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The TRUTH About Alcohol:
Lyndsey's Story
Lyndsey's Story is a 45 minute long multimedia presentation
geared towards a teenage audience. The presentation is presented by Youth to
Youth students and focuses on the ways in which the alcohol industry has used
its advertising in misleading and deceptive ways, in order to obscure the actual
risks associated with alcohol use.
The presentation begins with a discussion of the alcohol
industry's advertising strategy: advertising by association. The student
presenters discuss how the industry uses association-style advertising to
connect alcohol with positive images, such as pictures of: people who have lots
of friends, are athletic, are attractive, or who are having fun. The presenters
emphasize that, often, the images used in the advertisements have nothing to do
with the actual results of using the product. For example, alcohol causes loss
of coordination and balance, slowed reaction time and impaired judgment and yet
the alcohol industry frequently advertises using images of race cars and race
car drivers.
The presenters then go on to discuss how many of the images
that the industry uses are particularly attractive to a young audience. The use
of this type of advertising is problematic because it creates the impression in
young people's minds that alcohol use is risk free, harmless and "everyone is
doing it". This situation is made worse by the reality that, in fact, alcohol
is particularly harmful to underage drinkers since alcohol affects a teen's
brain differently than an adult's. However the student presenters point out
that, of course, the alcohol industry won't warn people of the actual
consequences of using their product since that would hurt their profits.
In the core of this presentation the students emphasize the
"8 Consequences of Alcohol Use that the Alcohol Industry Won't Warn You About".
In this section the students counter the impression that, if you are not
driving, alcohol is risk free.... The Youth to Youth
presenters focus on such consequences as:
- The risk of alcohol poisoning,
- falls and accidents,
- reduction in learning potential (by as much as 10%) as
a result of the way alcohol acts on the developing teen brain,
- alcoholism and the increased risk of addiction the
earlier someone starts drinking,
- Depression
- Impaired decision making
- Increased risk of violence, and
- Leaving yourself vulnerable to being taken advantage of
or being the victim of a crime.
The students use PowerPoint,
video clips and news stories to illustrate actual circumstances where young
people who used alcohol experienced these consequences. To illustrate how a
person who has been drinking is less likely to be alert to their surroundings,
making it easy for someone to take advantage of them, for the past several years
one of our students, Lyndsey Kadziauskas, has been telling her personal story of
how alcohol left her vulnerable.
Lyndsey, who is now a college
student, tells the audience about being invited to a party in September of her
freshman year in High School. At the party she had some mixed drinks and began
to feel sick. When she went into another room to lie down she passed out and
two boys at the party sexually assaulted her. Lyndsey tells the students what
she learned about the risks of alcohol use and encourages the audience not to
drink so that they don't give up control over their situation and don't lose
their ability to look out for themselves.
To
see more information about Lyndsey's story about how she presents to student
groups about the connection between alcohol and sexual assault - follow this
link to a story in the Dover Community News:
www.seacoastonline.com/2003news/dover/d6_20index.htm
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