Example Script for talking to Young Children about Drug Abuse

I want to talk you about something very important…taking drugs.  Drugs can be pills that you swallow, smoke that you breathe, powder that you sniff into your nose, or needles that you stick in your arm.  When you take drugs, they make you feel really, really good.  So good that you definitely want to take that drug again.  Someone might say to you, “here, take this drug, it will make you feel so good.”  And they are right, it will!  But drugs are very tricky.

Inside your brain you have feel good chemicals.  You don’t need drugs to make them, they are just there in your healthy brain.  When you take drugs, they tell your brain to make more feel good chemicals.  You may feel very happy or excited.  But when the drug wears off, you have less feel good chemicals in your brain than you did before you took the drug.  Now you will feel terrible!  You might feel sad or very tired and you will want so much to take that drug again so you can feel happy again.  So you take more drugs, but when that is gone, you feel even worse and now you need the drug to make your brain and body feel happy.

Now you are addicted.  This means that your body cannot work properly to make you feel good anymore, unless you have that drug. 

But this is terrible because that drug is damaging your brain!

Not only are you damaging your brain, taking drugs is against the law and if a police officer catches you, you will go to jail.  Also, drugs cost a lot of money.  Many people who are addicted to drugs run out of money to buy them.  They are so desperate to get more money to buy drugs that they might be tempted to do something that is wrong, like steal or hut someone to get more money. 

When you are addicted, you might not be able to sleep without it.  You might stop caring about your family, your friends, or your favorite things to do.  All you can think about is getting more drugs. 

If you take too much, drugs can destroy your brain, or even kill you!

People who want you take drugs are not your friends.  They might say, “you are not cool, or I won’t be your friend” if you don’t take drugs.  People might want to sell you drugs so they can make money.  They don’t care about being your friend or about your health.  They care about your money.

Here are the names of some drugs so that if you ever hear these names you will know what they are and how dangerous they are.

Pot/marijuana, cocaine, crack, crystal meth, acid, cigarettes, alcohol, etc.

Some people even use prescription medicines from their doctor as a drug.  Doctors prescribe medicine to help you when you are sick.  They tell you exactly how much of the medicine to take and for how long to take it.  If you take too much or for too long, you can become addicted to that medicine and then instead of helping you it could hurt you by changing/damaging your brain.

Some people sniff house cleaners because it makes them feel high/good.  This is bad for you to do because it also damages your brain.

If you ever see drugs or if anyone ever asks you to take or buy drugs, I want you to feel safe and comfortable coming to me to talk about it.