[__MatrixMan__]

You're right, I apologize for being needlessly aggressive about it. I'm just watching my family make my cousin into a pariah over drug use that isn't even happening (not yet at least). They just need to have an enemy at all times... and maybe I pointed some of that frustration at you.

[hyperadvanced]

It’s ok, it’s easy to imagine who you’re talking to online in the worst light, or to externalize your frustrations with others beliefs onto other people.

I have a lot in common with your cousin: I had long hair, I skated, I had “out there” beliefs that my family encouraged or at least tolerated. My community typecast me as a pot smoker or a punk or a hippie, when the time came to it, I was like “hell yeah I’m gonna get high, everyone already thinks that I do anyway!” Unfortunately that set me down a bad path, and I’ve been insanely lucky and dodged a lot of bullets that could have severely fucked my life up.

For what it’s worth, my parents did a great job of saying “we will absolutely not tolerate you doing drugs, but we will give you the freedom to do your thing, and when you fuck up, we will ground your ass into oblivion.” I think that having that as a threat gave younger me a lot of good reasons to think about what I was doing and to do it in a more responsible way than some of my friends whose parents were more hands off with things.