#49 Girl wants friend to stop smoking pot

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Gabby
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Joined: Sat Mar 26, 2005 11:24 am

#49 Girl wants friend to stop smoking pot

Post by Gabby » Wed Jun 08, 2005 2:01 pm

#49 Girl wants friend to stop smoking pot / Pot not source of problem

DEAR ABBY: My best friend, “Bette,” is one of the nicest, smartest teens you’ll ever meet. I enjoy her company, we get along great, and we have a lot in common. She’s also my role model, since I’m two years younger than she is. (I skipped a couple of grades.)

Recently Bette has been smoking weed and encouraging me to try it. I’m very against smoking. I’m afraid Bette might be doing the wrong thing. She says it’s OK because she does it only a little bit.

How can I persuade her to stop? Should I even try? Will I be ruining a great friendship? NEEDS HELP IN GEORGIA

DEAR NEEDS HELP: You appear to be more mature than your older friend. Not only is pot smoking generally unhealthy, it impairs your judgment. Marijuana can affect memory and the choices smokers make while under the influence. It is also illegal, with all that implies.

It is important that you understand that people change as they mature—or fail to mature. If Bette continues on this path, she may eventually begin spending more time with other kids who smoke pot. It could affect her grades and her participation in sports and other interests. You may have less and less in common. So start developing friendships with other students whose interests and goals are similar to yours and continue moving forward on your own wholesome path.

By all means, try to persuade Bette to stop; as her friend, it’s the right thing to do. But she is ultimately responsible for her own behavior—or misbehavior—and you have to protect your own future.


Gabby's Reply:

HI NEEDS: Your friend is revealing what’s next for you in your leadership-communication skills curriculum. Go back in time, to the first day you found out she had smoked. What you communicated then sanctioned and rewarded her behavior. It’s called enabling. It was supposed to be the turning point in the relationship. How did she know, with absolute certainty, that you would continue interacting with her? How did she know that you wouldn’t communicate, “Have you told your parents? I’m uncomfortable with you smoking, and, with you deceiving them, and, in you not valuing me enough to not do it. Will you stop doing it as of now? If not, please call when you have not smoked for 6 months in a row.”

What she has done is tantamount to lighting up a cigar in front of the Pope. It's a powerful communication of disrespect. It indicates dozens of withheld thoughts between the two of you. Thoughts withheld serve as barriers to the experience of love and respect. The concept of love is there. What's missing is the experience.

Now here’s what it’s really about for you; if you don’t get this, you’ll be writing again, telling us your new spouse is either smoking or cheating on you. How do we know? We know because you don’t communicate your expectations and standards up front in your relationships.

For example:

"...by the way, before we date too much more you need to know that I believe that marriage vows should contain the following agreement— “If either of us cheats on the other the other immediately files for divorce (with zero possibility of reconciliation), and, the cheater agrees they will not sue for custody, alimony, or property settlements. The same goes for smoking and drugs, I am totally unwilling to play the drugs, cheating, victim game. Cheating would be my spouse's way of communicating that they insist I divorce them, that they no longer want to be married to me. There will be no second chance. If this is a problem for you, now would be the perfect time to say so. —What are your thoughts about this vow?"

Because you weren’t willing to be honest, up front (zero drugs), with your friend you’ll have to present your ultimatum now. My sense is that you won’t—that you’ll continue interacting with her, (mostly irresponsible nonverbal shunning) supporting her deception with her parents, so that you don’t have to experience the pain of aloneness. That is to say, you are addicted to being invalidated (it’s called abuse). To support another in deceiving (abusing) another (her parents) sets life up for others to support others in deceiving you. In this case your nonverbal communications to her parents are powerful, having powerful consequences. It could be said that she has set you up to support her in recreating the experience of integrity with her parents. It could also be said that you unconsciously set her up to set you up to have a choice, to go for it or to opt for a life of mediocrity.

You need communication-skills coaching. We know this because you don’t yet know, at the level of natural knowing, that communication only takes place in space. You attempted to communicate into a position. Her position is, [I have smoked. I will smoke. Nothing you can say will cause me to stop now.] At some point in time you'll realize that you unconsciously intended her to be doing this, for you, in support of your growth, your maturity.

The truth is you offer her no intelligent mind-expanding game to play. No alternative except for more mediocrity. She, like many, has succumbed to the futility of it all. She sees what’s happening in the world, the hypocrisy, including your hypocrisy, and the hypocrisy she succumbs to when in your presence. She can’t find anyone who tells the truth, who inspires her. Smoking is a way to check out, a way to go unconscious. For some it’s a necessary (illegal but not "wrong") path. Most people need to hit bottom before choosing to have life work. If you get in the way, it delays their process.

FYI: I know of no one who smokes who is committed to making a positive contribution to his/her community. I've seen some awesome minds address their community's problems and then peter out after one or two projects, many resort to smoking. Smoking eventually takes one inside the mind, as opposed to out into the world of mastering personal relationships, organization relationships, community relationships, and societal (the world/international community relationships), each with its own communication model to master. Weed supports one in putting up with things. Don’t buy the supposed “expanded experience of love” benefits of smoking grass. The “love” that is experienced is at the expense of the support of others. A smoker consistently "forgets" to call his/her friends frequently to see what they are up, what their goals are, and what tasks they would put off except for their mutual support—therefore it is not an expandable mutually satisfying love. The vast majority of smokers are estranged from their parents. That is to say, they do not have a mutually satisfying supportive relationship with their parents; to this day they have dozens of withholds, deceits, and unacknowledged perpetrations with them. Although smoking may cause one to have the thought to call those they have ignored/abused/deceived and clean things up, they are still missing the communication skills to do so, so most don’t even try. Their mind has invented a good reason to not. Most smokers are unconsciously committed to having their parents fail and to not feel proud and accomplished.

Yours is a valuable letter for others to read, thank you, Gabby

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