The unfortunate thing about teenagers is they haven’t had enough real life experience with seeing the negative consequences of their own actions (and recognizing that these consequences were the result of choices they made) to be able to recognize good advice and to follow it. The advice I would give most teenagers is that success for the rest of their life will be heavily determined by the choices they make today, and the mistakes that they make can take years (or decades) to correct.
While it is a little “after school special”-ish I would generally advice teenagers to avoid experimentation with drugs because I have seen how many people’s lives it screws up. Without even considering drug addiction or disease (which are serious concerns) very few moderate to heavy drug-users or drinkers make it through college, university, trade-school, or are able to obtain and excel in entry level positions; which are the necessary steps to getting a good job and setting yourself up in the long run.
Certainly, there are exceptions and there are probably a handful of people who could respond to my post claiming to be these exceptions; but most of them would have to concede that the majority of their stoner friends straightened-up, didn’t make it out of first year, or are taking dead-end liberal-arts degrees.
No one expects to be the 40 year old working at McDonalds as an assistant manager living in their parents basement complaining about how unfair the world is; but the decisions you make today may make this one of the nicer outcomes.
