you remind someone of their value you increase your own value. That's positive peer pressure!
After the show the audience takes the same neuroscience quiz, and are asked questions about perception: how much do drugs and alcohol influence school, relationships, and do they think marijuana is addictive. Following that there is a talk-back between the audience and the performers which I moderate.
Drug Story Theater can come to your school even during the COVID pandemic. We have a professional video of the Middle School show called “Second Chances.” You can purchase the video and get the neuroscience quiz for free, with real time before and after data about the kids who watch the show. DST can also provide the same quiz to be administered at various times after the viewing, to see how much information has been retained.
For more information please go to www.drugstorytheater.org
Drug Story Theater is a 501 c-3 that takes teenagers in the early stages of recovery, teaches them improvisational theater, then uses psychodrama to help them create their own scripted shows about the seduction of, addiction to, and recovery from drugs and alcohol. The teens then perform these shows for middle and high schools so "The Treatment of One Becomes the Prevention of Many." In between each scene the performers step out of character and present three short interactive PowerPoint presentations to the audience teaching them about the adolescent brain and why it is at such risk for life long addiction, more than any other age brain! All the audience members take a pre-show neuroscience quiz, then take the same quiz after they watch the show. We are looking at how kids who learn about their brain change their perception.
DST teaches kids that addiction is not about morality, it is about mortality. DST is not trying to scare anyone out of using. If the brain is going to choose between fear and pleasure it will choose pleasure, every time. While we would prefer a kid never uses, we are just asking them to wait. Wait until their brain is a bit more developed to decrease their risk of life-long addiction. That based on the brain science, you can get high but the price you pay is trust: you decide which pleasure is more important to you. And that the greatest risk factor for first time substance use is low self-esteem. But at any and every moment you can remind someone of their value. And whenever
