1 of 3
Help the Hills
2 of 3
Photo by Sydney Cromwell
David Howard
David Howard talks about the new Drug Task Force and voluntary drug testing program in Vestavia City Schools.
3 of 3
Photo by Sydney Cromwell.
Help the Hills
David Howard talks about the new Drug Task Force and voluntary drug testing program in Vestavia City Schools.
Drug addiction could happen right in your own home. That was the message of the first “Help the Hills” town hall meeting, hosted by Leadership Vestavia Hills on Monday, Aug. 18.
Vestavia Hills United Methodist Church’s Tyson Hall was packed with parents, teachers, police officers and community leaders for the event. Charlie Shah, an LVH member and general counsel for Event Operations Group, started off the meeting by introducing LVH members to the audience and reminding them that drug addiction defies stereotypes.
“It’s not about good kids. It’s not about bad kids,” Shah said. “What we hope to communicate from this is that no one’s immune to this.”
David Howard, the director of administrative services for Vestavia Hills City Schools, was the first speaker. He described prescription medications as “the devil and an angel,” and spoke about the children he has seen whose lives have been ruined by drug abuse. Howard shared the stage with Brad Blount, a 2009 Vestavia Hills High School graduate who is battling an addiction to opiates.
Blount was on his high school’s football, baseball and wrestling teams. He began taking painkillers after a high school shoulder injury crushed his dream of playing college baseball. Blount was in emotional and physical pain, but when he took a Lortab he felt his worries lift off his shoulders.
“The best way to describe it is like a light bulb went off in my head and I was like, ‘This is it. This is the answer to my problems,’” Blount said.
Eventually, Blount was taking pain pills every four hours and became “an Academy Award winner actor” to hide the problem from his parents and friends. Even when confronted with a positive drug test, he couldn’t be honest. Blount is clean now, but he encouraged parents to keep tight control of their children’s medications and avoid taking opiates and other strong pain pills when possible.
After Blount received a standing ovation, Howard spoke briefly about the new Drug Task Force and the voluntary drug testing program, which has 320 students signed up so far. In his years at Vestavia Hills City Schools, Howard said risk factors for drug abuse most often started appearing in middle school, and early detection could be key to preventing serious addictions down the road.
The next speaker was Dale Wisely, a Vestavia Hills resident and the director of student services for Mountain Brook Schools. Wisely’s focus was on abuse of alcohol, which he reminded the audience was just as much a drug as heroin or marijuana. He said that while alcohol is considered more acceptable, it has killed more people and damaged more families than many of the harder drugs. Wisely also noted that there is no such thing as responsible teenage drinking and that teens who are allowed to drink under supervision are more likely to develop drinking problems as they grow up.
Wisely encouraged parents to educate themselves about drug use, set clear rules, monitor their children’s behaviors and create consequences for violating rules, including getting professional help if needed. Rather than having “the Talk” about drugs, Wisely suggested parents have several smaller, less intense conversations with their kids. He closed with a reminder that parents have the right to be an authority and set non-negotiable boundaries about illegal substances.
“We’re not going to shrug and say kids will be kids. We’re not going to say everybody in Vestavia Hills drinks underage because it’s not true and even if it is true, we don’t care,” Wisely said.
To close the evening, Rick and Suzanne Norris spoke about their son Tripp, who died in 2011 from a combination of alcohol and heroin. They spoke about the shame they felt about the reasons for their son’s death, and how they struggled to find something to blame for Tripp’s addiction. Rick said he had been willfully ignorant about drug abuse and didn’t realize his son was using heroin because he didn’t fit the stereotype.
“It can look like everything is all right, when in reality everything is all wrong,” Rick said.
Rick asked that parents begin to look at addiction as a disease to be treated, not a moral failing to be shamed and hidden. Being open and aware, he said, could help prevent another tragedy like Tripp’s.
“Drugs have robbed this city of too many of its best and brightest,” Rick said. “It took his dying to change my perspective. Don’t let that happen to you.”
Future “Help the Hills” meetings will be held in homes throughout the community. To learn more or volunteer your home for a meeting, visit leadershipvestaviahills.com.
To see a video from the event, click here
