Just recently, I have been kind of leary about smoking. After my uncle developed throat cancer and had to have his voice box removed, I began to weigh the pros and cons of smoking. My friends tell me that usually old people get diseases like that, but my uncle is only 35. That’s fairly young. I do know that 80% of chain smokers start when they are teens. Also, between 1964 and 2004, smoking was the cause of more than 12 million deaths (abovetheinfluence.com).

I’ve decided that I’m going to quit, before I even really started. Not to sound cheesy or anything but I have a lot to live for. Mom said she is even going quit smoking to be a support system for me and my uncle. One thing I learned is your past and present have a lot to do with your future. You can’t change your past but you can learn from it. Drugs and tobacco are my past and college is my future. Ok, what about being a rock star? Or the next President of the United States? Hey, a guy can dream!

For more facts about teen smoking and drug usage check out:

http://www.abovetheinfluence.com/
http://www.sadd.org/stats.htm
Or Follow @10drugabuse on Twitter

Click here to see his presentation to Gentry Middle School.

I was hanging out with my friend Dave and he asked me if I wanted to get high with him after our football game. I’ve never really had the desire to do that kind of stuff…but after he handed me his iPod, I was kinda interested. He told me it was this really cool, new way to get high without actually smoking or taking anything, called I-Doser. All he has to do is download some song, put headphones in, listen and it’s supposed to mess with your brain waves. When I asked him what the song was about he said there were no words…only weird sounds.

Even though there were no drugs involved I still felt totally weird about it. I mean, how is it normal to put headphones in and get high? What is this doing to my brain cells? Could this affect me for life? Am I the only one who thinks this? I told him I would have to think about it…but I didn’t want to look like a loser.

I am never going to say yes, so why am I dragging this along? I am going to tell him thanks for the offer, but I’m good, I don’t need drugs, even if they are just noises, to have a good time!

This is a fictional account of the real effects of how bullying affects those around you.

Your Thoughts…

First Place winners were Angela, Carly, Rachael and Laken from Ms. Tyler’s class.
Don’t Drown

Second Place winners were Timothy, Zach, Eddie, Aaron and Luke from Ms. Tyler’s class.
Throw Those Away

Third Place winners were Jesse, Taylor, Terry and Rachael from Ms. Tyler’s class.
Triple D

adapted from www.drugstory.org:

How he was introduced to drugs…
I first used nicotine when I was 11 or 12 and then marijuana, and that was a month before my 13th birthday. I got into alcohol later on that same year.

How his problems escalated…
When I first started using it was really sporadic. My grandfather’s death later that same year when I was 13 kind of triggered up more emotions that I kind of wanted to run from. I tried to use on a regular basis as much as possible. If I had to steal alcohol from my parents I would do that. I would try to cop as much marijuana as I could from friends.

The role drugs played in his social life…
I moved from different people to different people. I was kind of a social chameleon trying to please everybody and make sure I was cool to everybody, every group, so sometimes I’d be with the more stereotypical [kids], like prep kids or sometimes I would be with the more kids that were called freaks. But I never purposely gave up a group of friends because of what they were doing or what they weren’t doing.

Why he avoided “clean” friends…
Those who I did move away from the most would be my clean friends, the kids that weren’t using because they didn’t have the same interest obviously as I did, so I would move away from my clean friends in order to have more time to get high because when I did hang out with my clean friends, I found that I was bored because I didn’t have what I wanted and I still had to deal with emotions and my problems.

Experimenting with different drugs…
My drug use really did progress rapidly. I started out with more marijuana and alcohol in middle school but when I got to high school I was introduced to a world of all kinds of different drugs, and the progression of it was just that anytime I saw something new at a party or that somebody had, I would say, “Well I want to try that out,” and I’d buy it or I’d use it with somebody else who was using it, and it was basically just whatever I could get my hands on – anything that took me away from reality. It was like searching for some kind of magic combination that would be the ultimate solution to my ultimate problem, which at that point was myself. I didn’t have the proper coping skills, so my best friend was my addiction.

Denial and addiction…
I think automatically it starts out as an experiment thing but for some of us it makes more sense to keep doing it than it does for others and those of us who become addicted or are already are addicts, we find that it is so powerful – why would we want to quit? The big part of addiction is denial and, I mean, I remember myself thinking, “Well I have so many problems” and feeling really hopeless, but I figured it couldn’t be the drugs – they don’t have anything to do with this.

Why using only made things worse…
When I got to my last six months or so, maybe six or nine months of using, I would get high and I would still feel the effects of the high except that the feelings beneath it, all the anger and sadness and hopelessness and all that stuff wouldn’t disappear anymore.

How rebellion fueled his problem…
I actually said to myself that I wasn’t going to use a lot of drugs and I said that to my parents and stuff, but I mean that kind of just slipped away as I started getting more independent from my family and I just started overall anti-authority so I figured any messages that came from authority was either lies or just trying to manipulate my behavior; coerce me to do something that I don’t want to do. So drugs seemed to be, you know, something that made sense actually because it was like, well they didn’t want me to do it so I’m going to see what’s so bad about it.

Why getting help was so hard…
During my using, people did talk to me about it occasionally. My mom, she said that she figured it out when I was about 14, that something was going on with drugs but she didn’t know what do to about it, and she didn’t know how severe the problem was. Later on when they would start finding things – cause the longer I used, the more careless I would get – they would start finding more and more things in my room, around the house, in my car, that kind of thing. They would confront me with it and by that point, once I knew that they knew, I was like, “well fine OK, you know now.” Do whatever you want to me, but I am going to keep using basically. As any drug addict would tell you, it’s hard to hear somebody say that, “Well we think that you have a problem.” It’s really hard to hear that. I just basically fought with it or ignored it and closed up any feeling I had about it with more drugs.

When he realized something was wrong…
I can’t pinpoint the exact age I realized I had a problem with drugs, but I know that ever since, I’d say 14 or 15, I felt something was wrong – I just didn’t tie it to the drugs. My denial was so thick that drugs didn’t seem to have anything to do with it. When drugs stopped covering up my emotions, that’s when I started to think something was wrong here.

What drugs did to their relationship…
I told my friend that I was someone that didn’t use drugs and being friends with her was very difficult because she was constantly trying to find a way fix herself, or to fix her life, or catch up on exams, and she was sort of searching for a fake happiness with the drugs and the alcohol because she felt like at the time it was such a great thing. But when she woke up the next morning, or when she went to school, she was, you know, just in this really negative place and it became difficult for me to deal with that, and I said I wanted to help her.
How her perseverance paid off…
And so she said that wasn’t really fair because if I wanted to be her friend I should just be her friend and accept her for who she was. But I said at the same time I didn’t believe in that, and she should respect me and she owed it to herself – and to me – to give it a try. I told her if she gave it a try [staying clean and sober] and she didn’t like it and she chose to keep using the drugs and the alcohol that would be her decision. But I knew that when she gave it a try and stopped using the substances it would be a positive effect on her life.
How she got her friend to open up…
Well initially she tried to hide the fact that she was going out clubbing and, you know, drinking and using different sorts of drugs because she knew that I didn’t necessarily approve of those things in the friendship. However, after a while she just started telling me stories about the things that would happen to her over the weekend – sort of like girl talk – and it would come out and then I started pushing the issue a little bit and she was honest with me, which was something I appreciated because it allowed me to help her.
How she stays positive and avoids using drugs…
I think that me personally, the way that I see it, drug- and alcohol-free was just being really involved with different activities and being involved with positive people who help you move your life forward by getting opportunities. By being in clubs you sort of keep yourself busy and you meet people who [you] have similar interests with – then you don’t really need to use the drugs and alcohol. You have people to hang out with on weekends that don’t use drugs and alcohol. There’s also prevention groups at every high school that you can get involved with where you make great friends and, through those programs, there’s a lot of leadership opportunities and it really just helps you out to stay positive and to really just excel in life altogether.

source – http://www.drugstory.org