We certainly had to do a little experimenting on our own, but I think both of us learned much more easily than him the importance of meaningful, spiritually fulfilling sex, and the dangers of addiction, and for that I will always be grateful.

I also wonder, about “kids like scars”…do you think this relates to our not having a coming-of-age ritual in modern U.S. society? I mean, how sheltered are these kids? I’ve often believed (perhaps wrongly, but still…) that humans need a certain amount of stress and strife in life…enough to grow, but not enough to break (and that in itself is problematic, ‘cuz we have different tolerance levels). And that if someone hasn’t been given enough of life’s little challenges by young adulthood, that they will seek their own. Sometimes, in a self-destructive way.

Then again, maybe these kids just want reassurance that it is possible to screw up in life, and still come out ok. Perfectionism is drilled into a lot of kids these days, and their lives are highly organized from a young age. Maybe these kids just want to know there’s room to breathe.

As we say on the jobsite, “If you’ve never f’d up, it’s ‘cuz you’ve never done anything.” (the person who is no longer there, due to layoff or job transfer, is always the one to be blamed for everything forgotten or wrong. the corollary statement is “hell! hire him/her back….that’s the only person that did anything!”)

I don’t know who your friends are, Lawrence (though I think you are from Cville, where lots of my family reside); not a lot of folks around here are thrice divorced by 35. Add in the adventures with law enforcement, psychiatry, promiscuity, piercing, substance abuse and so forth and, while not entirely an unheard of story, it’s not exactly the road most traveled.

The change, it seems to me, seems related to the shift in religion that we’ve seen in America since the 1960s. The two big trends that I can see is the rising influence of fundamentalism and then also, quite different, the rising influence of mysticism. Christian teaching has long gone back and forth over how much religion one can gain from study and how much must come from direct experience of the divine. The Catholic Church emphasized study, Protestant churches have tended to emphasize direct experience. The more radical Protestant churches have usually been the most extreme in their embrace of mysticism. Since the 1960s the interest in direct experience of the divine has grown, and many people no longer look for it within a Christian context. They look elsewhere. They want exstacy, divine delirium, magic. They are looking for it in music, art, sex, drugs, risk, intense living.

Though you’d now like to rewrite your history, I’m with the kids on this one, because I’ve seen your story a thousand times – live wild in youth and end up comfortable and satisfied and safe before the age of 40. Your story strikes me as the most common experience of middle-class Americans today, the road most traveled.

We probably have different ideas of what “turned around” means. I do know that many treatment programs including AA refer to a higher power. But that is what I believe. If others believe they have done it on ther own then they are entitled to that belief. We can agree to disagree.

I agree that self-destructive behavior is just that, destructive. I also believe that we can’t turn our lives around on our own. We need God’s help. The question I have for you though (and it is a personal one, so feel free to decline to answer),is if recognizing your self-destructive behavior led you to seek God? I am not a teacher, so I don’t know how to explain it to younger people, but I think what someone who has been there can offer is, that if you can avoid self-destructive choices you should do so because they just create a lot of pain and negativity, but if you find yourself caught up in the negativity you can still turn it around. God can turn any situation into a positive “learning experience” for us, but the key is that we need to recognize that we need God’s help.
I was raised in Christian family and I think I have managed to make fairly healthy choices in regards to alcohol, drugs, and sex (with some exceptions of course). I could be wrong, but my guess is that I might be able to share with younger people how to prevent some problems, but I would loose some credibility and effectiveness when it comes to helping them turn away from these problems. You’re past could allow you to empathize instead of sympathize and I believe you might be effective with some people where I couldn’t be. Obviously, you only need to share what you are comfortable with, but sharing your past is not the same as condoning it.

Or, as I occasionally tell my kids, I make the dumb mistakes so you won’t have to.