By Max Baron
On Monday, February 26, Irvington High School came together for an assembly led by the incredibly inspirational Stephen Hill. Hill is a public speaker who uses his experience with drug addiction, and his journey to sobriety, to advocate for young adults to stay away from drugs.
IHS was lucky enough to experience an intimate presentation by Mr. Hill that sparked emotion amongst much of our school community. Using his own experiences, he shared in great depth what goes through the mind of specifically an adolescent who is exposed to drugs, and how one time partaking in an addictive substance can lead to a full-on addiction. Additionally, Hill emphasized his goal of saving at least one student in the crowd of each school that he visits from the dangers of peer pressure and addiction.
Hill works closely with Guardian Recovery, which is a program that assures everyone struggling with addiction gets the support and knowledge that is necessary to reach sobriety. Guardian Recovery, as well as Hill’s own foundation called Speak Sobriety, also focuses on sharing resources to teach the general public about addiction, and how they can help family members and friends who struggle with battles similar to Hill’s.
Dennis Sasso, a sophomore at IHS reflected on the assembly sharing, “It was very powerful to hear Stephen’s story and reminded us of just how dangerous drugs and alcohol are.”
Hill’s story helps encourage adolescents to make their own decisions about their health and safety, reminding them that drug use and abuse shouldn’t be a typical part of the high school experience. His descent from a successful student and athlete to an unmotivated and mentally impaired young man who relied on drugs reached the hearts of a lot of students at IHS. It emphasized to us as a community the ongoing issue of drug and alcohol abuse amongst high schoolers in America, reminding students of the effects that just one drink or one pill can have on the rest of our lives.
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