A baby in his mother's arms moves us. A teenager who commits suicide is a news item for the tabloids, but a catastrophe for his parents.

Between those two moments there is often the consumption of psychotropic drugs.

Little children want to discover, to explore, to feel, to see things. When they become teenagers they go on having the urge to experiment, to imagine, to go deeper into things, to understand, to try, to feel them. This is necessarily proof of their intellectual good health and this is how they shall become free and self-determining.

The adults who surround them, primarily their parents, are responsible for their development. They must provide them with the "dos and don'ts" in order to let them live and survive in an often hostile world.

The Dos may be habits, customs, codes, regulations, conventions. They will aid us in living with others and with ourselves, by helping us to make good decisions to improve everyday life. The Don'ts? For most adults, this word has lost its primary meaning, which is to not step beyond the limits established in order to protect physical, intellectual or spiritual life.

To forbid our child to drink bleach is common sense, all parents have to implement this. If a mother is sure that something is dangerous for her child, she will find the strength to convince him to respect the "Don't". But if we let false information invade us, we become lax, hesitant, we lack the urge to fight. If drugs are forbidden from being sold and possessed, it is because they are harmful, dangerous and because they have caused damage and death. To master ourselves we have to know how to obey and we also have to know how to respect the Don'ts.

Fasting is used by those who want to use their will to master their bodies and free their spirit. Conversely, taking drugs lets a product direct your body. While allowing drugs to rapidly diminish our will and take our minds away, our bodies decay and our freedom is destroyed.

When intelligence is "enlightened" by a cannabis high, what it sees and hears is turned to its advantage, the person is infatuated with himself. Even music is transformed into a tridimensional beauty through its magic. Everything becomes a pretext to enchant the imagination, which lets one hear, see and seize what one had never dared desired. A long devilish monologue leads the person to feel overly protective. Paternal feeling mixed with a sensuality have him admiring himself. Enamored with himself, the person who used cannabis freely becomes a slave and feels himself complete only in the vapours of the drugs, which alone understand him. Finally a slave to the miserable darkness, poorer and poorer in will, he becomes richer and richer in vanity. He will seek to turn everything to his advantage and will start to despise those around him.

We, mothers, have to warn our children not to be deluded by drugs. This has always been a well known trap. It is within their reach, in the pocket of a friend or of a well loved cousin. Do not let them trust it nor taste it! May they forbid themselves to be around it.

The best education is the one given from the heart, it is reserved for parents. Not only do children need to be loved but they have to know that they are loved. It is through our concern about what they do and what they like, through our involvement in discovering with them what pleases them that a mutual confidence will establish itself. Day after day let us teach them the love that is received, that is given, that is shared, that is loved. If there is love from parents, the child will find his way. If he makes a wrong turn, he will know how to come back. Through patient education and through their example of love, parents will guide the desires of their children towards the good. They will then be able to be taught by their teachers and they will naturally search for knowledge, as any mentally healthy person does.

Marie-Christine d'Welles

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