Man, my parents were cool as shit about this. And I think it had really good consequences for me later on, like in college.

Sex was positively viewed, but strict about protection (rightly so), and drugs were described as a spectrum with weed being very low, and the scary drugs (heroine) being very scary. They were honest about wanting me to wait for drugs and booze till I was more adult, but let me have a few parties with friends where everyone crashed at their house. It was super fun, and very badass feeling. I got to college and was like … Meh? On partying.

Definitely not the only way to go about it, but the honesty helped me weigh consequences of it all a bit better, I think.

Don’t do drugs

Don’t do sex

I’m indigenous Canadian and both my parents survived residential school in the 50s. Residential school for indigenous people back then was forced on us, especially for children where they were systematically abused by Christian missionaries. Mom was not so abused but dad was terribly traumatized to the point where sex and anything sexual or remotely sexual was forbidden. Just about everything in life to him meant burning in everlasting hell. Drugs were no different but less so.

So our indigenous Christian home just dealt with it all by forbidding everything.

How did it turn out?

I have seven siblings and we all ended up with alcohol and drug addiction by the time we were teenagers. I cleaned up early and I’ve been sober for 29 years, all my other siblings never fell off the deep end (thank God) but I’m the only one who got officially ‘sober’.

I didn’t have kids but everyone else in my family did before anyone was married. One of my younger brothers picked up the slack for me by having children with four women. I have over 40 nieces and nephews, some by the family, some brought in, some married in and others illegitimate.

We’re all one big happy family … but we’re all gonna burn in hell. Lol

“I don’t really get why people get so up in arms about discussing it, but Sex is fun. Be careful though, those swimmers are persistent little fuckers.”

“Drugs feel good and you think everything is fine until one day you look up and realize it all went wrong years ago. I can’t stop you, but I really hope you’ll choose not to try them.”

I think both worked out well. I’m sex positive and I generally avoid drugs because it just isn’t worth the risk of finding that one substance that totally ruins my life.

Neither sex nor drugs were ever discussed…at least not by my parents.

I was born in the 80s. Mom was a teacher, Dad worked in IT.

Both conversations were not especially made out to be a… ok listen carefully we’re going to talk about this now. They were not made out to be a big deal, just happened naturally.

It was part of everyday life, if the subject arised it was not ignored, we were kept up to date on news and when we hadl questions about any subject, we always had an answer, we were encouraged to think critically about subjects being politics, sex or drugs, didn’t matter.

At the time my country was going through a very serious drug crisis, so it was impossible to ignore.

Fortunately the decriminalisation of all drugs lowered the drug problem significantly, but I was in college at that point.

Drugs: anything not prescribed by a doctor will lead a person to being a homeless crack addict. Marijuana is such a powerful gateway drug, don’t try it even once.

Sex: is for reproduction within the bounds of marriage. And even then, women won’t enjoy it unless they’re promiscuous sinners.

Basically Mr Mackey’s “drugs are bad mkay” speech.

As for sex, it was never talked about at all.

My parents both openly smoked weed in front of my from a young age. I was told that as long as I was home by curfew and didn’t come home in a cop car they were fine with me doing basically whatever cuz they knew I wasn’t a complete moron (my dad worked in the school system and knew all the ACTUAL problem children really well, they hated me because of that so I never got to be a hoodlum lol), though my nugs WERE taken from me at 15 because “you were dumb enough to let us catch you with it” which is fair but I say they were out and bumming off of me without saying so lol

As for sex I got a quick talk about using a condom after my dad caught my GF and I doing it, but otherwise it was left mostly unsaid cuz my sex Ed wasnt trash

I have the same experience as the first few commenters. These things were never talked about in my home.

How can we as a society justify refusing to educate the youth about these things and leaving them to haphazardly stumble through the same mistakes that we all made?

Never really had one, figured everything out over the Internet which was a ride. My school has a health class but half of it was DARE and the other half was STDs and surface level nutrition.

Not discussed, they assumed I knew, they were correct.

Don’t do drugs, don’t do sex, only bad people going to hell do that. Even the part about us being their biological children was framed as “can you believe what we had to go through?”, because evangelical Christianity is a hell of a drug itself.

Presumably, the teenage talks would have been different, if they hadn’t totally checked out of parenting at that point.

I was told, by my mother who smokes nicotine, to never smoke nicotine

Was never a major topic because I have yet to show any interest in starting a relationship :p
My initial plan was to do it after starting a career but more due to social peer pressure which I couldnt care less about. So I havent done anything so far. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯