Excerpts from `Beyond the Yellow Brick Road'

A teenager on drugs does not grow emotionally. . . . Exactly at the time when young people need to learn how to deal with adult problems, drugs give them a means of sidestepping those problems. . . . Drugs are not a means of finding oneself, as many people pretend. In fact, they keep one from doing so. [Drugs] give you what I call an ``unearned high.'' . . . The problem with unearned highs is that you jump over the entire process of achieving a goal, and there is no satisfaction in that.

No drug has greater potential to wreck Johnnie's or Sally's life than pot -- no drug!

A teenager who smokes one joint a week is con- stantly under the influence of marijuana. . . . He is not functioning up to par.

Every school in this country has a significant percentage of students stoned every day, and their lack of motivation must have an effect on overall academic standards.

Nothing will keep [parents] more stuck, and render [them] more powerless, than holding onto the initial feelings of guilt, blame, embarrassment, fear, anger, hurt, and inadequacy [they] had when [they] discovered [their] child was on drugs.

Permissiveness is accepting wrong behavior. I believe there is no greater disservice a parent can do to a child than that. However well-intentioned permissiveness may be, the child interprets it as abandonment.

Love means not accepting wrong behavior; it also means accepting behavior that is undesirable to you but perfectly natural for a child. Your desire to ``socialize'' your children before they are ready is motivated by self-centeredness. . . . parents must let young children be what they are.

My theory of drug prevention contends that children who grow up accepting themselves will have enough self-esteem to resist the power of mind-changing chemicals. They will more than likely experiment, but drugs simply won't have much to offer them.

There's not much we as individuals can do about [the media]. But we can keep ourselves clean. We [parents], after all, are the guardians of genuine human values, and if we establish walls to protect them within our own families, our children, even when they drift far away, will always know where ``home'' is.

A recovering drug abuser must stick with winners (people who do not take drugs) whether they be recovering abusers or people who simply believe in sobriety.

I call myself a drug rehabilitator, but I don't ``treat'' drug abusers. I offer them something more attractive than getting high.