On Monday, October 28, Lindenhurst High School had its annual “Eyes Wide Open” assembly. The assembly is on a very serious and realistic topic that needs to be discussed with high school students every year, alcohol and drug addiction. The overall goal of the assembly is to send a message to the current high school students on the dangers of the decisions that they make when it comes to alcohol and drug use.

The assembly started with a student-created video that reenacts the high school party and what usually occurs. The video starts with the party scene and goes on to recreate a situation with a good student who falls victim to a bad decision when it comes to drugs and alcohol at a party. It subsequently shows how his schooling and athletics are negatively affected because he made a decision to do drugs and drink alcohol at the party. While in the beginning, it seems to be a fun party scene, the video quickly turns into a realization of the harsh realities that people go through from using drugs and alcohol at parties.

Then a woman named Kym Laube walked out on stage and told us her story with addiction. She explained how she was born in the Hamptons, which is a wealthy town, but she was extremely poor. That automatically put her at a disadvantage because everyone thought that just because she was poor that she was meant to fail. Being at a disadvantage from the start made her more inclined to try drugs and alcohol at an early age, and this ultimately led to her becoming an addict. Her use of drugs and alcohol got progressively got worse over the years. It even went to far as to affect her son. Other kids in her son’s school found out about his mother’s addiction, and it affected their view of him. He was labeled as weird and awkward for the longest time.  After a near-death experience due to misuse of drugs and alcohol, Kym felt that she was then given a wake-up call and that she had to stop doing what she was doing. So, she enrolled in rehabilitation programs and slowly weaned herself off of the addictive substances that she was using for so long. As her life got better, so did the life of her son, his personality changed and his popularity skyrocketed. He ended up on the football team and was so good that he was team captain by the time he graduated. He went on to play college football and his mother has been clean from drugs and alcohol for a long time. 

Mrs. Scharf is in charge of the committee of students including Nick Dardano, Olivia Maslinski, and Oleksandra Blyschak who run the Eyes Wide Open program.  When questioned about her thoughts on the assembly she said, “the students worked hard to present some people’s reality and that we all make choices in our life. If you ever need help, there are people around who care.” Students must realize how everyone is going through something, but the bad thing is that not everyone knows there are people out there who care enough to help.

Even though this assembly is yearly and high school students see it a total of four times, it is felt to be necessary that we see it four times. We need to be reminded yearly of how bad things can get if you make bad decisions. As well as learn about the stories of people who fell victim to drug and alcohol addiction and realized about their problems and took the correct measures to stop them. Attending this assembly is completely necessary and every school should implement it into their program.