If you had a chance to create an entirely new prevention model for first year college students, what key ideas, prevention models, research, and methods would you use?
This is one place in which the whole idea of freedom and agency are often not understood by students.
To quote our former University President, we are supposed to rise above being objects to be acted upon. We are to be agents who act in order to reap the good consequences we want.
You may choose to participate. You may not choose the consequences.
You may not choose the laws of Physics, nor Biochemistry, nor Neuro-science. They are not prescriptive laws, (as in the legal system "you are supposed to"). They are descriptive laws (as in, "Sorry kiddo, I don't care what you want. I cannot do a thing about it. That is just the way it is").
One of my friends was an engineering team manager in the defense industry. He had an engineer who played semi-professional hockey on the side. One day his doctor told the engineer that, "You are going to need to decide if you want to be an engineer, or a hockey player. One more concussion, and you won't have that choice anymore." Yeah . . . freedom to do what we want?
Substance abuse sounds quite similar to me in this regard.
You are not free to excel, not free to play the piano for instance, until you have disciplined yourself through thousands of hours. This is freedom.
We are free to make the right choices, and feel their consequences of being where we want to be in 10-20 years, and doing great things.
A leader I have great respect for once spoke of a muddy water hole with the sign, "Beware crocodiles." Nothing looked amiss. With coaching from the guide, most of the tourists eventually began to see the eyes of the predators who were waiting for unwary game, large and small. We are not the guards who prevent you from pleasure. We are the game keepers who warn you of crocodiles.
I am frustrated with the tolerance of illegal substance abuse. I am enough of a curmudgeon that "if I ran the zoo," there would be billboards of the latest innocents caught in the crossfire of the drug violence with the caption, "Sponsored by your entertainment dollars."
Sorry. This one is a sore spot for me.
Have your students go to the Apple Store or Google Play and download the free app - There is Hope. This app developed by the non-profit Columbia, Maryland crisis center Grassroots will give your students help identifying one who as it the risk for suicide and give them a direct button to talk to a trained crisis counselor.
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