By James Borrowdale

Copyright thespinoff

Reducing harm can start with something as small as a conversation.

Look around. Listen. Feel. Are you reading this on the bus as you return from work? Maybe you’re at home on the couch, or still at your desk? Wherever you are, your consciousness is being assaulted by a whirlwind of sensory information. The rumble of the bus engine; the tapping of a co-worker’s foot, the lingering scent of another’s perfume; the distant barking of a neighbour’s dog. At every moment of every day, you are experiencing the world in a countless number of ways.

Luckily, your brain is adept at filtering the world’s ceaseless stimuli, at deciding what should be ignored and what is important enough to be sent “upstairs” for further consideration. Drugs, however, interfere in this process, blocking some of the brain’s information receptors and activating others. Put simply, drugs replace your everyday filter with something much less familiar – a filter liable to let through too much of some information, or perhaps not enough of something else.

This impacts your ability to interpret and respond to the world around you. Putting this altered state of consciousness behind the wheel of a car, where the outcome of our split-second decisions is a matter of life and death, is a recipe for disaster. Talking to your loved ones, and especially your kids, about the misconceptions associated with drug-driving is one way to reduce harm.

A real parent’s approach: “My dad always told me I could call him at any time of night and in any state and he would come pick me up. He never got angry about it. I knew I could trust him, and I use this tactic with my kids now.” / B.M.

And it’s not just illegal drugs that don’t mix well with driving: it can be prescription drugs too. By way of illustration, Ben Birks Ang, deputy executive director of the New Zealand Drug Foundation, mentions benzodiazepines, a class of drugs including Xanax and Valium, which may be prescribed for anxiety. The active agents in these substances bind to a particular receptor, the GABBA-A receptor, altering its behaviour and leading to a sense of relaxation and peace.

These drug can lead “people to feel completely unimpaired, even when they’re knocking into furniture and that kind of stuff… They can have those subjective experiences of feeling completely fine, but then they’re stumbling around, bumping into stuff and are very clearly under the influence,” says Ang. If you have family members or children who are prescribed medications like these, it’s incredibly important to ensure they know how to recognise these effects in themselves and the risk this can pose when driving a vehicle. Even if they don’t take these drugs themselves, it’s important to understand that both illegal and prescription drugs can make driving more risky.

“I try to remind my kids that I have seen most things. Nothing can shock me. I’m trying to be open with them and give them the tools, so that when they do get into a sticky situation, they have what they need to stay safe.” / R. M.

Another misconception that Ang hears often is related to so-called “downers” like cannabis. Some cannabis users insist that its influence makes them better, calmer and more cautious drivers – but, as Ang says, any benefit of an increase in caution is more than offset by the drug’s negative effects on reaction times which are essential for safe driving.

Sometimes experienced users of a particular substance will insist that they are fine to get behind the wheel because they have a high tolerance. Or that while other people in their group are still high, they’re fine to drive, that the drug has already worn off for them. This is just another way in which our subjectivity can’t be trusted when drugs are involved. It’s also one area that’s particularly dangerous for young people, who might find themselves in the situation mentioned above.

“What I usually recommend to people is to look into the substance, get some expert information about it. Look at how long the effects are for the substance, and how long the recovery period from each use will be. Look for information on it, because our subjective experience of that is going to be really, really different [in terms of] whether we’re actually impaired or not.” Ang recommends taking a look at The Level. It’s a powerful resource for anyone, but especially parents, and has an easy-to-navigate, no-nonsense index of 25 commonly used substances. The index includes information on how long after taking each you should refrain from driving – helpful information when you’re trying to drive home the risks for loved ones and convince them that just because they ‘feel fine’ they might not be and should absolutely not be driving.

Ang strongly suggests that having a plan is the best way to go into any experience with a mind-altering substance, including alcohol. This extends to conversations you might have with your children or anyone whose driving behaviour you might be concerned about, or with anyone planning a big night out. These conversations, he says, are always much easier and more effective in a calm environment in the days or hours before anyone has taken anything, and are perhaps made easier still by grouping drugs into the more common conversation about drink driving.

The discussion, Ang says, should run through the logistics of how everyone is going to get home safely and touch on, where possible, back-up plans in case things don’t run according to plan, as can easily happen when drugs are involved. Having something to fall back on is an important safeguard against bad impulsive decisions, helping to avoid the situation whereby someone, “fuelled by whatever it is they’ve taken is like, ‘Yeah, I’ll be fine to do this now.’”

Of course, Ang acknowledges that things don’t always go to plan, and that there will be situations in which you, or your children, might have to have these conversations in less-than-ideal scenarios, when the influence of drugs and alcohol can make them much more fraught. These situations, of course, are highly context specific, but try to avoid putting anyone in an awkward situation in front of an audience, while also making sure you have people around who can help if you fear an aggressive response. “Yelling at somebody across the room, ‘you’re stupid, don’t do this’ or something, is not really going to lead to a good response. Speak to them off to the side away from other people, be like, ‘hey, I care about you, I’m worried about you, I don’t think you should be behind the wheel of a car right now’, and they might respond a bit better.”

“We’re trying not to judge them when they open up to us, that feels like the way in. We may fall apart behind closed doors later, but we really want our kids to know we’re here for them. That they can talk to us.” / T. H.

Regardless of when and where you have this conversation, it’s an important one to have and helps protect loved ones from road trauma. Whether you talk about this over a cup of tea with your kids in the afternoon or on the other side of 3am when the world looks a little different, it is important, Ang says, to bring a tolerant and non-judgemental tone. “The most important part is that everybody can engage with it. Feeling ashamed, feeling judged, and feeling like you’re being blamed are all things that put up barriers to talking openly, and they also shut down people’s openness to reflecting on themselves.”

“Concentrate more on trying to deflect blame, deflect judgment… be curious about what the different possibilities are and how to be safe together. This is generally a better way to go.”