We Are Losing Too Many Young Men

It has now become not unusual in this college town to open the paper--about once a month--to read an all-too-familiar story that goes like this, with some variation: Roommate returns home, tries to rouse sleeping roomie, finds him unresponsive (this year always a young man), calls 911, autopsy reveals accidental overdose of combination of prescription drugs, OTC things, and usually cocaine, a variant being drinking poppy tea. So I am talking with yet another mourning mother, who thought her son was doing all right for the past few years. A big funeral for him at St A's--many young people, including my own Carla, whom I have know since birth. And then, in our own family, a young man just out of rehab, another reporting (we pray) faithfully for UAs, a son of a nephew caught up in his own turmoil. What is this about, I wonder? Availability of all this stuff? Surely the world is not more dangerous than my own time as a young persom, when we thought the world would be blown up and completely destroyed by nuclear weapons.  No, it is not a more dangerous world, but we didn't have so many pharmaceuticals to deal with that danger then, although Valium has been around for a while. Sowhat? What are the answers--delayed adulthood? too many choices? seeking escape from...? Environmentally causes addiction? We are losing too many young men.