My Mother and a Gateway Drug

Is it wrong for a parent to do drugs with her child? What if she has a good reason?

I try cocaine for the first time with my mother.

As the dry energy rushes up my spine, like amyl nitrate multiplied by the force of one hundred, I know immediately I hate it. My mother starts laughing as I describe wanting to rip off all my skin, a feeling that is already familiar enough without chemical magnification. I can tell she's relieved. Her own experimentation with coke will only last a few years. It is the last gasp of the '80s. Everyone is doing it. Don't your parents?

I am seventeen and graduating high school a year early to go to New York where I will study at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. Mom is terrified about my being on my own, and being a pragmatic person, she knows I'll be exposed to lots of entertainment and vice in the Big Apple. That's how the cocaine comes into it. She asks if I think I will ever be interested in trying it, saying if I think I might, maybe my first time should be in a safe place, at home.

People are shocked when I tell them about the cocaine with Mom, but I think she is farsighted and responsible. I do. Young adults try drugs. Some parents do them too. She isn't promoting them, she's protecting me. If you don't see it that way, don't email me or tell me, or I'll hate you for thinking badly of my mother.

I'm not sure if she knows I have already tried pot, a drug that never really takes for me. I mean, why in the hell would I want a drug that makes me want to eat MORE? It is notoriously easy to get liquor in Texas. From fourteen on I can get double margaritas at Bennigan's without so much as a fake ID. And I am not one of those hard-bitten teens who look like adults. I look like a kid until I am deeply in my 20s. Like chicken.

Mom does know (and is furious) about my smoking, which I dabble with at a ridiculously early age, but don't fully embrace until I am older, like eleven or twelve. Another bad habit picked up from doing theatre and sleeping with adults.