Photo credit: Mattox/stock.xchng

As a young mother, I once made a list of what I called “The Ten Commandments of Parenting.” I’m not proud of this fact; it just shows how desperate I was for guidance. If I could distill the thousands of parenting decisions I had to make each day into a manageable number of principles, I thought maybe I’d have a shot at being a “good mom.” And, more than anything else in the world, I wanted to be a “good mom.”

These commandments consisted of a collection of advice from parenting books, friends, family, and even those well-meaning strangers in the check-out line (you know who I mean). I’ve long since lost that list and forgotten its contents, with the exception of my first commandment.

That first one I came up with on my own and it has stuck with me all these years: “Stay calm.” I come from a long line of overly-anxious folks, and my entire mommy career has been checkered with moments when I clung like a drowning man to the following dictum: “Don’t just do something; stand there.”

So when my 13-year-old son invited me to experiment with virtual drugs, I silently repeated my mantra: “Stay calm.”

We’ve all read plenty of newspaper articles where parents claim they had no clue their children were using drugs until it was too late. I not-so-secretly scoffed at these parents. “How could they not know? We would know,” I said to my husband.

I now realize that scoffing at others is tempting fate. It turns out my son was experimenting with virtual drugs for weeks or maybe months before it slapped me in the face. I honestly don’t know how long he was using virtual marijuana before I found out. Like most of you, probably, the days all run together at this point in my life.

I know, you’re probably saying “’Virtual marijuana?’ Give me a break.” I know because that’s exactly what I said.

For a while, my son would meander into the kitchen at that time in the evening when — after attending to the day’s myriad emergencies of work and family — making a healthy dinner that will not only nourish my family but also leave them with warm, happy memories, seems an insurmountable task. I would be standing at the sink, hypnotically scrubbing potatoes or rinsing broccoli, when he strolled through. He’d say, “Mom, you gotta try this website” (hereafter known as “The Site” because these people scare me).

“OK,” I would say. “I’ll try it sometime.” Scrub. Scrub. Rinse. My son would linger, so I’d ask him to pass me a bottle of olive oil or a can of tomatoes. At this point, like magic, he would disappear.

These kitchen conversations went on for some time, only my son’s comments varied slightly. “Jack [not his real name] is buying me something off of The Site.” Or “Will [not his real name, either] is ordering lots of stuff from The Site.”

“That’s nice, honey,” I’d say. “Have you seen the aluminum foil? It’s supposed to be in the pantry.” And just like that, he was gone again.

Things finally changed — and I got a clue — when strep came to our house. It kept all my kids out of school, and I took off work to be with them. As I was settling my 13-year-old into bed with pillows, fruit juice and the laptop, he said, “Mom, can I show you The Site now?”

There was laundry to wash, dishes to scrub, but I knew the correct answer was, “Sure, honey. I’d love to see it.”

We navigated over to The Site where I read that the company sells audio files to simulate the effects of prescription and illegal drugs. And they were selling my 13-year-old and his friends virtual “Hydro,” “Skunk,” “Rasta,” “Krypto” and “Bubble.”

Needless to say, I clung to my “stay calm” mantra more desperately than ever. “It’s too early for drugs,” I thought.

“The Site sells drugs?” I said.

“Duh!” As usual, my 13-year-old was way ahead of me. “Only they’re virtual drugs, so they’re legal.”

And I thought “Virtual marijuana? How can pot be virtual?” (I told you I knew what you were thinking.)

Then my son said, “Mom, what’s peyote?” A long conversation followed, during which we browsed the hundreds of products The Site offered, including, but not limited to, products called “Heroin,” “Ritalin,” “Valium,” and proprietary names not fit for a family magazine.

We surfed The Site together and he showed me that the company claims that audio frequencies, like drugs, can induce certain mental states. To differentiate themselves from the illegal drug dealer, they use the word “legal” extensively throughout their website.

And so began the “Have you tried drugs, Mom?” conversation most parents my age dread.

I wanted to impress upon my son that one of the many scary things about street drugs is that you have no idea what you’re paying for or ingesting. Every day people die because they take unregulated substances.

I told him about my classmate in junior high who made money selling oregano as marijuana. And about another guy I know who used to get his kicks serving Everclear and fruit juice to his unsuspecting friends, who then went out and did stupid and dangerous things.

“Never buy street drugs,” I said, “and always mix your own drinks.” There was so much more to tell him, but I decided to keep it simple and manageable, like my ten commandments.

In the weeks to come, Jack became my son’s virtual pusher, passing on to him “marijuana” mp3s and other audio “drugs.”

“I can’t tell if it works,” my son said. “I don’t know what the real stuff feels like.”

“I’m pretty sure it doesn’t,” I said, reassured that he’d just unintentionally told me that he hadn’t tried street drugs yet.

“But the website says it does,” he said.

“Honey,” I said, “Drug dealers don’t really care what they sell you, as long as you’re buying. They just want your money.”

Visiting The Site on my own, I was out of my league. Most of the time I spend online is requesting holds from the public library. So I turned to the technology teacher at our school for help. She’d never heard of The Site but she was more than happy to research it for me.

The scariest thing about The Site, she told me the next day, are the forums. There, people recount their experiences combining virtual drugs with real ones. These audio files could be a new gateway drug, she warned me.

Between work and home, my husband and I didn’t have the mental energy to find a real solution to this virtual conundrum. After all, our son wasn’t doing real drugs. But he was spending more and more time experimenting with The Site’s products, trying his best to find out what marijuana, heroin and crack are like. Blocking The Site wouldn’t help. His friends would just keep passing mp3 downloads to him.

And what would we have told their parents? “Your sons are purchasing audio files and probably learning an important life lesson. Just thought you’d like to know?” Didn’t these parents check their credit card bills?

I googled “Do virtual drugs really work?” hoping to get some testimonials or evidence in my favor. Most of the hits were people claiming that there was some truth to The Site’s claims.

It seemed we couldn’t do very much other than educate him, let the phase run its course, and put our faith in the fact that he was smart enough to see the truth after a while. If he learned to distrust virtual drug dealers, we hoped that distrust would carry over when someone tried to sell him real drugs.

One afternoon, as I settled in for a rare and much-needed nap, my son burst into my room and said, “Mom, you’re not doing anything. Try this virtual marijuana.”

I couldn’t have convinced him that I was, in fact, at that very moment “doing something” — catching up on my sleep deficit which had been accruing steadily since his birth.

“No,” he said. “Your friend sold oregano, so you wouldn’t know about pot. Try the alcohol instead.” My son, my pusher.

I agreed to try the audio alcohol. If it worked, I could have the buzz without the calories. If it didn’t, I planned to sleep this one off.

He gave me the earbuds. “Make sure they’re in the correct ears,” he said. “The website says it makes a difference.”

Nondescript white noise behind what sounded like a flying saucer out of a bad 1950s sci-fi movie assaulted me, a literal buzz. If anything, it was the opposite of alcohol: annoying and anger-inducing. I always feel happy and friendly after a glass of wine, but this audio “alcohol” would have turned anyone into a mean drunk. I gave it 30 minutes, only because I was doing it for my son. (For anyone else, it would have been 2 seconds.) At that point, I took out the earbuds, refrained from throwing them across the room, and tried to sleep.

Fifteen minutes later, my son crept back into my room, not wanting to disturb my experience. “It takes an hour to get the full effect,” he said, clearly disappointed. “You didn’t really try it.”

“Sweetie,” I said, “don’t you think that if you could really control another person’s mental state through audio waves, someone would have done it by now? It would be used extensively in medicine. Psychiatrists would be thrilled to administer drugs with all the benefits and none of the side effects.”

He paused. “Maybe,” he said.

“Or maybe a dictator would have broadcast audio waves to control his nation,” I said. “And moms would love to be able to control their kids with mp3 files.” I was only half joking.

“OK,” he said. “But try the marijuana, anyway. Please?” It seemed I was his only guinea pig. And in a strange way, it was satisfying to realize that, for the first time in our relationship, he was inadvertently acknowledging that maybe I did know more than he did about something after all.

The “marijuana” sounded a bit different, but just as annoying. I told him so. Again citing the oregano story (which he still brings up to this day), he said, “I’ll try Dad instead.”

His father agreed with me. The files sounded to us like annoying white noise.

After that experience, The Site was mentioned less and less in our house. We knew our son was still experimenting, but my husband and I couldn’t see the harm in allowing him to be disappointed, which we remained certain he would be.

“Jack tried a new mp3 last night and he said it was terrifying,” my son said one morning, but after that, he didn’t mention The Site again. That was the end of it, we thought.

Fast-forward to a few months ago (but, again, who really has any sense of time these days? I just know it was last summer). I’m back in the kitchen, chopping or scrubbing or whatever. It really doesn’t matter. The important thing is that my son sidled through again and said, “Mom? Remember The Site?”

Thinking The Site was ancient history and dismayed that it clearly wasn’t, I grabbed my “Stay calm” life raft and said, “Sure, I remember it.”

“It doesn’t work, you know,” he said. Just like that, out of the blue.

“I know, honey,” I said. Then I turned around, but he was gone, before I could even say, “Could you please pass me the olive oil?”

Since I first wrote this article, more time has passed, and my son is now 14. He tells me he has absolutely no interest in trying real drugs, even though he knows where to get them. (At school, just in case you’re wondering. Isn’t that reassuring?)

Obviously, I’m pleased, though I don’t make a big deal of it. That would only annoy him. But he wants to tell me why he has decided never to use drugs, so I ask him, “Why have you decided never to use drugs, honey?”

“Because I want to buy a gun,” he says with a grin. Then he assures me he’ll wait until he’s 18, and he’ll purchase the firearm legally. “I found out you can’t buy a gun if you have a drug charge on your record,” he explains.

This is all news to me, and I try to find some comfort in his statement. When I tell my husband about our son’s plans later that night, he tells me, “So he’s not ever going to do drugs — you should be looking on the bright side.” If I could find those ten commandments, I’d add that advice, too.

Andrea Bustos is a mom of three living in Augusta. She’s thankful her kids are open with her, though sometimes it scares the bejesus outta her.