- Alcohol
- Drugs
Heroes in Recovery lead advocate Bo Brown met Trey at the 2015 RecoveryFest Nashville event. Trey’s recovery has directly impacted his career and has provided a program and focus on students and addiction.
My name is Trey, and I have been in recovery since 1989. In 2014 I started a student addiction prevention program. We bring recovering people into schools to tell their stories and share the effects drugs and alcohol have on the youth in our communities. We encourage young people to not pick up alcohol and drugs and to make a better decision than us addicts made at their age. Approximately 95% of addicts picked up drugs or alcohol before the age of 20. Picking up substances before the age of 20 makes a person 7 times more likely to become an addict. In the 2014-2015 school year, we presented the program to 90 groups of students in 3 different counties, and we have a lot of schools inviting us back next year.
In the elementary schools, we have a program that is usually presented to the parents at a PTA meeting. In the middle schools, the program is geared toward those in the eighth grade because the material is a little more mature. In high schools we talk to all grade levels. We know that most of them have been around drugs and alcohol and that many have experimented by that age. We also talk to different athletic programs. The more we talk to the kids on a regular basis, the less likely they are to experiment with substances. We are also in the process of creating a program that can be used in other areas. We are looking at branching out into other states such as Texas, Tennessee and Maryland.