Through My Eyes: Kids, young adults invited to share stories about how substance abuse has affected their lives
Monday, September 8, 2008 10:49 AM PDT
By The Daily News
Printable version
E-mail this articleDrunk. High. Wasted. Hammered, smashed, messed up, trashed. Feed “slang drunk” into Google, and more than 2 million entries pop up. We’re looking to go beyond the buzz words and bragging to something closer to reality. How does getting drunk and high change people, and entire communities?
How does it change relationships and families? How is it tied to our ideas of having fun? To our health, our senses, our social rituals and special times?
Why do young people drink, smoke and drop stuff?
Why do young people NOT drink, smoke or drop stuff?
And why is it such a big deal on both sides of that great divide?
The Cowlitz Substance Abuse Coalition and The Daily News invite local young adults, ages 16 to 22, to answer any of these questions they choose, in an essay of 1,500 words or fewer.
Our contest, called “Through Your Eyes,” copies a similar project done in Brookings, Ore., sponsored by TheCitizensWhoCare.org, which owns the trademark for the contest title.
We are not looking for any one viewpoint. Your essay can be about yourself, your friends, your relatives, the culture in general. Good grammar and spelling make a big difference, but we can clean up problems. The best essays will have details from your experience, feelings and conclusions drawn from real-life events.
We hope you will take this opportunity to speak the truth, through your eyes.
We ask you to share your name, age and a phone number. But we will not publish authors’ names in the paper nor names of anyone mentioned in an essay.
A group of journalists and others will read the essays and choose three top entries for cash-equivalent prizes. We will publish those, along with however many other “honorable mention” essays we receive, in the newspaper and on our Web site.
Below are the contest rules, along with a list of suggested questions, which may or may not give you a jumping off point. If you have questions, call Cathy Zimmerman at (360) 577-2541.
Teachers are welcome to use the contest as a class assignment, but we ask that no essays be censored and no schools mentioned in materials delivered or e-mailed to The Daily News.
IDEAS FOR WRITING
Writers are free to use any of these suggestions for discussion in their essay:
Why do people do drugs and alcohol (why do you, why do teens, why do guys, why do girls)?
What allows or motivates people to avoid abusing drugs and alcohol, or to avoid them totally?
Teens in our area say that they get wasted because they’re bored. Bogus or real?
Good kids don’t do drugs.
Bogus or real?
True or false: Prescription drugs are the biggest and most ignored drug problem.
True or false: Pot is a gateway drug.
True or false: Pot should be legal.
Is drug and alcohol use a rite of passage, a natural part of growing up? Defend your answer.
Where do kids get the idea that it’s cool to get trashed? Do they learn it from their world, or do TV and movies influence them, or both?
True of False: Poor people get caught, rich people get away with it.
Going away to college seems to be connected to a lot of drinking and drug use. What’s this about?
Recently, college presidents from some of the nation’s biggest and most respected universities have lobbied to get the drinking age lowered from 21 to 18. Their reasoning is that allowing 18-year-olds to drink legally will prevent dangerous binge drinking. What do you think of this idea?
How does it feel, doing drugs or alcohol? Can you tell if you’re addicted, or not?
What’s the damage like, from all this drugging and drinking?
Drugs, drinking and death — when the worst happens and the grief it causes.
What should we do, in our town, about drug and alcohol abuse? Are we failing, doing everything we can, or paying too much attention to it? What would life look like, if there were no drugs or alcohol?
Essay rules
Write an essay, up to 1,500 words, about how drugs and alcohol affect your life.
Typed, double-spaced essays are preferred. But if you do not have a computer, write your essay in pen, making it as easy to read as you can.
On the back of the essay OR on a separate sheet of paper, write your name, age, a phone number where you can be reached and the county you live in (Cowlitz, Wahkiakum, Pacific, Columbia and Lewis counties only, please). This will allow us to reach you if you win a prize. Judges will NOT see your name, and we will not use your information for anything else except to identify winners.
By Oct. 10, 2008, e-mail, drop off or send your essay to “Through My Eyes,” c/o The Daily News, 770 11th Ave., P.O. Box 189, Longview WA 98632, czimmerman@tdn.com.
131941 wrote on Sep 9, 2008 9:30 AM:
of any way of educating people young and older about alcolicism and drug addiction. Good luck in your future.
If youhave a problem there is Alcolics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous and other self help groups around. "
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