The Country School is an independent, coeducational, Pre-K through 8 school founded in 1934.
News
The Power of Going Purple
Mr. Everhart shares the experience had by our 8th graders and some Upper School faculty at Chris Herren's talk at Easton High School last month, which was focused on his Purple Project initiative meant to raise awareness of the national opioid crisis.
Talbot County has just witnessed the rollout of a remarkable and important public health campaign. It seemed like elements of Talbot Goes Purple were everywhere this September.
Here at the Country School, Upper School advisories have discussed issues relating to addiction and the current opioid crisis, our PACS group has worked to educate and share age appropriate information to all of of our students, and the 8th grade partook in a powerful assembly at Easton High School centered around the compelling story and mission of Mr. Chris Herren.
I have every confidence that the Talbot County Sheriff’s Office, their colleagues in law enforcement, and the men and women who dedicate themselves to caring for addicts and those suffering from this epidemic will continue their great work. However, as we enter October, I want to share my takeaways from this campaign. More importantly, I want to ask all of you to consider, “Now that I have a greater awareness of the opioid crisis, what steps should I take moving forward?”
To those ends, I want to share three main points:
- Chris Herren, the speaker I reference above, emphasized that in seeking to prevent the horrors of drug abuse, we should not think of the drug addict on their worst day. We should think of what an addict looks like on the first day of their addiction, because that is a far better time for prevention and intervention.
Mr. Herren and Sheriff Gamble talk of a similar path when they explain how the heroin addicts they know get started: Drinking alcohol in late middle school/early high school; regular, near-daily marijuana use in high school and college; an introduction to prescription painkillers that becomes an addiction; and ultimately, a turn to heroin when the painkillers run out.
With the idea of thinking about “an addict on their first day” in mind, we must all help ensure that our middle schoolers - whether they are our students, friends of our children, or our own sons and daughters - do not start drinking alcohol. Doing so starts our children down a dangerous path, a path started by far too many middle and high schoolers in Talbot County at far too young an age.
- As adults, we must responsibly manage, account for, and dispose of our prescription medicines. When many of us were children, our parents were understandably most concerned that we would sneak beer or liquor out of the fridge or cabinet. As parents in 2017, the beer fridge and the liquor cabinet cannot be our only focus, as we must also keep close tabs on our medicine cabinets. Many of our prescription painkillers, which we store far-to-casually in our medicine cabinets, are for all intents and purposes synthetic heroin. We must be absolutely vigilant in accounting for every pill and properly disposing of these drugs. You can find a link here with information about where in Easton you can drop off your prescription drugs; do not flush them down the toilet.
- This is going to be the most challenging step: As parents, we need to pick up the phone and call the parent when we hear their child might be drinking or abusing drugs. Admittedly, this can be a difficult call to make. The parent on the other end of the line might initially be angry or defensive. You might feel you don’t have definitive proof. You know that your own child is not perfect, and you worry you are coming across as a hypocrite. Call anyway. Find the moral courage to say to a fellow parent, “I have heard that your child is drinking on the weekends, and I am worried about your kid. I hope that I am wrong, but I wanted you to know what I am hearing; I would want you to call me if you heard something about my child.”
Too often as parents we avoid this difficult conversation, and we don’t make the call; we stay silent, and perhaps we even feel a little superior about our own parenting. Given the stakes and the consequences, this is not an acceptable approach, so please start thinking now about how you will properly handle this moment.
I am so proud of our county’s embrace of Talbot Goes Purple; I have learned a lot; and I feel confident that your children have taken away some very important messages this September. However, it would be a shame if we did not all take it upon ourselves to continue the Talbot Goes Purple movement. Caring for our children is complicated, demanding, and hard; but it is also the honor of a lifetime, and I look forward to working alongside our faculty and all of you on behalf of our children.
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