The best Red Ribbon Week posters
Posted on 18. Nov, 2009 by kchristieh in education, life lessons, parenting
One of my goals this year as PTSA President is to make Red Ribbon Week more meaningful. It’s tough to communicate an anti-drug, anti-drinking message to cynical high school kids, especially when so many of them have already experimented with these substances.
Anne Tryba saved the day. She volunteered to be the Red Ribbon Week Chair about a month before it took place, and not only managed to stage an essay contest that garnered nearly 200 entries, but she created the following four posters. These aren’t of the mere “Just say no” variety. I think they’re very effective at shocking kids to take a second look at the consequences of their decisions.
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Personally, the most effective presentation that I have ever heard on the subject was given a few years ago. I was lucky enough to attend a presentation by the head of The Johns Hopkins Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences.
Two pieces of information impressed me the most in his presentation. The first was a demo of how easy it is for everyone to become psychologically addicted. In a quick and simple demonstration he practically made every person in the audience \hooked up\ on a body motion. The motion was trivial, but the message was clear and effective. He then went into an interesting explanation of how things that make us \feel good\ affect our primal brain and may end up controlling our behavior.
The second was tearing the veil from the rehab process. According to him, there is no silver bullet that can magically cure an addict (which is why all those Hollywood types checking into rehab facilities when they get in trouble is mostly farce). His message was that one cannot recover unless he/she comes to terms with the fact that he/she is addicted to a habit, or a substance which destroys their lives. Some recognize it in short time and rehabilitate themselves even without any help from the outside; others may recognize it later, not before they have lost their family, their livelihood, and their homes. And there are those who will never come to terms with it until they lose their lives — no amount of rehan can help them.
The visuals that you show here are great, but I wonder how effective they would be in the long run. I am not a psychologist, but from what I can still remember from my youth (so long ago…) we felt so invincible and immortal. Doing something which we were not supposed to do, no matter how stupid or risky it was, gave us an adrenaline rush enough to feel alive and excited. So I can imagine how some kids may look at these images and convince themselves that this would never happen to them.