Mark Manson

Yeah.

Yeah, so me too.

I don't know if it was nationwide.

I think it was nationwide.

I think it was in the 90s, yeah.

Yeah, people who are not 90s kids in the United States, there was this program called DARE, which was drug awareness something education program.

But basically, I mean, it was well-intentioned, but essentially what happened is that the US government decided we are going to send police officers into elementary schools to teach kids about cocaine and heroin so that they won't do it.

And what happened?

drug use among adolescents and minors skyrocketed over the next 10 or 20 years until they stopped doing the DERA program and then they came down.

So there's a backfire effect to a lot of this stuff.

And I imagine that there's something, there's probably something in our neurological wiring that's like,

is seeing don't smoke cigarettes is also in many ways no different than your brain seeing smoke cigarettes.

And so like both of those messages hit at the same time.

I know in NLP, there's some ideas around that, like that your brain just kind of ignores like the negative modifier of things.

And so you just,

it's better to not say something instead of to tell people to not do it.

Now in my book, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck, there was a section that I call the do something principle.

And to me, this is like one of the most useful frameworks or tools that I've ever learned in my life.

And it came from my high school math teacher.

Shout out to Mr. Packwood if he's watching.