations.
       The most important antidote of all, is of course the duty one assumes as a human being "to make a difference" in this world.  That is, to learn from all the mistakes others made before, and to take the best of the qualities to pass on to our Children's Children's Children.
       But these lessons can only be learned if one is mentored by another who has traveled life's path.  Parents and Grandparents, plus Loved Ones of Vigilance, are the key source.   When the closest members of the family subscribe to the Principles of Vigilance, they are underscoring their duty to help the child not become the next victim to the Beast of Drug Terror.
       They set an example for the child that individuality is not about making choices, but about making the "right" choices that impact future generations.  Being whacked out on drugs disables that ability.
       They also remind the child that peer pressure, the desire to be "part of" the group, falls second to the duty to be true to one's self.   Self-truth often means standing alone while everyone else goes in another direction.    The right to chose one's destiny is never measured by herd instinct, but a child does not recognize the danger of "going along" until he or she is instructed as to its dangers.

         Parents of Vigilance do not tell, they share.   They share their own flaws, their own defects, and how they made mistakes by following the crowds, by joining in just to be accepted.   Then, in retrospect, they realized that the herd was nothing more than that.  If one stumbled and fell in the herd, the herd kept going, leaving the straggler to become fuel for the vultures and predators.
        Children can be suited in Vigilance armor by Parents of Vigilance who take the time to become allies with the child.   There is nothing more satisfying for a child than to have a parent be a friend and a coach--one who is willing to share his or her innermost feelings, while at the same time setting rules and guidelines for behavior.
         The line is delicate, but it can be walked by Parents of Vigilance.
         At risk, is the child's emotional life, and, if the child makes an error, such as drug use, the child's whole life can be at risk.    There is little difference between a parent protecting a child from a molester and protecting a child from reaching out to take a drug.  
        To protect the child, one must constantly work on building the child's character and self esteem, and be on guard not to chop off the child's hunger for human love so the child is driven to drugs to receive that love in chemical surrogate.

         Some tips:   Talk to your child not about drugs, but about dreams.   Help your child see the future and dream the impossible.   Don't admonish the child, but reason with him or her about the importance of being self-determined.  Talk about the issue of peer pressure, and example stories of how you were afflicted by the desire to "go along," and finally chose not to.  Or, how you suffered the consequences of "going along."
        Share your insides with your child so your child can share his or hers with you.
       For a Sentinel of Vigilance to be of value, he or she must climb into a child's skin.  That right is earned.  No child will let another in until trust is built, and that trust comes only from the honesty and respect shown to the child.
       The more you become part of the child's feelings, the more aware you are of the child's Fears, Intimidations and Complacencies, the more able you'll be to replace them with the antidotes of Courage, Conviction and Right Actions for future generations.

      Reading a child a book, whether bible stories, mysteries and adventures or fairy tales each night, and talking about the stories is one powerful way to breech the non-communication gap between one's insides and another's insides.   Hugging your child and verbalizing your love for him or her in the morning and at night (at the least) arms them to shoulder the attacks waiting for them when they step outside the safety of the home.
        The Beast of Drug Terror doesn't sleep.
        He does pushups, waiting.
        Be a Parent of Drug Vigilance.   Guard your child's insides so his or hers outsides will be safe.

July 15--Grandfathers of Vigilance:  Unite!

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