Workshops and Assemblies
FCD offers a wide range of presentations for:
- Students
- Parents
- Faculty
- School administrators
- Guidance and health counselors
- Dorm proctors and residential advisors
- Coaches, team captains, and athletes
- Student councils and peer support groups
- Intervention teams and prevention advisory committees
- Trustees and school boards.
Our workshops and assemblies are available as part of Intensive Classroom Education Programs, as half- or full-day seminars, or as custom programs tailored to suit the needs and schedule of the individual school. The following topics are adaptable to virtually any audience or format.
Marijuana: How Harmless is It?
Marijuana's reputation as a "soft" drug masks its potential for harm. This workshop discusses the effects of marijuana on metabolism, hormones, memory and motivation, and also looks at the social, emotional and intellectual cost of marijuana use. Other specific topics will include risks of early use, how marijuana affects the brain, and risks of combining marijuana with alcohol or other drugs.
Healthy Decision-Making: What Does It Look Like?
Society bombards kids with multi-media messages that portray use of alcohol and other drugs as essential to being successful, sexy, and cool. These messages not only color the “informed” choices young people make about drugs, but they also create misperceptions that lead young people to overestimate the proportion of their peers and elders that use. This workshop explores the role of normative beliefs, media, and environment in shaping the nature and degree of student use of alcohol and other drugs. The workshop will further examine use through the filter of choices young people make within a personal environment of both risk and protection. Insight will be presented by a prevention specialist in recovery whose initial use of alcohol and other drugs was not unlike that of many young people—except it led to addiction, loss, and unimagined consequences.
Concerts, Clubs, and Party Scenes
When young people "party" with alcohol and other drugs, the results can be catastrophic: accidents, fights, unsafe sex, and the loss of judgment that leads to poor decision making. Why is partying synonymous with use? And why do teens drink to get drunk? A look at the drugs consumed in these environments and the hidden dangers associated with alcohol and energy drinks, ecstasy, ketamine, GHB, rohypnol, and methamphetamine.
When Alcohol and Other Drugs Become a Problem
Challenges students to understand the difference between use, dependence, and addiction to alcohol and other drugs. Special emphasis is placed on how use progresses and on both the subtle and severe potential consequences of use. Students will hone the ability to identify multiple warning signs of substance abuse, and will discuss and debate their peers' perceptions of problem use, so that accurate information about chemical dependence is revealed, and group knowledge about the early warning signs of a problem grows.
Helping A Friend
Think someone you know has a problem? What do you do? Who can you talk to? This session will discuss how to informally intervene with a friend you may have concerns about and guide him or her toward the help and support of a qualified and trusted adult.
Stressed Out: The Myth that Alcohol and Other Drugs Reduce Stress
Students often misuse alcohol or other drugs in an attempt to escape stress. This workshop will discuss how this approach is ineffective, and will encourage students find healthy, life-affirming alternative ways to relax, relieve stress, and "get a rush" independently and with the support of others. Healthy highs, self-care, problem-solving, positive relationships, and the development of talents, passions, and causes will all be covered.
The College Scene: Reality versus Misperception
Provides information and tools to assist high school seniors in making a thoughtfully planned transition to college that prioritizes their health and safeguards their future.Topics include misperceptions of college substance abuse, the realities of use and risk in the university setting, tips for managing college life, and adapting currently healthy behaviors.
"Study" Drugs: Adderall, Caffeine, Energy Drinks, and Ritalin
The misuse of substances to enhance academic performance, including prescription and over-the-counter drugs, is an ineffective and unhealthy behavior that tempts some students. This workshop will discuss the mental, physical, social, and legal risks associated with misuse of these substances. Additionally, this session will encourage students, based on current knowledge of adolescent development, to harness their natural brain power through healthy boosts like good nutrition and sleep habits, time- and stress-management techniques, and the development of study skills.
Smokeless Tobacco
Smokeless Tobacco (in its many forms, like dip, chew, snus, and pellets) is a drug that poses both multiple health risks and the risk of addiction to young people. This workshop will explore: 1) what smokeless tobacco is, 2) what it does to the body and mind, 3) how smokeless tobacco compares to cigarettes, 4) why persons chose to use smokeless tobacco, 6) what addiction looks like, 7) and how to make the healthy decisions about smokeless tobacco/encourage others to do the same.
Relationships and Substances
The use of alcohol and other drugs affects virtually all of a teen's relationships: to parents, siblings, and friends; school, work, and play; mind, mood, and body; conscience, confidence, and integrity; to how they perceive their past and their future, and to their emotional, intellectual, and spiritual lives. This construct offers a provocative entry point for discussing the impact of use on the growing adolescent.
Gender and Alcohol
For mixed or single-sex audiences, how alcohol affects men and women differently; how males and females diverge in their views on drinking and drunkenness; how societal attitudes toward drinking change based on the gender of the drinker.
Growing Up with Alcoholism
An estimated one-in-four children grow up in homes affected by alcoholism or other drug addictions. This workshop looks at ways in which substance abuse affects families, and offers participants practical and emotional survival tips.
Coaches, Captains, and Athletes
Coaches and athletes have a special place in the school hierarchy as leaders. This workshop focuses on getting coaches and athletes to think about ways they can support the school's prevention efforts. The discussion is meant to mobilize coaches to take a proactive approach to prevention, by unifying team efforts and expectations in regard to student non-use with those of the overall school community's. Communication skills, team building, and the positive influence coaches, captains, and athletes can exert on drug use attitudes and behaviors in the school community will be emphasized.
Sports, Steroids, and Other Drugs
Can drugs make you play better? How does drinking affect sports performance? An examination of the effects of a wide range of substances on athletic performance with a special focus on steroids, supplements, and energy drinks, which are being used in greater numbers by both athletes and non-athletes in search of the "ideal" body.
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