Recently we have had an assembly from a foundation called “Tyler’s Light”. It talked about how uses of drugs affect our brains, us and our families. The assembly also told us multiple statistics of many things, like how many people have died from drug use, the percentage of imprisonments of drug users, the amount of drug users from one time period to another, as well as the popularity of drugs. We watched videos that told about these things, and also interviews from people that were recovering from addiction. This assembly was used to help inform us about the dangers of addiction, the best way to help our friends and family that may be in use of drugs, and also to stay away from addiction.
The person that has initially started Tyler’s Light, named Wayne Campbell, had started this foundation because he had lost his oldest son, Tyler, to accidental overdose. He started this foundation so that hopefully more people would stay away from drugs and help others that could potentially be going through addiction. They talk to students at schools so that hopefully the students will know the dangers of drug use, and stay away from drugs. Their motto is “Speak up! Save a life!”, meaning that if you know someone that could be starting addiction then tell a teacher, your or their parents, or someone else that could help them. Wayne Campbell knows what is is like to lose someone you care about from addiction, and wants to try and make sure that less people have to go through that loss.
The assembly was serious and hard-hitting, considering that we learned and heard from real people that have had real addictions. After interviewing a few students, a few reactions from the assembly were “Sad, but happy because they were trying to help us”, “Very educational and showed the dangers of drugs”. A couple more were “A good listening experience, and could help us in the future”, and “Long, but inspirational”. I can conclude that people found this assembly helpful, and took the information to heart. The participants that answered questions in the assembly gave good answers, and I think that that shows how people don’t take things like this as a big joke, but as something that could be valuable to us.
Image from: http://tylerslight.com
Good story; very informative.