Episode: 1 Miles To Go Podcast: Listen to this podcast first – what we do.

Hello and welcome to the Miles To Go Drug Prevention Education lecture series Podcast where we simplify a complex subject by talking about prevention research, parenting, pop culture, and teaching all to raise healthy, happy well-rounded kids.

This is Episode: 1 Miles To Go Podcast: Listen to this podcast first – what we do.

Welcome, it’s January 7, 2012, my name is Kelly and I’m the director of Miles To Go Drug Prevention Education Lecture Series. 5 years ago we started our podcast adventure to attempt to bring our blogs and Drug Fact Updates to people who had absolutely no time to read the news about drugs, parenting, teens, prevention, behavior and everything else that falls into our category.

Since then, we have done several shows bringing our listeners the audio version of the news, which is so overwhelming that we started a daily twitter feed of news and research that was shockingly large.

Our problem has been that Substance abuse and prevention involve many disciplines.

a. It is social, cultural, biological, spiritual, psychological, medical, and historical, behavioral.

b. This is why it can be integrated into many different subjects.

So we think that drug prevention education should be about:
 Communication,
 Decision making,
 Problem solving,
 Family and general life skills.
 and how language plays a huge part in parenting and role modeling.
 Well, these are all the same tasks used for being a mom and a wife.

Drug prevention is all about being a healthy person, not just in the human body, but as an overall person, mentally, behaviorally and the human body. It is our feeling that drugs are never the problem, they are just a symptom of the problem. So, to some up what this podcast will become it all comes back to human behavior and how we approach our lives.

It’s not just about our children either; it’s about our sisters and brothers and elderly parents, our neighbors. Drug abuse affects all of us because if it isn’t us using, then we are on the other side of the user.
17 years ago, we began as a drug prevention lecture series. Myself and my husband, Jonathan started teaching a series of lectures in private schools in California. Our concept was different from other programs at the time. We went back to school for our graduate degrees and proceeded to design presentations that encompassed the science of drugs combined with a sense of humor. Not only did we want to provide kids with a new way to listen to a subject that was dry, boring, depressing and dismal, but we wanted them to retain the information given to them. We went on to create many lectures for grade 4-12 that were multi-sensory, interesting and informative, but gave them a sense of independence to make a decision based on their future goals for themselves. We not only asked them to consider themselves as users by never saying “drugs are bad, don’t do drugs” but we asked them to consider all the people on the other side of the user: the friends, the family and others affected by a person’s drug use.

Over the years, we have become a parenting resource center and have become known especially for our work with parents because we have written 2 books for parents and have 3 more coming in the next 2 years.
At Miles To Go, we believe Chinese Proverb - Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.
Teach a parent to parent; create healthy, happy generations in the future.
You can break old, unhealthy patterns and you create new legacies.

You may notice that we cover cancer and depression on a large scale. This is because these two subjects are the nemesis of every prevention specialist. Cancer can be the result of drug use and depression can be the cause of drug use known as self-medicating.

In the coming year we will include a variety of show topics each week, but they will fall under the following updates:

Show order each week:
1. Drug fact updates (favorite stories or research)
2. Parenting updates
3. Listener updates
4. Professional updates for doctors and researchers
5. Teacher updates
6. Professional mom updates
7. Mother’s checklist updates
8. Pop culture for parents updates

We will have guest parents, educators and professionals in the field of drug research and prevention coming this year as well.

Now, one thing I have to address is the fact that we are Disney junkies. It is pretty rare for anyone in the drug prevention field to include Disney in the same discussion, but I have to tell you that we have a tough job. Each year that we do this work, we deal with some of the most depressing subjects that includes an enormous amount of death, cancer and horrific problems in families. I’ve loved Disney everything for my entire life and use it as my place for escape and relief. I walk through the gates and get a sense of relief. I enjoy it so much that I included and entire section in my book: The Mother’s Checklist of Drug Prevention: All the Little Things We Say And Do. It is called “Everything I learned about parenting I learned at Disneyland. I reversed the order of everything I knew about drug prevention and put it into a real life experience about parenting. With this checklist you can set yourself up to be prepared and proactive for your child’s social future instead of being reactive when a crisis occurs.

So, under pop cultural, professional mom and the mother’s checklist I will include good tips from Disney for your parents.

Thanks for listening; you can find us at www.milestogodrugeducation.com or email us at podcast@milestogodrugeducation.com