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After about 4th grade, when I realized all the cool kids were stupid, I stopped caring about being cool. I don't smoke or drink for various reasons, including the fact that I've had many relatives be both addicted to and die from both.
Since about the same time I stopped wanting to be cool, I haven't really had many self esteem issues. I experimented with sex about the same time most people did, not early or late.
I might be totally off here, but I noticed more of a corellation between intelligence and not experimenting. The smart kids (for the most part) didn't do drugs, nor did they have sex. Some of them had low self esteem (my fellow mathletes), while others had higher self esteem (my actor friends), but most were just in the middle. The smart kids just didn't do it, and the dumb ones did. Simple.
As to the article, I have a problem with the fact that it compared "high" self-esteem to "low" self-esteem. What about "normal" levels of self-esteem? Generally, having an image of yourself that's inflated is also regarded as unhealthy... it's one of the main factors in narcissism and manic depression. The article would have you believe that high self esteem is the norm to which low self esteem is compared, but I disagree.
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