Right before the President’s winter break I gave my latest presentation at a high school in the New York City metropolitan area. I am not the type of person to toot my own horn, but this time has forced me to do so.
As I waited for the principal to introduce me, my “pregame” jitters weren’t firing nearly as much as in the past. I sized up the students and I felt pretty good about how the session would go. As I started my own intro, the kids were quite involved. My questions had great responses and hands were raised by many individuals. As I shared the video I made, one could hear a pin drop! At that point I knew they were taking things seriously.
After the video, I started to tell my family’s story of the opioid poisoning of my son, Zachary. It started with some incidents that told us something was wrong with him, but we couldn’t pinpoint what it was. We knew he started to smoke cannabis right before he graduated from high school. But we thought he was only experimenting. However, things started to snowball as the months wore on. Two years after he started to experiment, he came to us crying. He told us of his illness and we took him to a hospital to help him manage his withdrawal. In 6 months he was healthy and abstaining. His psychiatrist and he decided to leave the area and he moved outside of Boston where one of his bandmates was going to university. We hoped the roller coaster ride might be over and we could all move on from these dark days.
Sadly, that was not what the future held. The week before he passed he had come down for a visit. He told us a temp job he had was turning into a full-time one. We were elated! That elation did not last for long. On a Monday I got a call from a small hospital telling us to go to Mass General and to come right away. We drove up and were told that he had experienced an opioid poisoning and the outcome was dim. We decided to come back on Monday to see if anything else could be done. When we got there we were informed there would be no hope. So, we tearfully told them to terminate his life. There was no sound or movement from the audience! No family should ever have to experience this!
After the story, I showed them a PowerPoint with much information about SUD and its variations. I had slides which revealed the role of the brain and its chemical imbalances. The one I focused on was CUD, cannabis disorder, which affects mainly youngsters from the ages of 11–25, depending on sex. This is why I think more services and, most importantly, education will be how we can help make the best inroads to defeat SUD! When I finished I stayed behind and spoke to some students who thanked me and asked questions. One such student confided in me that he lost both parents to OUD. It broke my heart to hear this.
Before he confided in me, I felt a rush of excitement that my presentation was well received, which some students and faculty told me. In fact, most of the administration and guidance staff present gave me very complimentary written responses. While I am still waiting for the students’ responses, I feel they will be mostly positive. However, I still can’t forget the story about that one boy and his parents and that he left before I could further speak with him.
Reach out to us if you’d like to schedule a visit to your school or community at large. We’d be glad to bring the conversation to you.