Teenagers' testimonies
It’s my brother who’s doing drugs
It's my brother who's doing drugs. He's not going to school anymore, he wanders outside...When he comes back home he is violent and he fights with my mother. Sometimes I am really scared.
Once he broke everything, I was so scared I hid under my bed. It's good to say you don't have to take it. Madam, I never will take any.
Testimony from a 6th grade boy from Marseille
My father forgets everything
My father and my mother don't live together anymore. My father smokes plants that he grows with lamps in his cupboard. He says that it doesn't do him any harm, but he forgets everything.
Before he would leave the apartment to go shopping and he would come back without anything and he even forgot to come and get my sister and I from school. He is sick and he cannot work anymore. My mother does not really want us to see him, she doesn't trust him...My father is 35 years old
Testimony from a 5th grade girl.
My problems started when I was thirteen years old
After school, with some of my friends, we tried alcohol and marijuana for the first time: and that is when evil entered my life. At first, I hid what I was doing from my family and everyone else. I was convinced that I had discovered the real life and I spent my evenings going from one party to another: the fun never stopped.
I decided as well:
"If I smoke marijuana for my whole life, that'll be it. I will never consume other drugs. I will never be a junkie like those I see on street corners". Time passed and during the nighttime parties I tried synthetic drugs for the first time, and that is how heroin entered my life.
I was sure that I could quietly manage this evil that was bamboozling me.
Little by little, without my noticing, I became enslaved by evil. At the beginning, I succeeded in hiding everything from my parents, but then they discovered that they had a drug addicted son. At that moment a deep discord began between them: one wanted to help me one way and the other another. Me, I exploited the situation by often choosing to be with my father, because he had confidence in me and believed that in one way or another I would be able to save myself.
But over time, the situation worsened. The days were all the same, little by little I lost the confidence of everyone and I started to lose my dignity too. Nobody wanted anything to do with a drug addict. I tried to find the drug by whatever means necessary: I became capable of lying and steal from anybody. Then I started to have trouble with the law too.
When I had truly hit bottom, my parent, no knowing what else to do, suggested a center for withdrawal through total abstinence.
I started in 8th grade
The first time was at the end of 8th grade, I took some cannabis with a school friend. It wasn't a regular thing. In 9th grade I started to take it more often. I repeated 10th grade. I was taking several joints per day and also bongs. At the end of the first term I was kicked out of high school.
My parents put me into a private school but I didn't feel like studying, it wasn't my thing. Since last year I have felt more stable, but I've no intention of giving up cannabis, I can't imagine my life otherwise. I know my friends feel the same way, it's good this way.
I was in a religious holiday camp.
You –[editor's note: MC d'Welles]- gave a conference on drugs last year. At the time I was taking drugs every day. 6 months later, I don't take any.
My life has changed, I work again – at school. Everything is going well but I want to know how to get my boyfriend to stop.
A young girl aged 17
It was at a New Year’s Eve party that I took my first ecstasy
I was sixteen years old. As we take cannabis every day, obviously we had to take some thing else to party! I liked it at once mainly because I am the shy type. It was as if I had everything. Really everything.
After that I'd take some during holidays, not while going to school. These days I take some several times a day. As I am in a boarding school, it is rather stressful, especially with the teachers, some of them I can't bear anymore...I was also brought up before the school disciplinary committee, the supervisors are also on my back, though I have rather good results. Drugs are like everything, you have to control it, not to be controlled by it!
I had my first joint in 8th grade and I really liked it
It was mainly to be with my mates. At the end of 9th grade, I would smoke five to six joints a day. It would replace cigarettes.
Then I mixed it with anything that I could get my hands on. For us it's normal to take drugs, I can see that many have started using. There are some who are always stoned, it doesn't seem to affect them but for their studies it's not cool. We tend not to care about people who are not like us – they don't know anything. I've already repeated twice. My parents don't know I take all that stuff, we never talk about it. We hardly talk...
a first-year student
My best friend takes drugs.
I don't know how to dissuade her from it.
I like her and I don't want her to waste her life with it. What shall I do?
My friend takes drugs. How can I help him to stop it? He thinks only about it and has no interest in anything else.
Since we're smoking, is it not better to smoke cannabis than tobacco?
You are more easily addicted to tobacco than cannabis, are you not?
Here is what the 10th-grade pupils ask.
I am in 9th grade
and two years ago I discovered that several of my schoolmates –not necessarily from my class – were doing drugs. They smoked joints.
We realize they take drugs because of their behavior –aggressive or excited- and the color of their face. They look ill. I asked them why they were taking drugs and what they got from them. They told me that after using them, they would feel good, "in a good mood", that everything was floating around them, that they were talking crap but it didn't seem to affect them, that they were seeing or hearing things, that they looked "cool" or "fun".
I don't feel like trying it because they don't look as cool and fun as they think they are. My schoolmates have difficulties in following the lessons, in learning, they are very excited and violent. I think that they lock themselves up little by little. When I see them in this state, I feel disgusted and shocked. I don't understand what they are looking for because they are destroying themselves.
Aurélien, 9th Grade
At a party at a friend's, someone was smoking a joint
At a party at a friend's, someone was smoking a joint and he dared me … and that is how it started.
Why does one start to sell drugs?
What do they do to the body?
Why do people like to smoke drugs, how does it taste?
Why when one is on drugs one works less and no longer has any desire to see one's true friends?
What can one do to not be tempted?
Where there many people who took drugs around you when you were young?
These are the types of questions asked by 8th graders.
Do drugs have consequences for our health?
Is there anything in drugs which makes us unhappy?
Can you catch an illness as a result?
Why do you want to take drugs again when you have already taken them once?
Are drugs contagious?
What are drugs made of?
Does each drug have an effect?
These are the type of questions asked by 6th grade pupils.
