The dangers of substance abuse

Late last month, the Rockville Centre Public Library played host to the Rockville Centre Youth Council and three young men from Phoenix House, a drug and alcohol rehabilitation clinic, who talked to local teens and adults about their lives, becoming addicted to heroin and going to prison.

The Youth Council sponsored the program with the Confide Drug and Alcohol counseling center and South Side High School's SADD branch. The session took place from 7-9 p.m. and was aimed mainly at high school-aged students, to help impress them with the dangers and consequences of drugs. The three young men from Phoenix house—one was 20-years-old and the other two were 21—told their stories to a captivated audience of 50-60 students and parents.

“Honestly, the two hours flew by,” said Mike Caffrey of the Youth Council. “It’s so eye-opening. It’s eye-opening, scary and powerful.

“These kids told their stories about smoking pot and drinking at 12 and 13, and then going from doing that to doing Vicodin, and then the Vicodin got too expensive, so they went to Oxycontin,” Caffrey said. “And then when the Oxycontin got too expensive, they went to heroin. And all of them went to jail.”

Rockville Centre Mayor Mary Bossart also attended, as did Village Administrator Frank Quigley, Confide Counseling Executive Director Art Rosenthal and Youth Council chair Beth Hammerman. According to Caffrey, Youth Council organizers were pleased, if not a little surprised, with the turnout they had, and they hope to run the program again.

“We were pretty surprised with the response we had,” he said. “We would like to run the program again, but we would like to run it for the middle school.”

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