Issues: Human Development

“Charis didn’t outright tell me not to do drugs. She got me to understand why I do. I didn’t like the answer.”

Drugs & Alcohol

“The Power of Regret”

Similar to other Prajna workshops, our approach to the issue of drug and alcohol use and abuse relates to the issue of personal power and the idea of regret. From “recreational use” to addiction, using drugs and alcohol, aside from any discussion of right and wrong, potentially takes personal power away from an individual and can cause us to make decisions that result in shame or regret. Our workshops use this fact as their cornerstone.

While many programs that focus on this subject have merit, we feel most are too specific and miss a great deal of their educational potential. This allows young people to rationalize that they are the “exception” to the conversation. This conversation cannot afford loopholes. Young people are experts at finding them, and it is our job to remove any doubt that drug use will directly or indirectly affect each of their lives. There has been an enormous amount of research that has been done just in the past year or two that proves most existing approaches do not work. We believe ours do.

Our method involves starting the conversation well before addiction. We start with the roles that the media, our communities, and daily stress play in our lives, as well as how we can examine our positive and negative responses to those influences. Furthermore, our method encourages students to explore how we can educate and fortify ourselves around these issues to prevent abusive drug use or other negative behavior.

Of equal importance, we discuss, what we term “the neurotransmitter party” in our brains. We go through how a healthy brain functions in reacting to life’s in and outs. Then, we add what happens when drugs and alcohol enter the picture. Students respond with both relief and keen interest at this approach. They are getting facts without a lecture. This information does not come with an “agenda” or “personal baggage” which has proven to cause young people to feel too much responsibility in receiving the information to do anything productive with it. (For example, one cannot argue that using marijuana impairs one’s reaction time. Therefore, it is an out-and-out lie that one drives better stoned.)

While we emphasize the merits of substance-free lifestyles, we also make sure that young people know we are not here to tell them what to do, only to tell them what can happen with the choices they make. We feel that educating teens without telling them directly what they should do with their lives is far more effective than lecturing, preaching, or using fear tactics. Again, we have seen that kind of program fail time after time. A conversation about how awful the feelings of regret, shame, or a loss of personal power are is enormously relevant and welcome to this age group. Young people want to know how to avoid these feelings. At that same time, they want to know how to stay healthy and capable of making choices they can be proud of.