The room was bright and the floor was a washed-out ocean blue color. All you could see was nervous and impatient teenagers gathered in a circle in the gymnasium.
It was so silent, I swear I could hear the blood running through my veins. The silence was broken by the sound of a strong and stern voice saying “walk across the circle if you know someone who died because of a drug overdose.” Many walked across. “Walk across the circle if you were once an addict.” Many walked across. “Walk across the circle if you lost a friend to a drug overdose.,” Many more walked across. “Walk across the circle if you know someone who is currently an addict.” Three quarters of the circle walked across, including me. Still in silence, everyone sat down and all you could hear was soft sobbing.
I went to this conference along with two others to Washington, D.C., because I wanted to share my knowledge and gain knowledge about prevention and substance abuse with other kids my age. We went through several different workshops and team building activities to learn different strategies and ways to get our message out there.
Many speakers came and talked to us about the negative effects of marijuana and alcohol. We also got educated on the more harmful drugs, such as inhalants. We got to share our ideas with some of the U.S. senators. We also learned some new prevention ideas to bring back to our community.
Substance abuse is something that’s widely spread through the U.S. Substance abuse is the “overindulgence in or dependence on an addictive substance, especially alcohol or drugs.” Twenty-three-and-a-half million Americans struggle with some sort of substance abuse. That’s one in 12 people over the age of 12. This is something that is impossible to look over. Approximately 48,000 people died of an overdose in the year 2014, and the numbers have only increased in the past few years. Substance abuse is an epidemic.
I like learning about substance abuse and how I can help it. This is why I joined a club, Youth for Change, which allows me to work in substance use prevention at Greenfield High School and in our community. I know something has to be done about this serious problem, and I know we need prevention. Prevention is “the action of stopping something from happening or arising.” By getting the word out about the harmful effects that these substances can do to you, it will be more likely to deter younger kids from using them. Using drugs is accepted in our society and even viewed as the cool thing to do. We need to change this perspective.
Substance abuse costs our nation more than $484 billion per year. If there was a way to decrease this number largely, wouldn’t you want to do that? The most cost-effective way of doing this is by prevention. In using prevention, it can lead to a decrease in violence, HIV/AIDS, heart disease, reduction in traffic fatalities and much more. Delaying the use of drugs and alcohol in teens is critical for their development and growth. Utilizing prevention, we all can stop this epidemic.
This conference taught me multiple things. One of them being that the drink or pill that gets offered to you at that high school party could change your life forever. You have the choice to say “no.” Surrounding yourself by positive people who aren’t going to force you into anything are the best kind of friends. Addiction is something that can be prevented. We need to start using prevention as our tool to stop it.
Ravin Graves is a sophomore at Greenfield High School who attended the CADCA (Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America) Conference in Washington, D,C.