When surveyed over a year ago, 62 percent of students in grades 7 through 12 said that drugs and alcohol were the biggest problems they saw in their communities, outranking racism, eating disorders, gangs and sexually transmitted diseases.
To address the survey, the Los Altos Youth Commission hosted a forum May 31, where a group of teens spoke about how big a problem drugs and alcohol had become in their own lives.
“We did the survey to find out what students and the community thought was a big issue, so the youth commission would know what to address,” said Robert Acosta, the recreation coordinator for the city of Los Altos.
Emily Weed, a Los Altos High School student and the chairperson of the Youth Commission, invited the speakers to the forum with the hope of reaching students who attended.
“This is just to make people more aware of what’s going on in their own lives,” she said. “Hopefully someone will hear (the speakers) and be inspired by them.”
Each of the speakers began by telling how drugs and alcohol came to play a role in their lives, and then answered questions from the audience.
Randy Williams, a 16-year-old who used to attend Mountain View High School, spoke first.
He said he first smoked marijuana at the age of nine.
“From there it just kind of took over my life,” he said. “I started hanging out with the wrong people, and started stealing from everyone.
“I would steal out of (my mother’s) nest egg,” he said. “She would wonder why we couldn’t go on vacation, why we had no money, and it was because I had to get high.”
When asked whom his drug addiction affected, he answered, “I hurt a lot of people, but my mom the most I think, because I had violent mood swings all of the time and couldn’t stop being aggressive.”
When asked why he decided to get help for his addiction, he explained the detrimental affects of drug use he saw in himself.
“Drugs brought me nothing good. A lot of people think that marijuana isn’t addictive, but I think it is, mentally,” Williams said. “When you start doing drugs you stop growing mentally.
“You can still learn, but you’re still a baby.”
Becca Herman, a current student at Pinewood High School, was the next to speak.
She said she never expected herself to use drugs.
“I was really, really anti-drug,” she said. “I never thought I’d be the one sitting here. I was definitely the one lecturing my friends.”
When asked why she started taking drugs, she answered she was “pretty miserable, because it was a really bad time in my life.
“And being high feels good for most people. I can’t deny it.”
She remembered that before entering a rehabilitation clinic, she tried to deny that she had a problem.
“I remember wondering if I was an addict,” she said. “I remember going so far as to look up ‘alcoholic’ in the dictionary, because I was trying to think of anyway to say ‘that’s not me.'”
Brian Codding, another Los Altos High student on the youth commission, felt that by emphasizing the similarities between the speakers and the students in the audience, the forum would be able to help students who were not comfortable bringing up this issue themselves.
“Maybe if some people have a problem and they’re not able to bring it up, the speakers can reach them,” he said.
The Youth Commission is a division of the Los Altos City Council, comprised of local teens, Acosta, and Brent Butler, the Schools Resource Officer for the Los Altos Police Department.
