Similar to other chronic relapsing diseases, drug addiction can be managed successfully. Yet, prevention is the key!
Our vision for prevention is through providing information, increasing awareness and helping individuals adopting and making these ideas part of their lifestyle. we do the latter through creating an atmosphere of trust. Our slogans represent our beliefs, hence they build a bridge between hearing the information and believing in them. When people trust what we have to say, our slogans become their mantras and they make the adjustments accordingly.
Best prevention is through talking and sharing instead of judging and stigmatizing!!
Our main message is to highlight the importance of "justice for all” and how the lack of justice/ dissatisfaction/ decline in happiness and gratification lead to addictive behaviour.
The concept of addiction goes way beyond illegal drugs and we deal with it much more frequently on our daily life and with things that are even sometimes essential to life like: food, sex, love, also cell phones/video games/electronics, exercise/work out, etc. Hence, our focus is also to help developing the knowledge and skills needed to make good choices or reduce harmful behaviours.
Substance use disorder prevention program (NIDA, 2003):
Designated for schools, universities and wherever is needed.
Step 1:
Our program starts with identifying the major addiction problems encountered within the related community;
Step 2:
It Builds on any current existing substance abuse program or other resources;
Step 3:
- A short-term tailor-made plan is created according to the specific needs. Research-based strategies are developed for the current academic year including, when possible, direct interactive sessions for the students with specialists on the topic, ex-drug addicts, government agency for legal aspects, etc.
- Parents and teachers’ involvement is highly recommended in order to complete the work started in classrooms. Students are encouraged to prevent addiction by getting more informed and primarily by sharing & talking. Hence, it will be vital to have both teachers and parents on the same page to listen as well as to recognize a problem and refer it to the right person.
Step 4:
Long-term plan is projected to maintain the results obtained and to guarantee the program’s continuity & improvement. This can include preparing teachers to recognize addiction-related problem and the following steps for referral, to implement the prevention program and the allocated teaching strategies. Evidence-based training technique can be suggested like "Life Skills Training (LST) Program”. A growing body of literature suggests the importance of promoting local events and engaging students in prevention practical activities. For this, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, NIDA, offers a wide variety like the ”NIDA Drug facts week” & "NIDA chat day”.
Step 5:
It includes continuous evaluation of the program progress.
Public education:
Through community-based organisations’ workshop meant to increase awareness about dependence and reinforce the concepts introduced at schools and universities. So we do with communities the same as with individuals. All mainly based on trust and belief. Moreover, and in this case, more emphasis will be on revealing the size of the problem and indicating how it could be held and resolved.
Our main slogans include: "justice for everybody including my enemy”, "Parents aren’t GOD!”, ”Work with what you are, what you have, and perfect it as much as you can!”, "no success in slavery to things”.
Reference:
National Institute on Drug Abuse (2003). Preventing Drug Use among Children and Adolescents. A Research – Based Guide for Parents, Educators, and Community Leaders. Second Edition.