“Hi Tony,
On behalf of the the USD Students for Life Club, I’d like to thank you again for speaking at our Drug & Alcohol Abuse Prevention event. You made us feel motivated to be our best selves and encourage others to do the same. You also opened our eyes to the reality of of addiction and challenged us to change our perspectives on those struggling with addiction. We feel more confident in our abilities to reach out and support others in their struggles and we will most definitely continue to work to change the stigma that surrounds addiction.”
Back in the sunny home state of California for yet another presentation. This time for the University of San Diego. The Students for life Club were hosting an event that was specifically dedicated to substance use. I was set to share the floor with another substance abuse speaker, John Redman. Johh's resume was quite extensive, including a participant with the United Nations. John has worked in prevention and advocacy for a lot of years. He was extremely knowledgeable concerning a lot of things surround substance abuse and prevention.
I really enjoyed John's presentation, it held a lot of interesting information concerning the use of marijuana. I'm always interested in marijuana information because we seem to be in a time of life where the entire culture of youth believe that weed is going to save the world and is the answer to every issue our planet faces.. Obviously, I don't mean this in a literal sense but there is a mass shift in thinking with younger generations concerning the negative effects of marijuana.
Of course, during my presentation I put a heavy focus on prescription medication and the abuse of them, namely, pain killers and Adderall. It is extremely important that the generations coming up understand that prescription medication is not safe because it comes from a doctor. These drugs can be and are just as dangerous as street drugs. It's also important to break down stigmas that believe addiction is a choice or a lack of will power in the addict to just control their use. It's honestly pretty easy to classify addiction in such a way when you are not an addict yourself but it's not so black and white. The response from this presentation was very good as usual! Thank you so much University of San Diego!
