The Need for Real Drug Education
The Same Story Told a Thousand Times
While discussing the lack of proper drug and alcohol education in our schools, a Narconon Suncoast Staff member recounts her experience with these early educational programs:
It all started innocently enough. I was a young, glimmering product of the ‘This is Your Brain on Drugs’ and ‘Just Say No’ campaigns that had been firmly implanted in my memory for all of eternity. I signed numerous pledges in elementary and middle school vowing to never smoke, drink or use drugs. By all rights, I was on the path to a successful, sober life and if any one of my so-called friends even so much as offered me a beer, I was going to just say NO and refuse to hang out with them ever again.
And then I turned 14. Awkward and socially unaccepted, I gladly accepted the Tequiza that was offered to me on a golf course, late at night by one of the cutest guys I’d ever laid my eyes on. Any thoughts of anti-drug and alcohol campaigns or pledges very quickly slipped from my mind and were replaced by dancing with my girlfriends and flirting with boys at that party almost 20 years ago. That night, I had a newfound courage and ease that I’d never, ever felt before. I felt accepted…I felt pretty…I felt the way I thought I was supposed to feel.
That night I decided that those D.A.R.E. lectures were nothing more than a cool shirt to wear and my brain had most certainly not turned into scrambled eggs after drinking beer. I decided that alcohol was being unfairly slandered by the media and I was going to be damned if I didn’t prove to all of those D.A.R.E. counselors that they were wrong when they said it was bad for you!
Throughout high school and (some) of college, I continued to have fun with alcohol. Occasional, innocent fun, so I thought. I began to progressively rely on it to function.
I started blacking out more. And each black out brought more bad decisions. Lost car keys, lost cars, and lost debit cards. That slowly graduated into waking up in random stranger’s homes with no recollection of how I got there; I must have been roofied and kidnapped! My liquid courage had turned me into a total nightmare by my mid-twenties. I had come to rely on something to live that was actually killing me, ever so slowly. I could not yet see though just how badly it was destroying a life I hadn’t even begun to start. All of my bad decisions in life became excusable and I pointed my finger at everything and everyone but myself (and the alcohol, of course).
Those D.A.R.E. classes never taught me just how blind I would be while on my way to alcohol dependence. All I was ever taught was to ‘Just Say NO’ and to keep it that way. I had not been taught any reality on what I was experiencing, and honestly, I wished I had been. I may never have taken that first drink had I truly known how bad things would get.
I believe we need to better educate children on the REALITIES of alcohol and drug abuse. The ‘Just Say No’ campaigns and showing slideshows of car wrecks caused by drunk driving do nothing to deter our youth from experimenting with mind-altering chemicals. Let’s actually give them REAL information and data and have it delivered from a CREDIBLE source. No more police officers and EMT’s delivering the message that ‘drugs are bad’ and ‘you really shouldn’t try them.’
What better way to learn about drugs and alcohol than to hear the stories of recovered alcoholics and drug addicts?
If I had heard the message and story of an alcoholic who went through the pain, misery and heartache that I ended up going through, I actually may have never experimented with it. If I could fast-forward 20 years and see the chaos I would cause in the name of the next drink I surely wouldn’t have.
What Our Society Is Lacking
Our society is severely lacking actual and real education on alcohol and drug abuse. Today, drugs and alcohol is completely glamorized by the media, television, movies and in musical lyrics.
“Hey, if Metallica is getting wasted, Lil’ Wayne is drinking his lean (codeine cough syrup) and Justin Bieber is smoking weed, I should too! “
Drink this and take that is the message kids are hearing, which leads them to believe that getting high and drunk is cool and makes you the life of the party. These messages are totally destructive and damning…just look at our rate of addiction these days!
What’s really needed are more programs that deliver a true message of the consequences of taking drugs and alcohol and educates children on what these substances really are and the effect they can have on their lives.
The Narconon program has an effective and well-established alcohol and drug education curriculum. In 2004, Narconon International developed an eight-module drug education curriculum for high school aged children and has delivered an anti-drug message to schools world-wide to prevent addiction through education. Education is key when it comes to hindering the growing drug and alcohol abuse epidemic. Right now, addiction is at an all-time high with newer, stronger and deadlier substances constantly being created, sold and marketed to anyone who wants to catch a buzz. Now, more than ever, our youth need cutting-edge educational information delivered to them in order to keep them from being a sad, future statistic.
