Who are these people who meet someone, allow them into their lives, allow them into their CHILDREN'S lives, feel all happy and cosy and esconsed .... within minutes? Or, literally, days?

There seem to be quite a lot of people in the world who are like this. Who really believe that it can be healthy to get over a relationship instantly and start a new one, instantly. And that it could be healthy to impose this on thheir children as well.

Well - it's NOT. But whatever you do on your own behalf, there has got to be a set of rules regarding children.

Here's a clue: you don't WANT your children to become easily attached and then easily disattached - and that's exactly what behaviour in the article will encourage them to do. You don't WANT your children bonding away with people that you don't even know.

Here's another clue: children are loving, and particularly children who are vulnerable and hurting, they are really keen to find someone to love. On top of that, if their mommy is hurting, and then she finds someone to love, they won't sit around and say 'it's too soon, she doesn't know this person' (not until they're 12, anyway). They'll say 'great! Yippee! I'm going to help mommy heal by loving this person too.' And then guess whose hearts get broken too?

Livingstone is one of those self helpy kind of authors I really like. He wrote 'Too soon old, too late young' or some title like that. Anyway, he said good things happen slowly, bad things happen fast. Particularly when it comes to relationsips, I really agree.

Damnthatxanadu I am surprised you are so confident about dismissing any connection between drug use and the onset of shizophrenia. My brother in law tragically 'developed' shizophrenia in his early twenties, at a time when he happened to be also smoking a lot of dope. In the fifteen years since we have come across large and compelling amounts of research documenting the link between the two.

yes yes before you say it I know that it must partly be a statistical coincidence at least some of the time. Yes young men are more predisposed to both the illness and dope smoking etc etc etc. But it doesn't seem a long shot at all to me to speculate that dope and hallucinogens mess with brain chemistry - isn't that obvious? - and that in some way mental illness is a misfiring or imbalance in brain chemistry. What's more, drugs that assist with mental illness work on brain chemistry, just as hallucinogens do. So - there is a connection.

I myself experienced serious depression and hallucinogenic panic attacks when I was younger, and I was strongly advised to stay away from mind altering drugs for this reason. My therapist is an old woman with over fifty years experience treating people. She is convinced of the connection. Basically, her advice, which would also be my advice is - if you're in any way a bit shaky regarding 'what is reality', 'who am I', 'I have big mood swings and trippy experiences in the normal course of life' - then stay away from the drugs. It is not worth the risk.

Mujokan - thanks for raising this.

Oh - and I don't think anyone suggests you can 'catch' a mental illness. But you can certainly trigger an episode, and and it's possible you can trigger the onset - inadvertently or otherwise. Did you know that post partum is the highest risk time for women of adult onset shizophrenia and other mental illnesses? This is linked in some way to the huge hormonal changes - and real life stresses - of having just had a baby. These women who develop this were of course predisposed, but yes, like with drug use, something triggered it.

Damnthatxanadu and cabdriver - thanks for your thoughtful responses.

Although I don't think I've ever heard any suggestion that hallucinogens or other drugs 'create' mental illness, it seems we're all agreed that they can exacerbate it, and people don't always know they have a tendency that way until it's way too late.

Now, yes, some people's minds are as strong as reinforced steel doors. No matter what drugs they throw at them those parameters stand firm. But for others - they may not even know they have a predisposition, let alone are poised on the edge of a precipice, until it's too late.

My point is: why experiment? Why risk this? I intend to explain it to my son (who has a genetic predisposition from both sides) like this: imagine a really bad trip you can't get off. Better to never get on, right?

Also I disagree with the implication that while mental illness has been around for a long time drugs haven't. In fact drugs have always been around as well. Dope, hallucinogens, alcohol - and a lot of them much stronger and even less regulated than today. People had no qualms giving them to children, either.

There's no point pretending that very much about hormones or brain chemistry is understood. And with that in mind I don't see the point in messing with it just to have some trippy drug experiences.