“My neighbor’s son died the other day. He was a beautiful kid only twenty-one years into this world. Police and ambulance sirens blared as they raced up our street in an effort to revive him, but the sirens served only as an alarm that a life had been extinguished much too soon.
”The boy’s parents are constantly soggy-eyed now, and they busy themselves in the yard in the hope that physical exhaustion will somehow exorcise the pain in their souls.
“My neighbor’s son was killed by ingesting drugs that should never have been in his body.”
Steve Straessle, principal at Little Rock’s Catholic High School for Boys in Little Rock wrote these words about his neighbors son. He knows the teenage mind and has written a number of articles about the tragic loss of young lives and his insights into what parents can do to stop it. Nancy Rousseau, principal at the city’s Central High School is another highly regarded source.
Teens and young adults is one of three high-risk substance abuse categories we focus on at one day at a time. The other two are: prison inmates and veterans. Each of the three categories is discussed in separate sections, including recommended action steps.
