Book Review: The Addiction Inoculation

If you could addiction-proof your children with a shot (as the title metaphorically suggests), everyone would scramble into the line. Who wouldn't want that secret, the key to keeping your child on the straight and narrow. I doubt a book can possibly prepare parents enough to keep that tragic end from playing out in lives. Still, as resources go, this was a good one! Who better to write it than someone on the other side of alcohol addiction. Jessica Lahey knows addiction, addiction tendencies, genetic predispositions, and all the accompanying baggage. As a teacher and mother, her heart desires the best for kids.

Lahey is a born storyteller. She weaves her own past (and her attempts to protect her sons from that same past) into her outline of best practices for protecting your children from the perils of addiction. Still, I keep coming back to that nay-saying niggle in my mind. Is that even possible? Can the best parental efforts always keep your children from going down that alluring and destructive road? Yet, I agree with her insights. Constant conversation and open discussion about the reality of substance abuse is a must!

I think my favorite part of the book was an exercise she performed with her own sons one night. Based on a television show I'm not familiar with, she and her husband presented ten increasingly intimate questions onto the table. They paired each question with escalating hot sauces. While I could never engage in such an exercise, I jotted down her questions because they were fantastic. I hope to find some way to rope my own sons into answering the questions she posed. The hot sauce would certainly be an alluring way to present it and to loosen their tongues, but they'd have to go that route with their hot-sauce loving father - ha!

For me, I had a few conversations with my youngest son about ways to respond when others offer him alcohol or drugs. He can play the addiction gene card, since his alcoholic uncle took his life in despair over his addiction. I've always told my boys, "you never know... you could be the one who can only take one sip or one toke and be a goner!" He also liked the "I'm allergic to alcohol" excuse. If you are allergic, what a horrendous set of symptoms she listed. Yikes! Whatever the reason, I'm glad he's prepared ahead of time with counter-arguments.