Zach’s Journey into Prevention
Welcome, welcome, welcome to the Drug Prevention Power Hour. Now it says this podcast is hosted by Jake White. In case you missed it, I’m not Jake. I’m Reagan McDonald. Think of me as Jake’s younger, cooler, funnier replacement.
Now that we have that squared away, I’d like to introduce you to an old friend of mine, Zachary Dixon. Zach has been involved in substance prevention for many years and offers a fresh perspective to the field. How are you, Zach?
’m doing great, how are you doing? I’m awesome. I already know you pretty well, why don’t you go ahead and let our listeners know a little bit about you and your little story with prevention. Tell me your college intro. When you meet someone at college, what do you tell them?
Yep, as Reagan said, I’m Zach Dixon and I’m from Mountaineer Ridge, Kansas and I’m 18 and I’m majoring in finance at Hutchinson Community College. I plan to transfer to a university at some point. Don’t ask me when, couldn’t tell you. And that’s what I plan to do for the rest of my life is something to do a finance, know, something calm, collected, nine to five, that kind of. Anyways, tell me a little bit about how you got into the field of prevention.
Right, yeah. So back in high school, we had a meeting with Stan’s. I’d never heard of it, obviously. I don’t really pay attention to outside things going on. So whenever they came to our high school and our principal was giving the announcement of a club called Stan for drug and alcohol misuse prevention, I was like, might as well go give it a shot. And then I kept going back to the meetings and then meetings turned into club meetings and then board meetings and then trips. And then I just kind of became who I am.
STAND’s Initiatives and Projects
So I have been around STAND for a long time and I don’t even know what STAND is or stands for. So could you enlighten everybody else as to what STAND is?
It actually doesn’t stand for anything. It’s from a poem. It’s like, if you stand for what you believe in, then nothing can stand against you. And it’s about that.
You did do a lot of work with substance misuse in your time in high school. And I would like to know, and I think a lot of other people would too, if there’s something that drives you or makes you passionate about this cause, because a lot of times like we need our why, you know, we need something that helps us continue doing it, because it is a tough field and there’s a lot of really hard things that you have to encounter and so what kept you going? Why did you, why were you passionate about substance misuse?
Focusing on Mental Health
Yeah. So why I kept in it is because I come from a background of drug and alcohol misuse. My mom and my dad both re-users and arrested for those facts. And so whenever I was given this opportunity to not only kind of travel, you know, the United States to talk about drug and alcohol misuse, but also make an impact to my community, then I saw that as a way not only to like right the wrong that I was wrong whenever I was a kid for other kids. But that’s why I did it because I saw it as an opportunity to, you know, kind of fix my childhood.
That’s really sweet, That’s great. So we’re going to come back to the whole getting to travel to speak about it because, I mean, that’s fun. But first, I kind of would like to touch on what kind of things did Stan do? What are some examples or projects that you guys went so we advocate for teen mental health while giving healthy alternatives to drug and alcohol misuse. And how we would do that is we would do events or messaging towards our, not only our school, but other schools.
Cause mountain rich obviously wasn’t the only school, but if you were on the board, we would have monthly board meetings to figure out events to do like we did something called Taste of Newton where we had a food stand where we had, sold lemonade and caramel apples and we had on the napkins, we had messages on the napkins to spread mental health and alcohol misuse and drug prevention. Or we would have, we would host games in our community. So instead of people going out to drink and party on a Friday night, we would have an Among Us game at our school on Friday night, or we would just go around and put candy in people’s lockers to give them a little boost throughout the day. Or we did a whole week at my school about mental health where we had everybody write down, they made themselves a little baggy, put it on their locker, and every day during third hour, people had to write like a positive note about someone and go put it in their locker. And so that’s what Stan does is we try to not only help with teen mental health. That was kind of the big hitter this year. kind of, my school at least focused a lot on the mental health part, but we also do the drug and alcohol misuse, which we focused more on that whenever we went and traveled like in Chicago and the opportunities that I was given to speak to crowds and stuff like that.
So why do you think that you guys focused more on mental health within your school rather than the drug and alcohol prevention?
Innovative Engagement Strategies
Within our school, I’ll be honest, it’s cause I wanted to focus on mental health a little bit because my school was kind of a shut off your emotions type of school. Nobody was showing any type of emotion. So when, since I was the leader of my club, I kind of got to pitch the ideas and I was kind of just pension mental health ideas. didn’t just do mental health, but that was the big one that we did. And so I thought it was most important in our school because drug and alcohol use isn’t really prevalent in my school. That’s one thing that I’m blessed for is because I went to a school that nobody really drank, nobody really did drugs. So if nobody was doing that, then I thought we could focus on mental health rather than spreading a message that’s already received.
That’s awesome. I really like that you guys keyed on that because I think that a lot of times the reason that people abuse substances is because they’re really struggling with their mental health and they feel like they can’t talk about it. And so I am definitely with you on that. We should really key on mental health and making sure people know that it’s okay to like not shut it off. Like you can talk about it. We can make it more of a discussion topic because it’s nothing to be ashamed about. But anyways, so you I want to go back to when you talked about this Among Us game that you guys hosted. Alright, so let’s just start all the way at the beginning. How do you come up with that? How do you do that? are like the steps to actually make this happen?
Yeah, that was really fun. I actually don’t remember how we came up with the Among Us game. I remember it was at a board meeting. No, it wasn’t. It was at a school meeting and we kind of just opened it up to the people at the meeting. Like if you guys have any ideas of a game talk and then we’ll come back in 10 minutes and discuss the games and we voted on Among Us and then we ran it and we played it.
And it was really fun. what we did was we had like 90 kids show up, which is a lot out of school. was 50 kids. It might’ve not been 90. It was a lot of people though. We had a lot bigger of a, cause people typically didn’t come to the stand events at my school. They didn’t really care. But if we played the games, then they would show up. But if we had like the little messaging things, nobody came. So we,
That’s a lot for your school. Yeah, I think that’s pretty common. Use the game to pass on a message. It’s kids were going to show up for the game. And the game turned out to be where we would pick a handful. We would separate the freshmen, sophomores, juniors and seniors. And we would put a couple of imposters in each grade. And then you would pretty much, you would get a number. Like if I got 18, there was like 90 numbers and 90 numbers were hidden around the whole school. And instead of doing tasks like in the normal Among Us game, you had to go find your number and bring it back to be safe. And it was dark in the school. So you couldn’t even see. The only form of light you had was this little bitty light up ring. And so it was really hard to find your number and there was imposters going around killing people. And it turned out to be really fun.
A lot of screaming, lot of running, a lot of laughter. People really liked it. Since that one was the most successful game, I know this year’s stand group just did it again. And it went really well again. So it was kind of a big hitter. It’s probably gonna keep going on.
And then our message for that was, it was don’t be an imposter to fit in. I believe something would be, don’t be an imposter. Cause I feel like a lot of the time that people use drug and alcohol, it’s to fit in from peer pressure. They want to be part of the cool kids.
Okay, okay. So when you say that that’s your like message to go along with it, is that just like with the name of the event you push that or is there actually like so whenever we post the graphic for like Among Us, or I can show you an example if you want. So whenever we post like the graphic for it, we’ll put like a little like message down at the bottom of it. And then before people, before we like let people leave, then we would start talking about, hey, did you guys have fun tonight? People like, yes, this was so fun. And then we’d be like notice how there wasn’t any drugs or alcohol here and you still had fun. And that was kind of like so when you guys like say, like notice how there wasn’t any drugs or alcohol here, how long is that little conversation? Like, is it really only a couple minutes or like, do you guys go off of that?
Yeah, it’s really just brief because realistically, if you talk for too long as kids, stop listening.
So we really tried to keep it short and simple, which is what we would like practice or like we’d come up with what we were going to say beforehand. And so we would just keep it very short and simple, like, Hey, no drugs and alcohol here guys.
Remember that you had fun without the drugs and alcohol. Have a great night. Do what you need to do to get home. If you don’t have a ride, let us know. That kind of thing. We kept it very short and simple because kids don’t listen if you talk for too long.
Yeah, I think it’s important to keep it short and not just like push information on kids. All right. Are you gonna show me this graphic?
Well, the graphic from this year didn’t look like what I thought it would. It’s like, but that’s cool though. Okay, okay. I love the Among Us idea. I wish I had come up with that, but hopefully someone copies that after they hear this. okay, so.
Remember we used to do things like this pool party that we hosted at Pond Ridge. That’s another thing we did like a back to school type of deal. A lot of kids came to that too.
Yeah, yeah. Okay, so you’ve talked about a bunch of different things that you guys did. What kind of barriers did you run into that? What were some challenges that arose with getting kids to come or getting kids to listen? How did you deal with it?
The biggest challenge was getting boys to do anything. So that’s something I always had to talk with my supervisor, Rachel, about is how are we going to get the boys to come to the meetings or how are we going to get the boys to really do anything because they all thought that it was stupid, you know, why are the boys instead of leaving school early to go play, like go play basketball or something, why would they come to a stand meeting whenever they don’t care?
We were always having to try to like find out a way to get them there. Cause we didn’t want to be like, Hey, there’s cookies here. So come get a cookie and stay for like, you don’t want to like incentivize, incentivize, whatever the word it incentivize kids to come because then they’re coming for the snacks, not to be a part of it. know? So yeah, they’re there, but they’re not listening or doing anything. They just want the snacks to leave.
How we got over that barrier is since I was an athlete and I was friends with a lot of the boys, I would use my pool in the community to kind of be like, hey, we’re friends, right? Come check this out with me. It should be fun. And I would sometimes get some boys to come. They might’ve not came back, but they still came. But that was just a barrier that I, I don’t know if they are fixing it not fixing it, but like getting over it this year. But that’s a barrier that my years, we could never get guys to show up. But the guys that did show up were always, they were attentive, they’re given ideas, they were involved.
I think that’s pretty true of a lot of different chapters. know that whenever we had guys that showed up, they were super into it, they’re really passionate and they know what they want to do. It’s just a matter of getting them there. And I think it’s really cool that you use your of pull in the community and use your influence to bring people in. And that just kind of speaks to the importance of having those relationships and building those friendships and then using your friendship to make each other better and kind of help out in other ways.
I like that a lot let’s talk about all the traveling you got to do and the presentations you gave and whatnot. first off, kind of explain to me. So we were both on the Kansas planning committee. Can you explain kind of what that was about, what you got to do because of that, et cetera.
Okay, yes. So the Kansas Planning Committee was a group of teens. Well, younger people. They were all teenagers, but ⁓ it was a group of teens that whenever we went to CADCA in Chicago that we had meetings, was, was it two or three meetings? Yeah, I believe it was three. It was three, two-ish hour and a half
I think three hour and a half to two hour long meetings about how not only can we expand drug and alcohol misuse within younger communities, like how can adults reach the younger communities, but also how, if we can come up with like an event to do, which I actually missed out on because I did not receive the email, but we kind of just planned like this getaway for kids that would last a week and long-ish for them to go and learn about drug and alcohol misuse correctly if I’m wrong here your face looked like you’re like No, no, you’re totally right. And that actually did happen. I feel bad that you didn’t get to go, but.
I thought I was wrong for a minute because your face looked like I was spewing nonsense or something.
Well, I mean, no, no, no, no, you’re good. But yeah, and I’m super bund. I didn’t get to go to that. I was looking out for the, email cause it did sound nice. I never saw that email though. Sadly. I just, I just learned about. Yeah. You keep reminding me.
You probably missed it. I’m sure you got it. You really missed out. Like we had a blast. Yeah, I’m going to keep reminding you because we did our little weekend retreat. We all gave presentations. You could have given I would have been there. That would have been fun.
I’m telling you, when we went to the first meeting, I was like, when’s Zach gonna show up? Because you were literally part of the group that planned it, and then you never showed up. Gosh dang it. Someone told me you were just too busy for it, so I was not too busy for it. So also in Chicago, I was really jealous of this. You guys gave a presentation, like you guys had your own little session, didn’t you? Okay, explain that a little bit, please.
Yeah, so me and six other people also from, I was gonna make that joke, but I was like, I’m not gonna be corny. Okay. But me and like, I believe six other kids, was honestly six or seven. We met up, that’s the real number. We were all a part of the stand board and we were given the opportunity.
Six. That wasn’t funny to go to CADCA and give a presentation over how adults can be more prevalent in the kid community, how they can reach the kids. Because what we’ve all seen is that adults kind of sit kids down and just ramble. And the kids, don’t respond well to that. So we gave me and my other associates, colleagues, whatever you would call them, board members.
That’s what you might be in the other board members. We made a presentation, and we presented it to, I believe 90 different adults. was in a small little conference room, that you had to sign up for. And it was how to, it might’ve been more than 90. I don’t remember the number, but it was how the adults can be better with the kids. And we did things like you shouldn’t insensitize. I feel like, but.
That’s one way to get the kids into the door. If you can at least get them into the door, then you can work on them, you know. So maybe being like, hey, pizza party, get them into the door, but don’t make it a pizza party every time. If you make it a pizza party every time, then they’re just coming for the pizza. So maybe get them into the door and then keep them in the door. We also did things like social media. Every kid is on social media.
So if you’re trying to reach kids, the best way to do it is on social media. We also talked about keeping presentations engaging and short, which we learned that whenever we gave a presentation to our middle school, they wanted to talk about everything else. So we had to keep them engaged by playing games, Jeopardy, Family Feud, all that kind of things. And so yeah, we just gave presentation over how to keep the youth engaged to the adults. And it was primarily adults that are in the drug and alcohol misuse area. Some of them were like mental health as well. But like a lot of them came up and talked to us afterwards about how it was a really helpful presentation. They were going to take it back into the communities. And so hopefully they do.
Yeah, that’s awesome. You touch on a lot of really important points, like not always incentivizing, because I feel like I definitely saw that a lot with like, if we have cookies, then everyone’s gonna come because they want a cookie and then no one comes back when there’s no incentive and so.
Yeah, like we have where we would have our board meet, not board meet, our club meetings in school was our open cafeteria. And there on the last day we had cookies and everything for the active people as like a reward. And there would just be kids walking by that would just take a cookie and keep walking. They wouldn’t even stay.
Yeah, yeah. I’m really glad that I had the chance to have you on today. This has been really great. But just as we start to wrap up, I’ve got a couple more questions, especially I want to know this one. How has being involved in STAND and the Kansas Planning Committee and just everything you got to do with mental health and substance misuse, how has that been good for you? What do you feel like are some skills you took away from these experiences?
Personal Development: Skills Gained from Leadership Roles
Yeah, so I feel like being in stand and having this leader leadership position of being the president has kind of helped me mature and step into a leadership role because not only was I taking a leadership class in high school, I was able to use what I was learning in that class towards my actual stand and being the president.
And so, yeah, so I was kind of scared that learning these things in that class would kind of just go over my head because why does a high schooler need to have leadership experience? It’s not like I’m a graduate and be a boss, you know, I’m going to have to work myself up. But being in that leadership position and getting to work with other kids helped me grow roots in other communities.
Okay, little application. It helped me grow roots within my own community because a lot of the like adults started to appreciate what I was doing. And I was able to get a lot done because the adults trusted me, you know. And even now, I’m able to use my influence from being the stand president and having knowledge over the matter. Now in college, because obviously in college, a lot of people drink a lot of people do this. So being the president, I’m able to kind of use what I know to stay away from that group and not give in to those kind of pressures while also being able to maintain and keep a healthy and friendly lifestyle. Still able to make my friends be in the social groups I want without giving into the peer pressure. And now I’m able to use what I know on younger kids. Whenever kids come up to me, like not younger kid kids, cause they don’t know what stand is. They’re like seven, but like high schoolers that whenever I go to a high school game or something and they ask me and I kind of just have a down to earth talk to them about how high school is going. Kind of give them a little reminder not to give in to be themselves. If they ever need anything to reach out, they can always talk to me and that kind of stuff. So it’s given me, I feel like it’s given me an influence to be that kind of person within my community. And even after I’ve graduated to still be active in my community.
Yeah, that’s amazing. It’s really great all the ways that organizations like this can impact you, especially when you talk about like you saw the announcement that one day and you didn’t know what stand was and now like it’s just impacted you in a lot. Yeah, cuz they were still growing. They weren’t even in a lot of schools with that.
That’s amazing. last thing, cause we’re really cutting it close on time now, but I want to hear this. So to close this out, it’s time for today’s bright spot. That one person who’s made a real impact and kept you moving forward. And I think it’s the perfect way to end because we all shine a little brighter. Thanks to the people that are in our lives. So Zach, if you had to pick one person who’s made an impact on you, whether in the prevention field or your life in general, who would it be and why do you choose them?
Yeah, so I got a couple. I’ll keep it brief though, since we’re running down time. and obvious one, Stan was a big part of my high school life, a very big part of it. And so obviously my supervisor, Rachel, Ben too, shout out Ben, he’d a goat Manny, you know, these are all just, Heather for Alice too. She’s the goat. these are all people.
All right that helped me throughout my high school years because being involved in a group like that, really, whenever you feel like you’re gonna seek, it really helps to keep you afloat. know, having that thing that you can look forward to and those people that you can walk in and they’re super friendly, super nice, amazing people, then they make an impact on your life without you even realizing it. You know, you don’t think about it in high school.
And then you graduate and then you look back on it and you’re like, I should reach out to those people. They were great. I don’t really reach out that much and I’m really bad about that but, then also, you know, my brother, he was always super supportive about this. And he’s always been by my side. So, and he’s now given me either a nephew or a niece. We’ll figure it out later. And then my grandma, my mom, no brainers. They feel like you don’t really got to elaborate on how your mom and grandma make impacts on your life. But those are the key people.
That’s awesome. That’s awesome. Well, thank you so much for being on my show today and for being a leader in your community and just for all the ways that you’ve impacted other people because it doesn’t go unnoticed and you’ve really done a great job. Would you like to share a social media handle for people to check out your page or Stan’s page?
Yep. yeah, if y’all want to check out stand dot Kansas, amazing Instagram page. yeah. If you’re like a principal or something in Kansas, you should definitely reach out and see about joining and seeing if Stan can grow reach within your school. It’s an amazing, amazing club. and everybody can use a drug and alcohol misuse prevention and teen mental health, advocacy group in their school.
So Stan is amazing for the kids. It’s a wonderful opportunity. It helped me grow a lot as a person. People who knew me sophomore year would definitely say junior and senior year were a big change. So I can attest to that. definitely check it out. If not, if not even Stan check out something else, like why link and all these other things. Like it’s very important to get these types of clubs implemented within your schools. And, obviously I would always say stand, homegrown, but say, why link youth leaders in Kansas, homegrown, we’re better than stand, but we can always work together. Yeah, they’re just they’re amazing programs and they really change.
Yeah, why late to rise up Reno all these things they’re really good. So check these out. If not Stan check out the other ones. Thank you. Check out why link. Check out Y-Link. Yes, we finally got a plug from Zach. Yep, go ahead and now say checkout stands.
Check out Stand Not Kansas. All right. Anyways, thank you all so much for listening and doing life-saving work. So if you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend or someone who you think would benefit. And we will see you next week for another episode of the Drug Prevention Power Hour. I’m your host, Regan McDonald, doing Jake’s job only better. Thank you so much for listening.
