Can I get some input?

[Tiassa]

I just had a conversation with my Partner which might be related as follows:

P: "Joe just called and said he can't help us out, but we can go over and smoke with him if we want."

T: "Sounds okay. Go ahead and go. I'm just not comfortable with the idea of packing up the kid to go over to someone's place and smoke pot. It just seems ... you know."

P: "Well he's been wanting us to see the place for a while, so it's not like we'll just be going over there to smoke."

Comment: You know, I work very hard to keep my vices away from my daughter as much as possible. We know this house; we know where we can smoke what and not cause a problem. And I've never been one so desperate as to drive over to a friend's house just to smoke a bowl. So something just doesn't make sense to me. Now, given that in the weeks Joe has lived there we haven't popped over to see the place, I just rather think it's silly to decide that we must do that now only because someone has offered us some dope to smoke. It's not like we'd be bringing the stuff to a place we could smoke it "safely." At some point, we'd have to pack the kid--probably passed out at that point from secondhand pollution--into the car and drive home. And while I consider driving stoned much less dangerous than driving drunk ... no.

Am I really being unreasonable, though, inasmuch as I don't want to pack up my daughter just to go over to someone's house and smoke pot in a place that isn't "baby-proofed" and is difficult because of its size (a small flat) to isolate a smoking area within?

And if that answer is "no," could someone please tell me why I have to put up with this or similar logic every day? Like yesterday--the barflies wanted to meet my daughter; Mama packed her up and took her off and had a drink; leaving me at home as a "favor" to me. (What? It was two hours of peace and quiet, to be sure.) And the day before that--if we wish to enter into the discussion a general overview of substance use habits--having to go to the bar to "pick up some nuts and bolts." Yes, she brought home some nuts and bolts that didn't fit what she was trying to put together, but she managed to get a couple of drinks under her belt before driving home.

I'm a stoner. There's no question about that. I proudly advocate it. But what the hell is this?

Two cents? Anyone?

 

[sargentlard]

Face it..you two have problems. You have a daughter yet smoking sometimes takes precedence over her general well being. The mother doesn't mind drunk driving or driving under the influence of Marijuana or even her daughter being present in her company while she is being effected by the drug.

No offense intended but it doesn't really seem as if she was ready to have a child or raise one...and to some degree neither do you.

 

[Tiassa]

No offense intended but it doesn't really seem as if she was ready to have a child or raise one...and to some degree neither do you.

None taken.

Nobody on the face of the planet, least of all me, argues that we were in any way "ready" to have a child.

 

[sargentlard]

None taken.

Nobody on the face of the planet, least of all me, argues that we were in any way "ready" to have a child.

But you did and for her sake you have to mend your youthful ways. No more indiscretions like these...especially from your spouse.

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

With few exceptions, I've found stoned people to be far more responsible about "taking care of business" than drunk people. So as to the question of simply being stoned while you're in charge of your daughter's welfare, I'd say follow your instincts. If you think you're competent, you almost certainly are. Remember that one of the primary symptoms of cannabis intoxication is paranoia. Every risk in life seems to be ten times as likely as before you got loaded. It's extremely unlikely that you're going to miss one.

If you get so stoned that you fall down or pass out, of course, well then that's another story, but that doesn't sound like you.

But as to having your daughter grow up knowing that you smoke pot, that's a different question. Some day you're going to have to explain to her why it's OK for you but it won't be OK for her until she turns 18 or 21 or whatever age is considered reasonable by this generation.

That didn't use to be such a hard thing to do. Society had "rites of passage," and everyone tried to abide by them. The answer, "You'll just have to wait until you're older because this is something that's only safe for grownups," used to carry more weight.

There was also another school of thought. Forty years ago a lot of people used to just smoke with their kids because they figured their kids were going to smoke anyway and at least they'd know where they were. I never thought much of that approach to the problem but I've never had to face it myself so who am I to judge.

As for letting your daughter ride in your mother's car after she's been drinking... personally I think that is the biggest problem of all the ones you mentioned. Work on that one and you may save your daughter's life. To hell with the pot, thats a trifle by comparison.

 

[Tiassa]

But as to having your daughter grow up knowing that you smoke pot, that's a different question

I'm not particularly concerned about her knowing. However, despite my beliefs that marijuana has relatively low health impact, nobody pretends that setting something on fire and breathing it in is healthy. My concern is generally environmental and health-oriented. She doesn't need second-hand smoke; she doesn't need THC residue on the furniture.

There's actually a reasonable possibility that I'll eventually just stop because it's not worth continuing to smoke, and that may come before I have to explain myself to her. Strangely, dope is one of the things I'm comfortable enough with to say, "I'll worry about it when it comes up," but only in the specific sense of her awareness of my habit.

I won't automatically call myself a failure if she starts smoking or fucking at, say, 15. But in the past I've argued essentially that my disappointment should essentially be aimed at myself should that be the case.

As for letting your daughter ride in your mother's car after she's been drinking... personally I think that is the biggest problem of all the ones you mentioned.

I agree on the one hand, but disagree on the other for an entirely obscure reason.

Hmm ... perhaps the best place to start is with the idea that, "We must trust one another to a certain degree." Even I'm unsettled at acute degree of my partner's behavior over the last week. Judging by the arcane point an anthropology prof once related that some aboriginal people or another counted, "One, two, three, many," and by my general acknowledgment of the Threefold Rule of the Craft, I'd say I'm ticking off at least the third point on a list, and at this point I have to start wondering about it.

When she has to run up to a bar to meet a guy who's going to give her some materials for a project she's working on ... I can trust that. I owe at least that trust.

But when I frame that idea according to the following--

• She knew she needed the nuts and bolts before she "spontaneously" bought a headboard that we really can't afford if she's describing our finances accurately . . . .
• I also, as a generic consideration, owe her the trust of being smart enough to not drink and drive with my daughter in the car.
• Between the nuts and bolts and the showing off of the baby, she gave me on Wednesday (right after coming home from the bar) the reasons she needed to go to the bar on Thursday and Friday.

--I'm dangerously close to counting "many," at which point I am obliged to make a deliberate attempt to disrupt the behavior.

But a primary obstacle is this odd illogic. I've already discussed the issue with her, and it's quite clear to me that I'm going to require assistance when we reach that point of not just putting my foot down but stomping loudly enough to rattle the Cascades. That particular day will either result in her attempting to murder me or her attempting to kill herself. (You know that point where anger and confusion put together paralyze a person? It comes awfully early in any discussion for her, and beyond that is one hell of an abyss.)

And yet, my friends--many of whom have withdrawn from me on the advice that they're waiting for me to be rid of her--and my family--who obviously express concern at her behavior--just don't seem interested to any degree.

It's not entirely different from Sciforums sometimes insofar as if there's not one word or one short phrase that encapsulates a process or idea, that process or idea obviously does not exist. And sometimes things for which there are words and phrases don't exist. And sometimes ....

In other words, they're an American family; they're American friends--One of my best friends, for instance, who knows I don't drive and is aware fo why, called me the other day and said I should come down and see her. Right. Let me hop on a bus. Then I'll transfer across ... one, two, three, four county lines, and I'll be there directly, in eight to ten hours. Does she say such things to annoy me? No. It just doesn't occur to her that my lack of a driver's license has any relation to do with her request to pack up the baby and come on down. My brother, a couple of weeks ago, interrupted a discussion my mother and I were having about how to pull off a number of feats in a relatively short amount of time (clear an outstanding DUI, clear a contempt charge, get a license, get a job, get the fuck out of the house with my daughter in tow) in order to tell me to start selling a bunch of stuff on eBay. Now, it sounds like a good idea, but stop pushing the idea based on completely inflated prices, please. Twenty bucks for a five year-old miniature boom box with no CD player? I can buy one used for less. Oh, you want me to sell five hundred plastic cups with an obscure pharmaceutical logo on the side? And how is it that the classic capitalist is forgetting the investment of packing and shipping that stuff? (Some of it's not worth the cost of shipping. A hundred Post-It holders shaped like a rhinoceros and a pharmaceutical logo on the side? Who the hell is going to buy that for any substantial price? It sounds like Homer Simpson's grease operation; the cost of the bacon isn't his problem, since his wife bought it. Unless I can con someone into paying for the shipping on a plastic cup in addition to a grossly inflated price, I'm going to actually lose money. Oh, Mom? What? You mean you'll bail me out again? Well, how much money, exactly, do you plan to spend doing that? Why?!

Now, it's not particularly to lament these minor issues at all. But rather to point out that, if I'm going to find any assistance in staging an intervention against what is recognized as one of the most reckless consciences to never serve prison time, what one atheist has suspended disbelief for long enough to call her the Devil, it's going to take one hell of a sales job. Seriously ... my mother is about to ask me what I want for my birthday. This despite the fact that she already knows, and despite the fact that the only thing I actually want for myself in the world at this time costs less than she spends, anyway. This is the logic of the people around me.

And the thing is that they just don't like her anyway. But they speak about her as if she's somehow "normal" enough to communicate with "normally". Were this true, I would not find myself amid these circumstances. So for some reason, they think I can walk up to her and say, "Honey, I think you're drinking too much," and she'll respond, "You're right, Dear, I probably am. Will you please help me help myself?"

The idea that she will resist the notion that her behavior is cause for concern is apparently beyond conception for most of the people closest to me. And unfortunately, the one person I have left to turn to legitimately has enough of her own issues to deal with. (Family, business, personal.)

So what I'm looking for, in the end, is to find a way to make what seems perfectly clear to you and me clear to others. It's an amazing malady to witness; my family doesn't particularly like her, my friends and family don't trust her, and I look at a common friend of ours and want to say, "You know, I understand not fucking me because you didn't want to upset her, but this is a little different."

But that script in the topic post; those bullet points above ... this is every day. And for some reason, the people whom society somehow indicates are supposed to, in their role as family and friends, at least be able to offer some honest advice even if they're unwilling to help out in the action (nor do I blame them for that unwillingness; she's reduced a teetotaler to tequila before)

It's easy enough for me to write it off as something I can worry about tomorrow. But "just as long as nobody gets hurt today," doesn't seem like a reasonable clause to me.

I don't accept it of anyone else; how can I possibly claim it for myself?