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(Background music)
I’m Travis Cross, Olympic wrestler and firefighter.
Whether you’re into Arts or drama or helping out in the community,
there are lots of different things in every community
that you can be involved in.
Being a mentor yourself for a younger kid, volunteering.
So why do you like volunteering?
I think it’s important for kids who are in a hospital to kind of have
a bit of a distraction so we can kind of just hang out and have fun…
Yeah!
Game night, board games, movie night,
the sports, activities, fun family activities.
Things to do in the community keep kids away from drugs and alcohol.
I like to play lacrosse, go biking, and hang out with my family.
If you start working with people who start taking
episodic excessive drinking behavior, take a lot of marihuana,
take any other drug, our research clearly demonstrates that
those people then, will engage further along those pathways.
In order to prevent yourself from going down those pathways,
you have to choose your friends wisely.
(Background music)
My name is Adam Loewen,
I’ve been with the Jays three years now.
You know, choose your friends wisely and
I think the more value you put on friendships more than
trying to impress other kids, you know, you'll go further.
When you can do that as a younger kid, no matter how hard it is,
you can be, you know, confident in saying no to anything.
I’m Brett Lawrie with the Toronto Blue Jays and I dig the long ball.
If you find yourself in a tough situation, I think the best thing to do is
go ask somebody for help maybe a little older,
teacher or your principal.
Really look inside yourself and see what you really want to do.
Do you want to go down the wrong road?
Or do you want to go down the right road?
A guy I knew back in minor league baseball,
he got addicted to over the counter medication and Oxycontin
and it really took a hold of his life
and he didn’t even care about baseball anymore,
all he wanted was the drug.
And it doesn’t only happen it sports, it happens everywhere.
Just because it’s prescribed doesn’t mean that it’s safe for you to take.
So don’t be messing around and taking something that’s not yours.
If it’s not yours don’t take it,
if it’s not prescribed to you, don’t take it!
Addiction is no joke.
Elementary school, I was hanging out with this kid all year.
We got in trouble all year.
Hi, I’m Alex Despatie.
I’ve been a diver for twenty years now.
I’ve been world champion three times.
And I knew I was gonna have to choose the right people
to stay focused on school and diving at the same time,
and I think that decision of, I made of sort of choosing the right people
to hang out with, really helped me to grow as a person.
It was a real turning point for me for my personal growth
at that point, even at such a young age.
Pretty sure I made the right decision
because he didn’t turn out so well in the end.
(Laughter)
Yeah, so do you guys have like any idea of
what you guys want to do when you’re older?
Not that you have to know what you want to do when you grow up
but you at least have to be focused and be putting effort towards
your education even if you have no idea what you’re going to do.
I want to work with music,
so like in the studio, being an audio engineer,
like working with all the buttons that go up and down,
that type of stuff.
I kind of want to be a doctor or like something that works with kids.
I don’t know what I’m going to be when I grow up.
I don’t know what I wanna be but I know that
by night, I'll be fighting crime!
I don't know by day.
Maybe be a journalist or a reporter.
Maybe you’ll be the journalist reporting his crime stopping.
(Laughter)
Maybe.
I think I’d really like to be a studio guitarist, work with music I guess.
So what are some things you guys think would get in the way of like,
you accomplishing your goals?
I know it looks tempting to try drugs
especially in a culture of peer acceptance, but really,
is it worth compromising your life goals?
And when they don’t have a goal,
they don’t really know what they’re going to do with their life,
so they think like drugs are the easiest way.
Stress can be, a huge factor is someone’s life and for some people
they might see drugs as the escape from reality.
Really, I mean it could potentially be anybody. It could be any one of us.
So there’s peer pressure, so like my school there’s a lot of,
well, I don’t want to say a lot of people do it,
but there’s some people close around me that do it
like after school, at lunches and stuff.
But like they try to get you into doing it, they think that
that will make you cool, somehow.
In my life, I have encountered a lot of people, a lot of very cool people
that I have worked with, that I have looked up to and I have seen them
and seen how drugs have affected them and trust me,
it’s not cool.
So when you think it makes you cool it actually makes you not cool.
You know what I’m saying, I’ve seen it and I’ve seen seen how people went
from being successful to being on their face.
You know what I’m saying? To being like, really they lost everything.
It spoils all their relationships, and it spoils all the thunder,
all the things that made them special.
It all went out the window.
It doesn’t make you smarter, it doesn’t make you doper,
it doesn’t make you more popular, it actually clowns you out,
because I’ve seen it, so don’t do that.
Well I’ve even had people come up to me and say like,
“Oh yeah, I heard like you rap, like if you did drugs like you might be able to
be on like a high level like them like, the way you think.”
I don’t see how it puts me on that higher level of thinking so like,
I don’t see how it does me any good.
Music is a big, big part of my life.
Like I’d rather stay in my basement and use my equipment and record,
than actually go to a party because going out to a party gets you into
all this extra stuff you don’t need.
But when I can just stay and do what I love in my own house
of my own comfort, it just feels way better than doing all that other stuff.
“Rappin’ for a passion, I aint in the fast lane, but if it cross by,
like Sidney’s last name, I might take a shot like Max Payne,
I won’t lie, man that’s lame.”
With drugs in your life, that leads to destroy
your family, your friendship, lose your job, poor health.
Why would you take a chance on that?
When someone asks me, or like says,
“Oh you should try, whatever, you’ll love it!”
Just straight up say “No” and say “I respect myself more than that.”
The way I see it is that it changes like people’s way of thinking,
like their mind set, so like they’ll be like okay,
they used to be playing football, like all the time
and that’s what they kept their mind on,
and then it just changes completely like,
“Oh I want to go get high”
and all this stuff like…I’ve seen it completely change in a lot of people.
It’s become such a social norm.
But, only if you surround yourself with people that are into that kind of thing.
So like, it’s not like you go down the hall and everyone’s like
“Oh guys come on, let’s go out, smoke up and stuff.”
Like if you go to the right spot, yeah, they’ll be offering you stuff,
but if you just remove yourself from that situation,
then you’re not really faced with it so it’s really, it’s a personal thing.
Like just don’t get involved with it
and you’re not faced with the peer pressure.
I guess B’boying is like my drug, it’s the thing I love to do.
Even though I get bruises everywhere,
but it’s the funnest thing I’ve ever done and I’m going to keep doing it.
Who wants John to do something?
On the table? Are you serious?
Yeah, here we go...
(Clapping)
That’s what I’m talking about.
That is why you stay away from drugs!
The best part about being drug-free for me is that
I do have control of my life.
I do live a stable life, I’m in control of my body
and I don’t have to worry about the consequences
that you normally would have if you were addicted to drugs.
I can still do the stuff that I love without having to worry.
(Guitar)
What have you learned about the power that you have to make good choices?
Yes?
We all have that power and we all have the ability to make
healthy decisions that are better for yourself.
You know, you’re in the driver’s seat, you’re the pilot of your own path,
you have the opportunity to make the right choices, so do it.
You don’t have to worry, like
“Oh I can’t stop.”
Or like you don’t have to worry about that type of stuff.
You know you can already be like yourself and you’re not using anything
else to like affect you, and like make you like feel better
when you can just be yourself, and feel better yourself.
I’ve learned that the only person that can make decisions for myself is me
and I shouldn’t give in to peer pressure.
I feel like that if you say no, then you’ve accomplished something.
You’ve, it’s like you’ve been over this like huge hill
and you’ve actually accomplished something.
When you take that stance at that young of an age,
it becomes a non-factor.
Trust, and I know that I’m drug-free and people trust me.
Yes?
Trust yourself.
To trust yourself, very good, absolutely, that’s a great one.
It’s going to be tough, I know it’s going to be tough to change friends,
you know, and it’s gonna take time, you know, but you have to do it.
You gotta be strong, you, I mean you cannot,
you can follow the crowd, you can go along, you can go along.
You see it all the time, some poor kid gets caught up in it
because he doesn’t have the strength to stand up and say
“No, I’m not taking drugs, I’m not going to ruin my life.”
It really is, I can’t tell you enough from my own experiences.
When I was a young guy and we were in Red Deer,
it was tough neighborhoods and I found out early.
It’s just the road to ruin,
you were shot in a lot of ways when you were wearing yourself thin
at that age, you were getting anxiety attacks, you were,
you were really doing yourself a disservice.
Really, at the end of the day, it’s about doing the right thing and at that age,
you’re, you know, thirteen, fourteen years old,
you know what the right thing is and it’s just a matter of just doing that.
When you’re sitting for the very first time at a party, in a car, outside,
wherever you are,
you’re gonna be exposed to pot, marihuana, ecstasy.
It's critical that you have an explanation
for why you’re not going to take it before you get to that party,
before the alcohol makes you slip into that bad behavior.
So, before you go to a party, you’re gonna say
“What can I say to my friends that’s not going to allow me to engage in this behavior?”
Things like, “I got a practice tomorrow.”
That’s a great excuse; I’ve got a practice tomorrow,
so I can’t do this behavior.
They’ll accept it and move right on
and not even have a blink of an eye at you.
You have to defend yourself.
You have to stand up for yourself and that’s the only reason
why I’m here today because I stood up for myself.
When guys, when guys said
“Hey look, you know, come do this or do that”
I said “Hey guys, I gotta go to the boxing gym”
or whatever it is
or “I have to run today”
or “I have to go to school.”
I see a lot of youth today believing in substances rather than themselves.
They will buy a supplement to actually change their bodies,
to drop some fat mass, gain some muscle mass or they'll
take a drug to get away from their problems and the pressures of life.
It is not in the bottle that gives you success.
It’s you believing in yourself that gives you success.
You know, if one kid looking at this was to say
“Hey, I gotta start making better choices
because that story really got to me.”
then me talking about it now and everything else we do is worth it.
The motivation is there, my goals are there,
and being drug-free allows me to stay on that path
and to go exactly where I want to go in life.
Believe in yourself.
(Clapping)