SHIPPEVILLE, Pa. (EYT) — Getting high – it’s not good times; it’s not cool; it’s not exciting and thrilling…it’s police sirens and handcuffs; it’s jail time; and it’s family members weeping at a funeral.
Getting high is the first step to addiction: which is “Hell on Earth,” “a nightmare that you can’t wake up from,” and “a downward spiral that ends in jail or on a slab in the morgue.” These are the basic messages in the Armstrong-Indiana-Clarion Drug and Alcohol Commission’s “Reality Tour” drug prevention program.
More than 35 teens and their parents participated in Armstrong-Indiana-Clarion Drug and Alcohol Commission’s (AICDAC) “Reality Tour” Tuesday evening, April 25, at the Clarion County Jail in Shippenville.
The “Reality Tour,” subtitled “The Life and Death of a Teen Age Addict”, is a drug prevention program developed in 2003 by Candle, Inc., a community-based drug interdiction organization in Butler, PA. It is designed to give teens a cold hard look at what the outcomes of drug use are likely to be. Designed to be hard hitting and memorable, “Reality Tour” is not simply a “shock treatment”, but its vignettes and skits, combined with real life testimonies strip away all the “glamour, glitz and excitement” away from drug use and shows the cold, hard, and (sometimes) irrevocable outcomes that teens risk when they get involved with drugs.
Funeral Scene of the Reality Tour
The venue of the event itself sets the scene as being real, somber, serious, and thought-provoking. There can be little positive energy and few positive thoughts generated while being in the harsh and sterile environment of the county prison. Volunteers, aided by Sheriff’s Deputies, stage a series of skits portraying an arrest for drug possession, a stream of conscious statement from “inside the joint” by a teen who is suddenly faced with the reality of where she is and what it might mean – going “cold turkey” alone in a concrete and steel cage.
The next vignette is the overdose victim in the Emergency room dying from the drug use, the weeping parent, the pointless end. Then ending the skits in the parlor of the funeral home where the teen is reposed, his young life over before it even began, her family still grieving, still looking for answers. More than 30 teens paying their respects to the “family” silently shuffle out of the room – many of them truly shaken by the experience.
David Dunn Clarion County EMS tells his stories of drug and alcohol caused fatal auto accidents.
During the skits, Mr. David Dunn of the Clarion County Emergency Management Services gave a short talk about two of the car wrecks that he worked caused by drug and alcohol use. Recalling the multiple deaths in both accidents, Mr. Dunn urged the teens to understand and accept the reality of what the consequences of drug use might be. Dustin Parsons, a local drug and alcohol counselor, spoke to the kids about his experiences with drugs and the Clarion County Prison. Mr. Parsons didn’t mince words as he described the harshness, hardness, and bleakness of being locked up. His personal experiences looking from the inside out were real and were thought-provoking.
Following the skits, several people spoke to the group about their personal experiences with drugs, the courts, jails, and rehabilitation and recovery. These personal testimonies from recovering peer addicts drive the realities home. Not only can it happen to you, but it will happen to you if you are not careful with the choices that you make. These testimonials are personal. They are not polished, professional presentations. Voices crack with emotion, teens (and even adults) choke up as they recount the horrors that they visited upon themselves and on their families. The impact on those teens attending is obvious and powerful.
Armstrong-Indiana-Clarion Drug and Alcohol Commission is a not-for-profit corporation that has been designated as the “Single County Authority” for drug and alcohol prevention, intervention, and recovery programs in the three county area. In that capacity, AICDAC receives, administers and allocates state and federal drug and alcohol monies. AICDAC works in 4 areas of drug and alcohol services, being prevention, intervention, treatment and case management. The “Reality Tour” is primarily a prevention tool that is community-based. The program is designed to engage parents, focusing on the family as the first line of defense against drug and alcohol abuse. With the skits and speakers, the program is designed to have an impact and be memorable. It is consequence based — “here is what is likely to happen if you use drugs.”
The “Reality Tour” brings the community together to talk about drug and alcohol abuse and the consequences, using local law enforcement people and teens and adults in various stages of rehabilitation and recovery to drive home a two-pronged attack. The first and most striking point that the program makes is that choosing drug and alcohol abuse has no good outcomes and the second point is that there is help available and there is hope.
Ashley Callihan AICDAC speaks to teens
According to Ashley Callihan, Clarion Administrative Officer of AICDAC, the “Reality Tour” program has grown in attendance over the years. In 2016, more than 100 teens took part in the program. Across the Commonwealth, more than 38,000 people took the “Tour” in 2016. AICDAC is available to present the “Tour” to school and church groups and other youth organizations.
