do that hopefully at the end we will have some time for questions but we do ask that you all listen respectfully and that you really take this moment to take in what our speakers have to say some of them traveled a great distance to be here with co president today's assemblies to kick off this year's c to b c nominations c to b c stands for cool to be clean four years ago our student council was approached by several business leaders in our police force to start a club that rewards students for making positive choices on a daily basis think about it each day we make thousands of choices one study at cornell said that on average we make two hundred twenty two decisions about food alone imagine how many more we make about our behavior school our interactions with our friends and our choice of netflix shows to watch many of these decisions are made based on what we've seen from our parent teacher siblings and friends now that we're in eighth grade we're faced with more important decisions decisions our parents and teachers can't control anymore choices regarding drugs alcohol and relationships are going to play a larger role in our lives we are in charge of those choices and we can either make positive ones which lead to success or negative ones which lead to consequences each other for making good choices for being clean of bad decisions our members are good role models good friends good students and good citizens of peers township hi i'm alexa goldsmith and the national institute on drug abuse says that by tenth grade thirty percent of teenagers will have tried drugs this is roughly the number of people on the right hand side of the auditorium our challenge to you as a seed just b c member is to prevent that statistic from becoming a reality one way we're going to do that by arming you with the facts and information we need in order to make better decisions today at the assembly we're going to gain more information about drugs we're going to be talking about staying clean in the sense of how drugs can harm our bodies and minds along with guidance department c t b c has brought in many has brought in several guests for you today mrs brittany galley on oh a pharmacist who will speak to us about how different drugs affect their bodies officer dave a policeman who will talk to you about the consequences of making bad decisions miss mary lou fran to charlie parent who will talk to you about her personal experience w losing a loved one mr mark barron a man who is here to shares experience with drugs and why he made this is and to get clean at this time we would like to invite mrs galli on to the stage to talk about the effects of drugs on our bod hello everybody i was here last year my name is brady i'm the pharmacist who's going to be talking to you guys so i mean my powerpoint a little bit differently this year because i know you guys heard it last year so we're going to be focusing this year on just the pathways of addiction and how this really changes your body and affects the way you think getting started before addiction we have  abuse abuse is just the continued use of a substance despite the negative consequences because it feels good you have that control you're just choosing to abuse something abuse then can turn into something called addiction which is more of a disease of the brink characterized by these compulsive drug seeking behaviors that you use these drugs despite the harmful consequences so at this point it's not a choice it's more of something you have to do to get that good pleasurable feeling from the drugs so getting farther into the pathway of addiction and how this all happens we all have things in life that make us feel good whether it's family friends sports food these things are called natural rewards these are things that make us feel good in life they make us they stimulate the reward section in our brains releasing something called dopamine and that gives us that sense of pleasure  since they feel good we keep doing them and that's why we play sports we have friends we hang out with our families and then there's things then there's drugs that are something called artificial rewards so they mimic these brain chemicals in your body and cause a surge of that dopamine and that feel good chemical and that causes an overload of your brain so things like sports friends families these things no longer feel good  anymore the only thing that can now make you feel good is these drugs so how does that progress to this disease state it is your choice to have that initial experience you don't have to you then choose to have that experience you find it rewarding you find that you can get away with it negative few negative consequences then you choose to have another use of these continued to as you continue to have these negative choices your brain is slowly changing and then that affects your impulse control your judgment your memory your motivation your behavior all these changes are gradual and then you are no longer to regulate these impulse control and then in the bottom corner you see it's no longer a choice at this point at this point the continued use has changed how your body works it has developed new pathways in your brain you can no longer control how you behave and act in life so this next slide is the physical evidence of your brain on drugs so these are different brain imaging studies that affect areas of your brain that are critical in that decision making behavioral changes learning memory so you can see the non abuser drug brain or not abuse or brain has more stimulation more thinking more judgment and then after someone abuses drugs that stimulation is no longer there because you need the drugs to stimulate that brain so a few facts kind of and so in two thousand and twelve nearly twenty four million american aged twelve  twelve in order had abused an illicit drug and that's part of the national institute on drug abuse so nine out of ten of these people who abuse or addicted to nicotine alcohol or other drugs be can begin these to use these substances when they under the age of eighteen so that's why it's so important to have these talks with you guys so you understand these spock's people who began using drugs before the age of fifteen are nearly seven times likelier to develop a substance use disorder  so just to kind of and this last slide focuses on a clinic that focuses on brain imaging studies and it just shows the differences between a healthy brain and then the damage  different drugs can have on different brains at different ages of life so i thought this is a really powerful picture and something just to end on and keep in mind so i think you good afternoon we're going to talk about laws that of in pennsylvania and first let's talk about the possession of marijuana possession just having it not necessarily using anything just having it less than thirty grams which is a little bit it's called a misdemeanor technically you can go up to jail for up to a year but for a first offense the for the fine is actually up to thirty days in jail and a fine up to five hundred dollars now if you have that same thirty grams and you are selling that the somebody else that's a fine up to one hundred thousand dollars and up to ten years in jail so the sale is a lot more serious than just the possession itself but the possession can hurt you to the other in a cottage you know such as like the oxy coding and stuff like that just possessing it is a felony you can spend up to fifteen years in prison and  of up to two hundred fifty thousand dollars possession of heroin less than one gram maximum penalty up to one year and the subsequent offense so a second or third offense up to three years the other thing is paraphernalia and we see this a lot we stop a car and there you see spoons that were used pipes that were used for smoking marijuana and things like that so anything with syringes spoons anything that was used or is commonly used for drug use now if you have a spoon in your car because you were just at mcdonald's and had a sunday or something you're not getting in trouble for that but you know if you are a user and we find the marijuana we find the other stuff just the possession of the paraphernalia is a misdemeanor whether or not it contains the residue or not if it's something that is for drug use it's called a paraphernalia and you can be arrested for it now the next step i guess said sale of either transporting or the sale of drugs possession just with the intent and the liver you're taking at the someone did you're taking drugs from one place to another that's a misdemeanor a sentence of one to three years in prison and fines from five thousand to twenty five thousand dollars if you actually sell it you're the one that has it you sell it to a friend you sell to other people to make money that's a felony fifteen years in prison and fines up to two hundred fifty thousand dollars any subsequent offense a second or third offense doubles the penalty if you sell drugs to someone under the age of eighteen it's also doubled if you are seventeen years old and you sell drugs to a friend of yours that seventeen years old you get arrested you're going to receive that double penalty so very dangerous control dangerous substances such as prescriptions and we've seen more and more of this recently if you possess a prescription drug that is not for you you can be arrested up to one year in prison and up to a five thousand dollar fine and the subsequent offenses three years in prison and up to twenty five thousand dollars fine now not everybody that gets arrested goes to jail expression a first offense a lot of first offenses are probation now ok you get arrested you don't have to go to jail that's that's kind of a bonus right however you know probation means you don't actually have to serve in jail but you must comply with rigid rules and restrictions such as house arrest restrictions on where you can travel to eight to twelve meetings per month with your probation officer counseling drug testing any restitution any cost to the victim's community service you will have visits in your home they come in this is a conviction so this will go on your record can that affect you the rest of your life and the answer is the yes your juvenile records are protected as a juvenile once you turn eighteen your juvenile records are protected however the lot of times any job offering any job you try to you're trying to get going to college or anything like that you will normally have to sign away your private you know private time for the for in your juvenile record so that means people are going to be able to see them and i will tell you just i did this this morning i'm not a big computer person like i can go into n h l dot com and stuff like that that's what i care about but this morning because of doing this i want i just typed in records for pennsylvania like arrest records for pennsylvania a couple different sites came up i clicked on one a guy probably a month and a half ago two months ago for some pretty serious offenses so i put his name and and within thirty seconds i was able to click on something to show me his arrest he's seventeen years old now the last thing i had to do was click a button that says i agree not to use this against them for jobs for you know employment all kind of stuff i mean that's ridiculous right who's not going to use them for that stuff so understand this last thing for me and this is personal a lot of you guys know me you know been around for a long time here my sister my nephew her last march this past march my sister called me i was actually over power hill school just leaving school and she called me crying tyler was using heroin and he had taken my sister's car stole the car from her and went to home with the buy drugs have any of you been to homewood recently i would bet not because i will tell you i would not be going to home with unless i was in a tank because it's a super bad area but it can happen to anybody doesn't matter a family money you know you start messing up it can affect you so please make good decisions thank you ladies and gentlem everyone like to first thank the middle school administration good when kenny and officer dave for inviting me here to speak to you today some of you may remember elementary i work in the front office there and i hope i was a smiling face that greeted you when you came to pick up your lunch or drop something off or see the principal but you might be wondering why am i here well i'm here to tell you about my family and mainly what my family life has been like for the last three and a half years since my son nicholas died at age twenty three from substance abuse nick died on friday may ninth two thousand and fourteen in our bathroom in our home on mother's day weekend now if you think back three years to what you were doing on mother's day two thousand and fourteen maybe you went out to dinner took your mom out maybe you made her dinner maybe bought her a nice present or went to visit her grandma well how did you get to do any of those things that day i sat with my husband edna our daughter katie and the rest of my extended family and cried and mourn the senseless death of our only son and our firstborn child and that's nick up there on the left i think he was twenty one in that picture and that's nick and katie when he was twenty three that was the last picture of them we had gone out to dinner when he was seventeen at the time when nick died now i'm not going to talk to you about nick died he was an alcoholic any abused drugs but that's not my story today my story is to tell you the story of a family left to grieve the death of a beloved family member and a death that we can't fully understand and will never stop grieving how like to start by telling it with katie because  talking about katie rather because in many ways nick's death has taken the hardest toll on her both physically and mentally and katie has always been a funny happy and well rounded girl she enjoyed life and she was a bright spot in our lives katie was seventeen as i said when they died her only sibling died at the end of her junior year of high school the next year she graduated from peters township high school and went to the university of date in her soft morier dayton she developed a panic disorder and was having severe panic attacks i don't know if any of you had panic attacks or know someone that has a panic attack or have seen a panic attack happening but it's scary you feel like you're going to die the same time her hair started falling out she had sores on her head from obsessive lee scratching her head this was all due to her grave and her anxiety since nick died her panic attacks were so bad that she had to leave dayton and move back home last winter she spent the last nine months working with her doctor in a therapist to help her manage her attacks that's all she's going to be able to do is manage them they'll probably never go away and she worries about things that no twenty one year old should have to worry about w i do if something happens to mom and dad where will i live how i support myself i'm not going to have the chance to be an aunt to nick's kids i don't want to be an only child she is guilty feelings about her relationship with nick because during the last several years of his life they didn't have a very good relationship addicks are sometimes very hard to love she doesn't like to go out much and she avoids crowds the bright spot is she is back in college she's going to pitt studying to be a speech therapist but she'll never be completely free from her panic of disorder i want my old katie back but you know what she probably wants her old mom back to now my husband has a different way of coping he is participating much more in outside activities with churches business organizations and that takes him away from home a lot he talks about nick just to memories like remember when we all did this or remember when nick said that or remember when this happened nick was his son and they shared a special father son relationship that dads and sons have they fish together they joined indian guides together they went camping and they built things together and when nick turned twenty one and he was old enough he went to las vegas with ed every spring for a big convention that he goes to and they had a great time together dad doesn't speak much about the pain he feels it's private to him so what about me well i can tell you that's nick's death is the single saddest worst most horrific event i'll ever experience in my life i'm a mom and as a mom i want to fix things for my kids all mom's do we want to make things better i have to live with the pain that i couldn't fix things for nick i couldn't use his pain and i couldn't save him i haven't felt joy or real happiness since before may ninth two thousand and fourteen and i don't know if i'll ever feel those feelings again i don't like to leave the house because i feel like i have to be there in case someone needs me i was there when nick died but i couldn't save him i have to do better i keep his shoes by the back door just where he left them in case he needs them his room is as he left it his death isn't completely real for me and i don't think it ever will be not mad at him that he died i'm not mad that he died i'm just sad i'm always sad i like my job and mcmurray i love my job because for eight hours a day i'm busy and that keeps my mind busy as well i don't linger on those thoughts that get to me in the middle of the night when i get home i walk around the house restless i have a hard time focusing on many tasks like making dinner doing laundry or any of those household tasks because my pain is just too great all i think about is nick i miss him i miss his hugs  miss him telling me he loves me and i miss loving him next death has drawn us together three people in the eye of a storm we are grieving in our own way but we share that grief together many families break apart after the death of a child so i guess you could say we're lucky in that sense we've pulled together and we can comfort each other our hearts are broken they'll mend but they'll never be completely whole again there's always going to be a big piece missing so what i want you to take away today is that your family loves you they care about you they care about what you do and they're there for you no matter what nick always said that what he did was his business he didn't see why it should affect us he always said i'm not going to die mom i'm fine well guess what he died it's a hard thing for someone your age to understand death and understand how death can happen to you because you you're young you know think death just happens to young to older people his decision on that day three and a half years ago affected us and then affect us forever you're entering a time of your life now where you're going to be making decisions for yourself just as as one of your student peers said earlier we can't make those decisions for you you're going to be making good bad or good decisions and bad decisions but know that you carry the people you love with you in those decisions our families celebrate our successes just the same i'm here to tell you that when your bad decisions come along we share in those too thank you for listening to me today again everybody i'm going to do this little different probably walk around use a lot of hand gestures and everything so my name is mark air and i'm recovering addicts i grew up about an hour west of here and we're in west virginia i had a loving family lots of friends a lot of support from my family and their friends look at that mug shot it's terrible but growing up you know i was a straight a students i excel sports very good grades like i said i thought i had everything but for some reason like i deep down i never felt a part of i never felt complete if i was with this group of people i want to be with that group of people at this place at this time i want to be  another place that time and i didn't know what that meant so at a young age and eighth grade i drank for the first time a freshman in high school i smoked marijuana for the first  know i wanted to fit in i thought that was cool i thought that's what people wanted you know people would want to hang around me you know like mark was the guy that had fun he's you know he's fun to be around you know and looking back now in all reality i wasn't true throughout high school i experimented with different prescription pills was easily accessible and i thought that that's how we had a good time so after high school i attended west virginia university i got a four year degree a bachelors of science in nursing twenty two years old morgantown west virginia feeling like i had you know the world at my fingertips i had everything i could ever ask for i was making tons of money live in the so called life partying on the weekends well the years went by and november two thousand and thirteen something happened that i never prepared for my mom was murdered and i was lost after that i was completely depressed anxiety was through the roof i did not handle it i don't want to talk to anybody about it i thought i had to hold that all in because i had to be a man at the same time the girl i was with and she was diagnosed with cancer so there i am twenty three years old twenty four years old trying to deal with the death of my mom work forty hours a week as a nurse and take care of my girlfriend i could handle it and i want  about it so i broke down i turned to something i didn't fully understand and i started the abuse prescription pills you know it was something that i had done before and i knew how it made me felt and so i wanted to numb all that pain one day a week turned into two to turn into three three turned into four four turn every day before you know it you're caught up in the grips of this continuing a progressive illness this addiction that you don't have a choice at this point your body just telling you every second of every day you need to get more you need to get more you need to get more and before you know it you're not yourself so time goes on i lose my job at the hospital i was clearly messing up i started to still pills from them because i started to run out of money because i was spending it all in drugs and i get fired and i lose my nursing license my girlfriend's family her and then they kind of have like a little intervention i just got and angry because they notice i started to steal her prescription pills because she was in hell part of pain from her cancer you know the person that i loved i hurt the most not thinking of the consequences of my actions you know so i had to move home from morgantown back to where in twenty five years old back back to my dad's basement after having what i thought was everything and drugs took that all  you know a couple of months down the line my girlfriend passed away and i never got to say goodbye because i wasn't allowed to be around her because i was high all the time and nobody knew who this person was anymore i wasn't even a person guys i was just a shell existing in the world because if i didn't have anything in me i felt like at the flu every single day of my life getting out of bed not being able to walk whole body aching sweating just miserable trying to figure out what i can do so i started to get on in jobs because clearly i wasn't allowed to work as a nurse anymore i started work as a service that i could have a casual pocket at the end of the night i would take that cash and i'd go spend it on drugs never saved any of it still five thousand dollars for my dad and over the course of four years i probably spent about ninety thousand dollars on drugs it's a lot of money but at that time you know you don't think about any of that because your brain changes so much and you caught up and everything you just keep thinking about is i just want to get high i just don't want to feel this anymore and it all started out because i thought that back in the day it was the cool thing to do that people would want to be around me now come full circle nobody wanted to be around me i lost all the family my friends i had nothing at this point in my dad for getting into it a lot came home one day we got to a fist fight and kick me out and i was homeless i barely had any gas in my car staying from place to place you know couch the couch sleeping in my car a lot i didn't have any money i was getting fired from a job so i started stealing i started breaking in the cars as the so that i could you know hopefully it would all add up so i can get something that i can maybe get you know a dollar cheeseburger from mcdonald's you know i weighed one hundred fifteen pounds i was completely miserable hated myself hated who i'd become and i lost everything so on july sixth two thousand and sixteen i'm in a place that i shouldn't be in and a part of town and studio i know no business being there i get a knock at the door there's two police detectives and two patrolmen and they take me away in handcuffs a week later i had stolen a wallet out of a lady's purse and kroger not thinking that about the consequences of my actions and where i would end up but i knew in the back of my mind i was going to get caught i knew it so i spent ten days in the county jail completely miserable no access to anything going through physical mental withdraw and it was there that i knew i wanted to change my life around and i didn't know how exactly so when i got out of jail i started to attend was that meetings i went to a short term detox to get my mind right get my depression and anxiety under control and then i decided i want to go to rehab for sixty days i went to rehab in a place in wheeling west virginia and it was there that i learned about the program of the twelve steps and how to find a new way to live how to learn how to live a life without the use of drugs you know something that i first did when i was thirteen fourteen years old that i never knew would come back and haunt me and completely take everything away from me at twenty six and twenty seven you know i did start from zero not to live life i don't want to be an adult i thought i did but i did completely relearn all that and i'm still learning that today one year three months and eighteen days clean i'm still learning how to live i'm still learning how to be an adult you know i was lucky enough to do the things that i did to get my nursing license back i now work in a hospital wheeling west virginia i just worked on that shift last night i got up this morning after a few hours of sleep and was able to come speaks you guys you know i would never be able to do that before you would never have seen me just been somebody passed down the street not thought twice about you know i'm starting to gain back the relationships that i loss of my family and friends you know my dad the person who i stole from the most and hurt the most take me out of the house you know that he's my biggest supporter he's my best friend i still live with him to this day because i owe it to him every month i give him money i do whatever he needs me to do and i don't ask questions and i'm twenty eight years old should be doing that right now but i know it's what i have to do to make things right because i ruined so much in my life because i started using you know like i said it's not cool to be twenty five and have to move the parents i thought when i first picked up that you know people would like me more because of that but now where i'm at today i never realize that i would affect so many people you know before i just heard you your actions and your decisions carry the people you love i never saw that that was the most powerful statement i've heard in a long time i affected so many people in my life that i never thought that i would hurt and went down the line not just for my dad not just from my girlfriend god rest her soul went to my brother to his girlfriend to my friends to my grandmother to my aunt and uncles and my cousins but now the change that i made in life today i choose recovery today because after what drugs took away from me and i see now that that is not cool that is not the way of life recovery for me today is what i choose because it is the only way of life so if you know somebody that's struggling or you get put in a situation just remember play that tape board and realize where you can end up you know recovery is possible and taken up and using it's just going to lead to nothing but bad guys nothing but pain depression and hatred toward yourself so please think about the consequences of your actions and think about who your decisions can affect and just know that there is a life that you can live without the use of drugs thank you are at this time we'd like to invite all of our speakers we have about nine minutes to ask questions if you guys want to come on up it do any students and or teachers have any questions for any of our speakers he wants he wants to know on average how many people were a year do you arrest him with drug related issues you know what i'm not real sure but with all of them from you know the small stuff on up it's for a thirty forty year but i'll tell you that the thing that's more disturbing how many people we go to that are have overdosed and are literally dead when we get there and we do c p r or we you know how to use the nor can i want to bring him back that's happening a lot more that's happened even i'll tell you what i told these people about two months ago a kid that i've known since he was younger than you guys just a heroin addict and i kid that i coached hockey with a couple years ago had to arrest for dui it's not easy you know but you know they all said consequences that's what it's about so it's horrible right you know they're working my twelve steps and having that program that i worked stay clean what that means to me is that i think i was born with the disease of addiction and it escalated through my choices in using drugs and you know once i put the drugs in me you know because of this disease and i thought it made me feel a part of again you know i didn't have a choice after that you know if i would have been more self aware and not done that you know i could have filled that void with all those things you know now we talk about our program spirituality you know that's how i have to fill my void is you know by you know being more spiritual my life and you know turning to the likes of god and seeing what's most important in life other than you know abusing drugs and mark while you have the microphone so i just want to know was there anything long term so i know that you're in recovery congratulation is there anything long term with like holding your job and getting certification that you have to do because of your addiction and the rest well i still have a misdemeanor on my record also i'm in a program called west virginia restore and every day between monday and friday four am and two pm i have to check in to see if i get randomly drug tested and it's not cheap it's a total about eighty dollars a test and that's two to three times a month so you know i'm completely free in the doing what i want  i am on a shot called vivitrol that they require me to be on it basically means if i were to use drugs again i wouldn't feel the effects it blocks the effects of the the happy receptor that you heard about in your brain and yeah like i have people watching me at work you know every step that i take you know you know i have to be careful in all my documentation and how i act at work and now i am so you know i'm under pretty want to pretty short lease and under a microscope so you know everything's like i said everything's not perfect but it's getting better and i just need to continue to do the things i need to do so through this address to i'm going to go and take this one for me growing up people he said marijuana is not a gateway drug ok and i know a lot of people might laugh at that and see things i still have friends to this day that laugh at that you know there's a billboard in air my hometown that said like it had a picture of a marijuana leaf and a beer and said you know this is the gateway for me it was because when the pain got great and often and things happen in my life that i didn't want to feel anymore you know marijuana and alcohol i went so far and it didn't take away that pain so i had to turn to something else because i had abuse that for so long to so for me that was the negative effect of marijuana was that it led me to want to feel something different so that i could feel my emotions in my feelings and that's to me why it is gateway and the back i can you talk louder sorry honey hold on you said in twelve step process wh well it was very difficult because i had to show them that i was going to meetings that i was serious about getting clean and getting into recovery you know i had to go to rehab and i did a sixty day in patient and then i had to do a twelve week outpatient as well so you know i had to make the effort and show them that i was willing to stay clean and that this wasn't just something that i was doing because you know i want to because it was something that i earned in the past it was something that i love and i have passion about and i really wanted to get back so you know it took a lot of effort and still still to this day it does and yes in the pharmacy we do have a lot of protocols to prevent that kind of stuff from happening we have cameras everywhere we also ha inventory counts three times a week where we count everything to make sure that our counts are on so if there ever is something suspicious we have a lot of security to be able to to catch it prevent it and prevent it from proud to tell you what warning signs would you have parents look out for if they think their child may be if you think drugs are using well i would say notice you know personality changes they're not their personalit es completely different withdrawal they don't i mean withdrawing from you as a person they don't want to go to family events or their want to be a part of the family they missed a lot of things they're tired they're both r j they all come over there you know it's a lot of physical changes that you would notice in someone who might be abusing drugs so anything out of the ordinary like that anything that you know maybe they were happy and funloving and now their personalities completely different they're dark they're moody they don't want to get out of bed they're up late at night they're up all night you know the signs are there the signs are there a lot of times we don't want to see him and don't want to acknowledge them do you think that nick's peer interactions played a part in his addiction at all i think to a degree it did yeah certainly his friends  know use drugs too but you know like mark told you he feels like he had the addiction gene and if you have that sometimes it's harder to get clean it's harder to not get sucked into that world some of you know nick has friends now or that he was really good friends with when he died and they're successful they're working they're doing things that they should be doing at the age of twenty six but they were lucky they're the lucky ones nick wasn't lucky you just don't know and mark also said it just sneaks up on you you know you don't you don't know that you're an addict until it's too late a lot of times so  i think that yeah his definitely peer interactions are what started him on that path we have time for about one more question  the point that my mom died because i didn't want to accept the fact that i was i didn't want to accept the fact that i was and then once my mom passed away and i started to really abuse drugs i realize like you know this started a long time ago and i should have been aware of it that we're out of time