Every year Mrs. Schneider invites the “Drug Lady” comes to visit Holy Family High School to talk about the dangers of drugs.

Her real name is Lynn Riemer and she is the Colorado President of ACT on Drugs and she is widely known as the “Drug Lady” at Holy Family.  She talks to the Anatomy classes and a couple of freshman classes. Everyone gathers in the library to listen to her speak. She is welcome to any questions and is a very friendly person. 

She has a degree in Biology and Psychology and has a lot of experience. She talks to schools all over the world educating students about harmful drugs. This helps people be safe and allows us to be educated about the world around us. It also helps the generation we are in currently where drugs are so glamorized and show the actual truth about drugs. 

We started by learning about the parts of the brain and why addiction happens. There is a part of the brain that is responsible for our brain rewards. It is called the limbic system. It is responsible for our feelings and pleasure. In this part of our brain, we also have hormones like dopamine and serotonin. When we do drugs these hormones get out of whack and we spiral into addictions. 

When we use drugs it gives us more serotonin at one point, which then leads to better highs and worse lows. Once we start doing drugs, the receptors in our brain make it more difficult to make these happy hormones which lead to addictions. People can’t feel the same happiness they felt before without drugs. We then can build up a tolerance which leads to more drugs and different types of drugs. This is why recovering from addictions is so difficult. 

She comes back to talk to us again in November to go more in-depth. I think this is very beneficial to teenagers and students everywhere. Allowing us to be more aware of what is going on around us.