Looking back more than forty years later, I think that afternoon in Montreal was one of the turning points in my own life. My cousin Mike had taken me to a business meeting that he had to attend …

Until then, there was something exciting about being on the edges of that world. I knew people who were involved, heard the stories and, to some extent, enjoyed living vicariously through them. I wasn’t thinking seriously about where that road could lead because I had never been confronted with the risks in such an immediate way.

Sitting in a room very much like the one recreated in this AI-generated image changed that. As I looked around at the people and the pile of hash on the table, one thought kept going through my mind: I am in way over my head. This is a very dangerous situation.

Forty kilograms of hash was being sold at that meeting, and this was no longer a story about somebody else’s adventures. I was sitting beside it. If the police had come through the door, I would have been sitting in the same room as everyone else, trying to explain why I was there.

For the first time, I could see how quickly that world could change the direction of a person’s life.

I didn’t suddenly stop using drugs, and I don’t want to rewrite my own history to suggest that I did. What I decided was that I did not want the drug trade, the people surrounding it, or the risks that came with it to determine the course of my life. I chose a more traditional path.

When I returned to Prince Edward Island, I warned my brothers about what I had seen. I thought the sheer scale of it—and the consequences that could come with it—would make an impression on them.

Looking back, I don’t think it had the same effect on Reggie.

I can’t know exactly what he thought when I told him the story. But the experience that caused me to step away from that world did not cause Reggie to do the same. His involvement in selling drugs continued and, over the years that followed, became increasingly serious.

Sometimes I think of Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken. We were brothers, exposed to many of the same people and influences, but we did not always respond to them in the same way.

That afternoon in Montreal helped me recognize a road I didn’t want my life to follow.

Reggie continued down it.

For Parents

There may also be something in this story for parents.

Young people do not necessarily respond to risk in the way adults expect them to. The same story, warning or frightening experience that causes one teenager to pull back may have little effect on another—and might even make a dangerous world seem more exciting.

Parents can warn their children, brothers can warn brothers, and consequences can be made very clear. None of that guarantees how a young person will respond.