Way before Nancy Reagan ("Just Say No") and way before the cracking-egg-frying-pan commercial ("This is your brain on drugs"), there was my mom.

Now, most of us who grew up in the 80’s (not to mention the 70’s and OF COURSE the 60’s) have probably been faced with some kind of hallucinogenic at one time or another. These range from the ubiquitous marijuana (pot, grass, weed, bud, reefer, ganja, herb, dope, etc.) through the various extremes of hash, uppers, downers, speed, mushrooms, coke, heroin, PCP, LSD, MDMA and a whole lot of other acronyms, none of them nutritious.

We may have even sampled a few of the past decades’ finer narcotic fares due to curiosity, accident, pressure, or any number of reasons. I’m not here to judge that, but I can honestly say that my tox screen comes up pretty clean. Drugs scare me. Anything with so many names and incarnations should scare you, but my particular profound fear is due mainly to one person: my mother.

My mom is a nurse, and was one of the first floating-shift RNs at Royal Inland Hospital in Kamloops. As such, she got to work all over the hospital, wherever she was needed, which was usually in the ER, the Psych ward, the ICU and Extended Care wards.

I had just started junior high school when she went back to work. My newly minted teen brain was just starting to perk up to possibilities from the party underground. While I got the usual anti-drug lectures at home, I also got mom’s take on her days and nights at the hospital.

"Well, we lost another one tonight..." she’d say wearily, easing off her white orthopedic nursing shoes.

I’d look up from my homework.

"Yup...another kid. Must have been about fourteen or so. Jumped off the Petersen Creek Bridge." She’d begin to rub her feet, savoring the arches and pausing before filling in the unasked blank. "Angel dust, they think. Or maybe pot. Landed face-first in the pilings, arms outstretched, trying to fly."

Or, during Dallas:

"Did you know a Steve Wilson^*? Well, never mind. He aspirated on his own vomit at a party on Saturday. Saw him in the ER but they couldn’t save him. He’d taken something that made his lungs collapse. Quaaludes."

Or, on the way to the mall:

"Remember Jill Marples^*? Probably not - she was a few years ahead of you. Tsk. So much going for her. They have her in extended care now. Pity they have to keep her strapped down like that, in case she tries to eat her hands again..." (sotto voce) "ACID. Back in ‘82."

Or, at breakfast:

"Tough night last night. A few intensive care patients had grand mal seizures. One bit off his tongue. Sedatives just don’t work when 65% of your brain cells have melted. Speed."

And:

"Two tonight. There’s a bad batch of something going around Kamloops, they say. Shame. So young. Their hearts exploded. Cocaine."

I grew up pretty convinced that (1) over half of Kamloops was taking drugs (based on casual inquiries, this could very well be true) and (2) in addition to melting your brain and exploding your heart, drugs make you sweat, smell bad, and lose bowel control. Drugs also cause hair loss, crossed eyes, involuntary twitches, halitosis, psychotic behavior, acne, and multiple personalities. Based on general scientific research and not just half of Kamloops, that’s also true.

It didn’t matter that I never read about any of these incidents in the paper or never heard about them from anyone else but my mother. She had the inside track, and every shift brought forth some fresh new horror based on the hallucinogen du jour. Someone who tried to fly from a bridge or drink gasoline or eat their cat. Someone who is still, even today, convinced that tiny glistening strands connect everything around them. Someone who still sees the Devil in every morning plate of hospital scrambled eggs. And usually, it was their first time taking drugs.

"Because," said my mother, "You just don’t know how it will affect you. Everyone’s chemistry is different. There’s really no way to know."

At thirteen, my girlfriend and I would go Dairy Queen and drink four cups of coffee in rapid succession because we heard four cups of coffee was like speed. And coffee wouldn’t kill you, would it?

I didn’t dare ask.

At fourteen, we bought two pills from the local hood that had "222" on them. "It’s good," he assured us. We cut the pills in half and nibbled and waited, hearts thumping wildly...before I even swallowed, I was thinking, oh, please let it be over...

Even though nothing happened, I didn’t try it again.

By fifteen, I’d had more than a few joints offered to me. I always passed on them, hearing mom’s sotto voce whisper ("...Everyone’s chemistry is different...") and picturing the worst thing in the world - which was ending up in the RIH ER with mom leaning over me in a gurney going, "Tsk! Get the straps!"

Eventually, I "experimented". The one thing mom didn’t tell me is that people got a lot stupider. I didn’t want to talk to any of them, mostly because I was huddled paranoiacally in a corner trying to (a) stay awake and (b) keep my heart from leaping out of my chest. One of those friends joked about how so-and-so’s joints were "probably laced with PCP or something..." Inwardly, I freaked, and I still break into a cold sweat.

By the time I actually conquered the well-placed fears instilled by mom’s post-shift debriefings, I was also smart enough to not be curious or careless or pressured anymore. Recreational drug use was just not that much fun, what with all the acute paranoia, teeth grinding, heart palpitations, sweating, and nail biting. I came to a brilliant conclusion: don’t do drugs.

I don’t think mom ever believed that I managed to avoid most of the standard coming-of-age corruption in Kamloops. That is to say, she never let up with the episodic retelling of her workdays. Over dinner, lunch, and breakfast, she would continue to grimly extol the various failed organs she’d seen and their possible chemical causes, pausing only to crack a few eggs in the frying pan. She’d sigh and shake her head as they sizzled.

The message got through, though. No doubt about that. I found myself speaking to someone younger the other day. It was a candid conversation, and the subject of Ecstasy came up.

"You know," I said, digging into the horror vault of something I’d read recently. "I have a lot of doctor friends. One was telling me about someone they treated who’d been at a rave. They said even five hours after he died, his temperature stayed at 108°. His kidneys, liver, and heart all failed at once. Apparently his brain boiled...they could see the fluid bubbling. Ecstasy."

(P.S. For more "material", see http://www.teenchallenge.com/main/drugs/)

^*Not names of real people.


©Laura Z., November 2001

Author: Laura Z. (33) lives in Vancouver, B.C., Canada with one son (15 months), one husband (34), and one cat (about 78 based on energy level, but 3 in people years). Her mom, now retired, recently returned from Jamaica where she ran a volunteer-based free clinic for several years. Reported drug use in the parish decreased somewhat.

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