Stoned-Age Parents : Drug-Users of the ‘60s and Early ‘70s Struggle to Help Their Children Avoid the Same Problems

Allan, 42, who smoked dope almost daily in the late ‘60s, is now a businessman and father. His son is 13--and may soon face the temptations Allan couldn’t resist.

“I’ve given it a lot of thought,” said Allan, a San Fernando Valley resident, “and I haven’t figured out what I’ll tell him. I’ll have to say something.”

What should Allan say? Should he admit his experiences, possibly damaging his credibility if his son decides to try drugs? Or should he lie?

No answer applies to every situation; circumstances vary from family to family. But one thing’s for sure: As the generation of drug users in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s approaches middle age, they find themselves on the other side, the inside of the once-dreaded Establishment. And now their teen-agers must confront the drug battle.

“The numbers of people who took drugs and now have teen-age kids are growing all the time,” said Jerry Bachman, program director of the University of Michigan’s Institute of Social Research. “And they’ll continue to grow.”

According to a 1988 survey conducted by the National Institute of Drug Abuse in Washington, about 45 million Americans over the age of 26 have smoked marijuana; about 14 million have used cocaine.

And while, in an institute survey released this week, the proportion of high school seniors who said they used drugs in the last year dropped to 35.4%--the lowest figure since the survey began in 1975--the percentage of students who said cocaine would be “fairly easy” or “very easy” to obtain climbed to 58.7%, an all-time high.

David Robb, an assistant to William Bennett, President Bush’s drug czar, said that how parents discuss their past drug habits may determine if their children eventually experiment or at least admit their experiences.

“Thank God not everyone’s parents went to Berkeley,” Robb said.

For months, Dick Callahan’s daughter, Megan, 17, had been staying up late, oversleeping, missing school and acting erratically. He figured she was drinking or maybe taking speed. He knew the symptoms well.

One night, when she was high on marijuana, they talked.

“Maybe, I thought, if I told her about my experiences,” said Callahan, 42, of Tujunga, “I could get her to cop her story.”

Callahan’s strategy is common--tell the truth and hope your kids will be honest with you.

Nancy--not her real name--recently discussed drugs for the first time with her 13-year-old daughter. She admitted that she smoked marijuana in college.

“I guess I wanted to show her it wasn’t beyond my understanding of reality,” Nancy said. “I wanted to show her I wouldn’t judge her, that she could tell me things.”

The line between being honest and too honest is fine.

Specific details--how much, how often--could send the wrong message, especially when schools teach that drugs are detrimental to physical and mental health. Soon after the talk with her daughter, Nancy began to worry that she had revealed too much, that maybe it “wasn’t a real parent thing to do. I thought maybe it came out sounding like drugs are OK.”

And Nancy’s husband, Larry--not his real name--doesn’t think he’ll tell his daughter the whole truth. He loved dope.

“There’s such a potential for abuse that it frightens me,” Larry said. “I’m her father, not her pal.”

Conversely, Herb, who smoked marijuana every day for 10 years, held nothing back from his three teen-agers.

“If you leave anything out, it’ll come back at you at some later point,” said Herb of North Hollywood. “If I said I didn’t enjoy it, they’d wonder why I smoked so much.”

Herb, who is in the music business, also told them that he was paying the price for his drug experiences. “I could’ve been an achiever if I hadn’t done drugs.”

Many psychologists prefer Herb’s approach: Tell your kids the extent of your drug involvement, both positive and negative, hoping that on the balance, the adolescents will be dissuaded from experimenting.

“If their confession is consistent with the open dialogue that has gone on between parent and child,” said Howard Levitt, president of Counseling West in Woodland Hills, a family counseling center, “it’s OK to say that you used drugs. It’s a sign of respect between parent and child. It may help the child open up.”

But, Levitt said, if parent and teen-ager don’t communicate well, “it may be better in some cases to lie because it would be hard for the child to take what the parent is saying in the spirit it was intended.”

And, if a parent is open, the teen-ager may cry “hypocrite” when there is an attempt to crack down on drug use.

Vicky Townsend, 40, of North Hollywood used to get high in front of her children. Living with an alcoholic husband, Townsend saw dope as a daily escape. A joint, and she could handle anything. “We used to laugh and call it ‘Turkish Tobacco,’ ” Townsend said. “I didn’t think it would have any effect on them.”

Years later, her teen-age daughter Jessica started using drugs and didn’t stop. Townsend was furious. She ordered Jessica to get rid of the grass.

“I said, ‘Who are you to say this is wrong?’ ” said Jessica, 17. “This was my thing and I enjoyed doing it.”

Herb fears getting the same response from his 23-year-old son, who has used and may still be using drugs.

“I get that sinking feeling when I talk to him about drugs,” he said, “that he’s thinking, ‘How can you even suggest anything when you were a daily user?’ ”

Some parents staunchly differentiate between their drug use, in the 1960s, and that of their children. Back then, they say, drugs were taken in communal spirit, as a moral and political rebellion against society. Everything was open to experiment, to discovery. And, unlike today, nobody knew about the long-term consequences.

“This was the pre-Manson era,” Nancy said.

Psychologists don’t accept the distinction.

“That’s a cop-out,” said Loree Cohen, a psychotherapist who counsels families with drug problems. “The motivation might have been different, but were there any less addicts? Any less deaths? The results were the same.”

Marlene Nadel, 41, can’t dismiss her drug use as 1960s experimentation. She was an addict. For years, she took LSD, speed, opium, hashish--and almost died from several overdoses.

Nadel eventually sought help, and now works with others at Cri-Help, a North Hollywood drug treatment center. Her 15-year-old daughter, Sidra, has smoked her share of dope and, last year, checked into Renew Life Adolescent chemical dependency program at St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank.

From the beginning, Nadel shared her past with her daughter.

“I haven’t been ashamed to tell her,” said Nadel, whose ex-husband, Jack Bernstein, was also a heavy user. “Because there are a lot of drugs that she has not tried, and I want to educate her totally.”

Sidra said such honest warnings didn’t make much difference. She was convinced that she would not become addicted like her parents.

“When I heard it from them, I just blew it off,” Sidra said.

Callahan’s daughter, Megan, also received treatment at St. Joseph and didn’t find much relevance in her parents’ drug admissions. Last year, her mother, Ginny, tried to scare her by telling a story of how she thought she was dying when she experimented with grass about 15 years ago.

Megan found the story amusing.

“I thought that was so hysterical,” said Megan, laughing. “I couldn’t see my mom stoned.

“I don’t think there’s anything they could have said to change my mind,” Megan said of her drug use.

Psychologists and drug counselors agree that in many cases nothing a parent says can stop a teen-ager from trying drugs. “There are no guarantees,” said Barbara Swenson, director of training at Counseling West. “You can’t follow them to the party.”

Perhaps the most parents can hope to accomplish by admitting past drug involvement, Swenson said, is to create an atmosphere where the teen-ager feels less need to rebel.

And parents who have taken drugs are better able to spot the signs of drug use in their kids. Callahan knew his daughter was on something. Herb noticed his son “had that certain look.”

Past generations didn’t have this perspective.

“They couldn’t look us in the eye and see that we were using,” said Loren, 37, of Woodland Hills.

Loren’s wife, Donna, remembers she was so high once, she parked her car in the middle of the street in front of her house. Her mom was angry.

“I told her I had to vomit,” Donna said, “and she believed me.”

Allan knows he can’t postpone his discussion about drugs forever. His son is rapidly maturing, and the peer pressures aren’t going to disappear. Allan acknowledges his confession, depending on its extent, might give his son conflicting messages.

“There will be a point,” Allan said, “where I can tell him what I did. It’s going to be difficult.”