Home » Santa Clarita News » Families in Action - Cary Quashen » Being Honest With Kids About Your Past Drug Use

Being Honest With Kids About Your Past Drug Use

A Santa Clarita drug expert is stressing the importance of talking to kids about drugs and alcohol, but when the kids have questions, is honesty the best policy when it comes to talking to them about your past drug abuse?


Sponsored Articles


Don’t miss a thing. Get breaking Santa Clarita news alerts delivered right to your inbox.

“There are two ways to talk to your kids about drugs,” explains Cary Quashen from Action Family Counseling in Santa Clarita. “If you talk about your past drug use in a way that glamorizes it, it could backfire and encourage drug use.”

The fear of encouraging drug abuse or looking like a hypocrite can hold many parents back from being honest, but it’s all about presentation, according to Quashen.

“If you talk about it in a way that is honest about your past drug use, emphasizing that fact that they were mistakes,” Quashen said, “and you don’t want your kids to make the same ones, they might not.”

Some parents think that they experimented with drugs and they were fine and that their kids can do the same, according to Quashen.

“It’s a different age now, drugs are very different in this generation,” Quashen said. “No one may even really know what is in the synthetic drugs on the street now.”

It may be even more important to be honest with kids that they come from a family that has battled drug abuse or alcoholism — and stress the importance of being cognizant of how there can be a genetic predisposition to the disease.

“I’m an open book with my kids when it comes to the mistakes I’ve made with drugs and alcohol,” Quashen said. “I explain to them that I really got lucky, and that my life could have been a lot different.”

Parents should start having a conversation with their kids about drugs and alcohol at a young age, Quashen said. The conversation will change and evolve as they get older.

“To keep our kids off of drugs, we have to seriously educate our kids about drugs and alcohol,” Quashen said, “and that conversation should start at home.”

To see a video with more information, watch it here.

CNN contributed to this story.

Do you have a news tip? Call us at (661) 298-1220, or drop us a line at community@hometownstation.com.

About Action Family Counseling

Action Family Counseling has drug and alcohol residential treatment locations in Santa Clarita, Piru, and Bakersfield; Intensive Drug and Alcohol Outpatient in Santa Clarita, Simi Valley, Ventura, Pasadena, and Bakersfield, Action Family Counseling is here to help you.

Action Family Counseling’s primary goals are to maintain abstinence, stabilize co-occurring illnesses, and increase quality of life. We support and reinforce change in behavior patterns so that adolescents and adults, or clients and their families can fully indoctrinate the philosophies and principles needed to remain abstinent and stabilized for life.

Action Family Counseling accomplishes this by providing an effective treatment approach developed by the Department of Health and Human Services that includes a multi-disciplinarian personalized approach by a treatment team. Once a patient is identified, we provide an initial screening and assessment, which allows us to properly diagnose and place patients in the appropriate treatment setting.

Once a patient completes our intake process to our residential program he or she receives 24-hour crisis management, individual counseling, group therapy, family education and counseling, treatment planning, routine and random toxicology screening, pharmacotherapy and medication management, education about Alcohol and Other Drugs and mental health issues, self-help and support group orientation, case management services, and discharge service planning with a transitional service plan to our Intensive Outpatient treatment program to ensure a continuum of care.

KHTS AM 1220 - Santa Clarita Radio

Being Honest With Kids About Your Past Drug Use

One comment

  1. what is a good age to tell your son about your past? My son is nine. I asked him what an alcoholic is and he didn’t know. So should I wait till he is older or is now a good time?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

About Kimberly Beers

Kimberly Beers is a Santa Clarita native. She received her Bachelor's Degree in Journalism from California State University, Northridge in 2013. While attending the university, she focused her attention on news writing and worked as a primary news writer for the campus' award winning radio station and televised news program. She began writing news stories for KHTS in 2014 and hopes to have a lifetime career dedicated to writing and sharing the news