 IN YOUR FACE
My name is Simon and I have been a volunteer at the T.H.O.M.A.S. Organisation since April 2000. Before that I was on the Reconcile Project recovering from drug misuse. At the end of my time on the Reconcile Project Father Jim offered me a position as a volunteer. During this time I have started a youth initiative which is called ‘In Your Face’ and is aimed at years ten and eleven in secondary school. The aim of the new initiative is to educate using a drama workshop and active discussion as a means to dispel myths and reveal the realities about the dangers of drugs. Currently there are four actors in the play and the play is based around chemical dependency, mainly heroin abuse. The actors are people who are currently in our Reconcile Project and they have all had personal experience of chemical dependency. Many of them have also experienced homelessness and have been socially excluded. The initiative is titled ‘In Your Face’ because it’s designed to get in peoples faces and give them the real truth, not just your ‘say no to drugs’. That way doesn’t work because people do try it and they say there not going to die doing it once. What we are trying to do is to give hard facts and reveal what actual addiction is like as in the cheating and stealing etc. The play is all simulated though with our experience of drugs we can give quite a good performance of what using heroin is like. This has been a real challenge for me because I never thought I had this kind of creativity in me. Other people had seen it but at the time I didn’t really believe it. This has been a big step for me because I’m putting something back into the community instead of taking all the time. I’m enjoying it and it’s also given me a chance to discover myself and build on talents that I didn’t know I possessed before. It’s also good for the people from the Reconcile Project because it’s starting to show what T.H.O.M.A.S. is doing for them and also they are helping others to see the danger of drugs. That’s a big thing when you are getting clean, a lot of people want to put something back. I feel this initiative an go a long way. Basically it’s for young people and by young people who are giving the truth and not false messages. |
