Teaching Journey and Philosophy

Welcome back to another episode of the Drug Prevention Power Hour. I’m your host, Jake White. And today I’m hanging out with Jeff McLaughlin. And let me tell you about him. He is a top youth speaker with a passion for helping students lead healthy and happy lives. He lives in Idaho with his wife and their two sons and their crazy dog. He is in the mountains or in the lake every day. So Jeff, welcome to the podcast, man. How you doing?

I’m great Jake. Thank you so much for having me. I’m super excited to be here. I know that you and I have gotten to hang out a couple times in person and now we can hang out online and try and make a difference to people who don’t necessarily get to see us in person. So I’m super excited.

Right? Exactly. And if you want to see us go to the YouTube channel, you can see it. But Jeff, I, when I met you, I was like, this guy’s got the same energy. He’s pumped. He’s excited. He’s doing prevention. You’re all about play. And so immediately I was like, we need to be friends. And since then we’ve done two conferences together as MCs and keynote and doing workshops, both in, both in Washington state.

Yeah, yeah, interesting. Actually, that just, yeah, they both were in Washington, weren’t they? I’ll be damned. I’m good. I’m good at memory things because I got gray hair.

Yeah. Yeah. I love it. Well, tell us a little bit more about you, just like your background and how you got into this line of work. That would be awesome.

Well, okay. So here’s the funny part is I’m a certified school teacher. I started off my teaching career teaching high school special education. Now I wasn’t a certified teacher at this point. Yeah. I was just, I was a parent. I don’t say just, I was a paraprofessional, which is an incredibly challenging job. And the teachers at the school I was at the high school were like, Jeff, you can just go ahead and teach this math class. And then it was like, Jeff, Hey, by the way, how about you also teach this English class? Hey, Jeff, you know, since you’re here, why don’t you also teach this life skills class? So I ended up teaching all these classes and then we started doing the life skills class turned into, hey, let’s learn how to write a resume and let’s actually go out in the community and get jobs. And so I helped these kids get jobs in the community, which was awesome. And then I would take them to and from work every day for like two and a half to three hours. And it was a really cool job. And then at some point I went, wait a minute.

I’m teaching classes, I’m doing all these things, I’m making $8 an hour. And they’re like, yeah, we figured you’d figure that out eventually. You should probably go back and get your education degree. So I was like, okay. So I went and I got my education degree and then I taught, did my student teaching in second grade. My first job I actually got was teaching kindergarten. And yeah, can you imagine this as your first kindergarten teacher? You’re like, you know. Five years old, you’re like the whole hand, you’re so excited, like, my gosh, I’m so excited, my whole hand. And you come around the corner, you see this, and you’re expecting like the little school marm, right? No, it was so much fun. I had a blast.

Right. I bet you’d be good at that though. Wrangling those kids, teaching them.

It was so much fun. I’m pretty sure I learned everything I needed to know about education by teaching kindergarten. That was it. It was simple. Yeah.

What? Okay, I can’t let that go. How is teaching kindergarten like teaching the rest? Or like, how does that pivot from the rest?

It is so simple. Number one is, do they know that you care about them? Which all teachers are like, yeah, yeah, whatever, we know that. But it’s especially true in kindergarten, because if kindergartners know that they can come to you and give you a hug, or they can come to you with a boo-boo on their knee, and that they can get help, they know that you care. And if you have snacks and extra recess.

And don’t adults also want snacks and break times? That’s so good.

Play-Based Learning in Education

Yes, you are so much better as a human being if you just take regular scheduled breaks. I can tell you, this is, salient point number one, if you are an adult and you are working, which, okay, cool, good, that’s awesome, that’s great, take breaks, frequent breaks. Your brain can only go for so long before you start to, like, decline. You need to go for a half-hour walk, take your dog out, get some sunshine, put your feet in the earth, do something that gets you away from a desk, away from a computer, up on your feet and actually moving around and you will be more productive over the course of the day if you do hour and a half section and then a half hour break. You’ll get more done in that four and a half hours than you will in an eight hour uninterrupted section.

That’s good. Wow. Okay. That I love it. I love it. Okay. And then what happened after kindergarten teaching?

So I so funny enough, I was I was I wouldn’t say getting in trouble. I was I I had a very play based classroom and my principal came in one day and she goes, Jeff, we need to talk about about school. And I was like, OK, what do you want to know? And she’s like, well, you know, your kindergarten class is a little crazy. And I was like, yeah, they’re supposed to be. We’re five years old. And she said, we are not five years old. They are five years old. You’re the teacher.

I don’t understand what you’re saying. So I had a great relationship with my principal. She was fantastic, but everything I did was play, play based. So I took all the chairs out of the classroom. We didn’t have any chairs. I lowered the tables so kids could sit on the floor. They could kneel. They could stand if they wanted to. Like you didn’t have to do your work at your table. You could go wherever you needed to, to be comfortable, to do the work that you needed to do. And if you had, if you were done, there was always free time activities.

If you finished before everybody else, could always go volunteer to help somebody else. And the cool part was that the kids started to take ownership of the classroom. And my crowning achievement in all of education was that as a test, as a test, after four months of working with these kids, four months straight, teaching them how to do school, how do we come into the classroom? How do we start our day? How do we do calendar? How do we line up for recess? All of the things I taught for two days, two days in a kindergarten class without saying a single word. I didn’t speak at all. The kids lined up at the door to come into classroom and I looked at them in the hallway and I went.

You like signed to them?

Community Building and Youth Empowerment

I don’t even sign. And I was just like, I pantomime. I played charades. And the kids figured it out. The kids led every single activity during the day. They were fantastic. It was the calmest, quietest. Like one kid would go, all right, look at the time. It’s time for carpet. So let’s go to the carpet. And I would read a story. So I didn’t say any words. I read a story that we’d read before and that all the kids knew. So the kids read the story out loud to each other as I was like going along.

They did the calendar on their own. They got their lunch stuff taken care of. They got lined up for all of their specials, music and PE. We got out to recess on time. The kids led it all. And they were, and I was like, if five-year-olds can do this, we as a country of fully grown adults should be able to do things.

That is amazing. So you, that’s so funny that you had this playful style in the classroom that I’m sure people were like, hey, why is there so much noise coming from his room? Like what’s going on? All the other teachers, of course. And then you had two days, you didn’t need that, any of that. Like your students learned from all of your so-called not structured, but that it was, it was structured for them, right and you gave them the freedom to make choices and it resulted in really independent and helpful students. So that’s so cool. And I’m sure just like you said, there’s so much that would translate into your next part of your career, which today you do. So you do prevention because that’s how I met you, right? Like you’re doing prevention. You’re a great facilitator, speaker, workshop leader, educator, but you also do stuff with professionals too incorporating play. So first, before we dive in, because I bet we’re going to learn a ton from you. Tell me about your involvement in the state of Idaho. Like when people say, Jeff, what are you doing with prevention? like, yeah, tell me about that.

Idaho Drug Free Youth and Prevention Programs

Yeah. So I, early on in my career, when I was, just started speaking, I, you know, as a speaker speaking, the other is like, getting to speaking, you’ll make all this money. And I was like, this is going to be great. And then they’re like, by the way, you’re your own business. So you have to pay more taxes than anybody else. by the way, there’s this whole travel thing. by the way, you’re going to need a CPA. by the way, all these different things where it’s like, yeah you’re going to have these times where you’re super busy and then there’s times where you’re not busy at all and you need to find another job so you can survive. All sorts of things like that that I was like, my gosh. So it really took me about, I would say it took me right around seven or eight years of speaking to become what I call the professional speaker. And in that time, one of the jobs that I had, I got a job with Idaho Drug Free Youth and they are the state, the premier, youth prevention organization in the state of Idaho. And their whole mission is simple, to empower youth to lead healthy and happy lives. And so that covers a broad range of spectrum, right? So it very specifically started off with a program that was based out of another program in Texas that was, hey, if we can get community members, business members to sponsor schools, and these kids will actually pay to be drug tested, they would then get discounts to go to those businesses. And that’s what it started off as. Because there was all these kids that were like, hey, there’s like this whole just say no campaign and there’s dare. And we’re focusing all these things like all these kids that are partaking in drugs and alcohol. But what about us kids? What about the kids that aren’t? What benefit do we get? And so they started their own club.

These kids started their club and they said we need an advisor. And so one of my friends became their very first executive director and she fell in love with it. She recruited me and she’s like, Jeff, come, come hang out with us, come have fun. And so I’ve been doing Idaho drug for youth off and on for the, golly, since 2008. So whatever that is, like 16 years now. and it’s just been fascinating. Yeah. It’s, they, mean, we run a huge camp. run the Idaho youth summit, which is every year, we, we sponsor kids from all over the state to get together up here in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho out at Camp Luther Haven. And we run, a four day camp.

We train youth and adult staff to work with our incoming campers. And then we spend four days with the campers and have great adventures. build, it’s funny cause we always build community. Every year I’ve been there, it’s like the most magical place on earth. It is, it’s one of those places where you go, if the world could just come and see this, if people could just come and see how you get together, regardless of your circumstances, regardless of where you’re from and what you look like or what language you speak or politics or religion, none of that. It just is like, hey, we take you as you are, and we want you to know that you’re welcome. You’re here, you’re welcome. Come join our family and let’s make the world a great place. And it’s, it’s magical every year because kids always come, they always come together and they, they show up and a lot of them are like, well, I don’t really want to be here, but somebody’s making me be here. So I got to be here. And it’s, it’s funny because it’s not even this, like it’s Idaho youth summit. It’s not a drug free camp.

We talk, we do trainings on drugs and alcohol. We talk about brain science and we bring in law enforcement and speakers and hosts and we have these great, but the biggest part is the community that we build. And by the end, these kids have gotten an education. like, they’re like, okay, let’s not do things because fentanyl is really scary. Like, holy cows. And we bring in the fentanyl task force and they talk about things. They’re like, okay, what’s this and what’s this? And so they do education pieces, but they’re also having fun with their campers the fellow campers. And by the time it’s over, virtually every single kid is like, I don’t want to leave. I just want to be here all the time. And that’s been really, really magical. And then we help schools set up programs across the state and then we run leadership academies and yeah, it’s been awesome. It’s been really cool. So we have a ton of fun and it’s, all about empowering youth to lead healthy and happy lives. mean, what, what, what higher calling is there? I don’t really know. I mean, maybe there’s some, but yeah.

Empowering Youth Through Experience

Yeah, I like this one. I like this calling. Yeah. So if someone wants to look, can go to, they can look up Idaho drug free youth and see all info pictures, probably stuff like that. And I love this model because what’s so cool is that you have this amazing experience, which takes a lot of resources, right? Like we’ll never undermine the amount of time it took to get there because you have a four day experience that takes students from somebody made me come here to I don’t want to leave. This was incredible. And not to mention all the protective factor of you helped instill in that person, right? I matter, I belong, I’m accepted. I can be a leader. Someone saw something in me to bring me here. And now I have skills and knowledge to share with my friends back home. So like that’s a four day intensive dive. And so the adults are up late, you know, taking care of things. The kids are up late. I’m sure they’re shenanigans. It’s all fun. It’s all wild.

And then you mentioned it quickly, but I want to ask you for the details. When a student graduates from this, they probably don’t want to stop going. So they have the opportunity to become a leader and they show up early. So you have adult advisors or facilitators and trainers, and then you also have the student leaders. What age range are these student leaders? And then how are they trained to help out now as a leader before the camp starts?

So our leaders, have youth staff and adult staff. And so the youth staff are generally juniors or seniors in high school. And they’re paired with an adult leader, adult being 21 and over. So there’s this weird age, like 18 to 21, where it’s like, okay, what are you gonna do now? Because now you’re like that early college age, right? So you’re in the peak of pressure for drinking and drugs and alcohol, all of those risky behaviors that we’ve talked to them about.

So we’ve created what we call the I-Team and the I-Team comes in and is our like honestly, cause it’s so, as an adult, I am utterly exhausted by the end. I mean, I’m up at 5.30, six o’clock in the morning and we don’t go to bed until probably 11.30 or midnight by the time we’re done with our admin meeting, just to make sure we know everything that’s going on the next day. We’ve cleared all the problems. We’ve talked to the counselors. We’ve talked to all the camp leaders and we’re making sure that everybody’s in bed and everybody’s had their meds and all the things.

Right? And so you’re, you’re running on fumes and, but you have the I team who is like, they’re, they help us out in terms of they’re getting people to the right spots. They’re doing bed checks. They’re like making sure like if somebody’s too loud, which let’s face it, you get cabins full of boys, they get a little rowdy and so, but they have a chaperone. I mean, even with the chaperones, some of the chaperones are like, just like they’re literally put their earplugs in and like they fall asleep.

Well, you know what happens? Some of them have chaperones like you and I, and they’re like, yeah, why not have a wrestling match in the cabin? Right. Or like, why not? And so you need the I team to put the advisors and the students in line. Right.

Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, but there’s also like things like we’re at a camp in North Idaho and we’re like, Hey, by the way, and I, I’ve said this, think not every year, but most of the years we have an animal sightings list of, Hey, by the way, look out for wild animals because they’re here. And like this last, this last summer we had a cougar sighting. And so we’re like, don’t go out at night. If you don’t want to get eaten.

And the kids are like, is that real? And I’m like, yeah, here’s the picture of it. It’s right over there by the climbing wall. That was where it was seen walking through camp. So just be aware they’re here. And the kids are like, and I mean, so many stories like wild animal, like a moose came through camp once, which moose are really dangerous. mean, just craziness, but yeah. So we actually train, we spend the first, so we do Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, training the, the youth and adult staff. they are in training for basically, they’re 12 hour days. So it’s busy. Yeah, 12 to 14 hours a day, they are in training, learning how to facilitate a group, how to do the ropes course, how do we facilitate questions, what kind of questions do we wanna ask them? We wanna ask them open-ended questions. How do we get students involved? How do we get them engaged? What do you do if you have a student who’s talking too much and taking over the group and not actually sharing the, you know all sorts of things. So we try and go through as many scenarios as we can. But mostly it’s like, how do we support each other in this mission? And what’s your buy-in for this? And so a lot of our adult staff have been campers in the past and are now adults that still want to give back. And so they show up every year, year after year. And we’ve got, I mean, we’ve got some campers that have been there for close to 30 years. This year will be our 30, our official 30th camp. And yeah, we had to take two years off for COVID, but yeah, it’s yeah, 30 years of camp. It’s awesome.

That is so cool. And I’m guessing they’re not paid volunteers. Like they’re volunteering their time. They’re taking a week off of work or school or whatever it would be in the summer saying, I’m like, right, for students, I’m not going to be at my summer job or going on vacation. I’m here. And they love it so much because they went through the program. Like that’s so cool. did.

This year, for the first time, I went to a teen institute and it was in Tennessee. And it was like the same thing you’re talking about. Like when you approach an organization that’s been doing something for three decades and you first see like these, these passionate volunteers that are not being paid, they’re taking time off. They’re showing up a couple days early to get trained. And you ask them like, why are you doing this?

And it all goes back to this was so impactful for me as a student. so to think about, why would I like Jeff, this is a lot of work, right? Like a whole week and you’re tired. This is why you do it because it truly transforms lives and you can’t replicate something like that without spending the time. And basically you’re thinking about the hours, right? Like students are having 12 hours a day for four days. That’s 48 hours. That’s a week and a half of quote work time you’re smashing into a couple really impactful days. So it’s amazing. It’s so, cool. Hopefully some people are inspired by that.

Yeah. Yeah. And everybody’s wiped out. yeah. But it does. It takes so much effort. I mean, we, we literally, we spend a year planning camp. We spend a year planning it like as we talk about it. And I mean, the camp doesn’t change that much. We know we’re going to do these many days of training. We know we’re going to have kids at this time to this time. I mean, we know we have meals. We know we’re going to, you know, we’re going to go on a cruise. We do a cruise. We actually do a cruise and a big giant dance party on a boat. It’s crazy. I mean, it’s awesome because we’re iDefy kids. Like, let’s see here, if you’re not going to do drugs or alcohol, what can you do that’s positive? yeah, dance. Of course. And we dance all the time, all the time. If there’s music, we’re dancing. It’s, it’s that simple. So it’s just, it’s fantastic. But I mean, we spend, we do a big giant fundraiser every year. we’ve, just got, brilliant. One of the members of our board is on, the state legislature and he is a huge, huge prevention advocate. I mean, it is, it’s Marco, Marco Erickson.

Is it Marco’s? Yeah, Marco. That’s so good. He was on one of the earlier episodes. So look it up. If you’re listening to this. my gosh. With the cowboy hat, right? Marco who wears the cowboy hat.

Yep, the cowboy. Yep, statesman with the cowboy hat. Nominal human. my gosh. Amazing human. Like to have those kind of people, like if you are, if you are listening to this and you are in any other state, Washington, any state, you need to talk to your legislators. You need to talk to your state representatives, get those people involved in the magic that you’re doing for the youth. Because when they actually become a part of it, they see it. And then they go, my gosh, this is magical. And you say, yeah it would be really beneficial if it was at least partially funded. I know I hate to say it, but what can we pork barrel spend money on? He didn’t do that. They actually went through and did a really detailed thing for the state of Idaho. we actually got, we lost our funding for a number of years and we just were one of the recipients of some funding. it’s a big deal. Cause I mean, we’re trying to reach as many kids across our state as we can.

And not only our state, because we have kids that come to camp from other states. We have kids from Texas and New York and Florida that show up every year and we’re like, you know, don’t live here anymore. like, yeah, but I’m not, this is my world. I’m not giving up on this. This is everything. And it’s just, you create this such a strong community of support that people want to be a part of it and they want to be a part of it for a very long time because of how good it makes them feel. It’s just human brain. It’s how we work built for connection. It’s just magic.

The Science of Prevention

Yes, I love it. Let’s Jeff, let’s pivot to the brain. We’re both in prevention. We’ve seen prevention from the, don’t do drugs, just say no without any kind of practical tools and brain science or why. And we both take the opportunity to help students realize like you’re building your life right now. Let’s work together to make sure it’s amazing. So how do you teach us some stuff on what you use when you work with students and you educate them and have an experience. What are you doing and what can you teach us to do a little bit better?

So I am a huge purveyor of the brain science because I think You can tell them like all the stories you want and I do I always start mine off with my first experience with alcohol My very first party ever went to I was when I think I was like 19 almost 20 years old and I just didn’t get invited to parties in high school because I didn’t drink or do drugs like I was I always playing sports and my friends knew that I had no clue that everybody like a lot of my friends were partying and so I, my very first party I ever went to with alcohol was like, I think I was either 19 or really close to 20. And it was a harrowing experience. I mean, I saw, I saw domestic violence. It was, it was horrible. And I thought at one point, maybe I was going to die. And so I tell this story and I’m, I’m like, this is what alcohol does to your brain. It turns your frontal lobe off. And just so you know, I’m not, I’m not making this up. Let’s look at some pictures.

And I don’t show them gory grotesque pictures of car wrecks and I don’t show them like the faces of meth. I show them actual PET scans of brains. And you can actually take somebody’s brain and I use Dr. Daniel Amen’s work, A-M-E-N, Amen Clinics. And I look at his stuff and he’s got these great scans on his website. And I just say, look at these. Here’s what happens to your brain. Here’s what a healthy brain looks like with a PET scan with all the colors on it. And you can see when somebody does something, all these things light up in your brain.

That’s your brain actively engaged and working, a fully functional brain, okay? You’re at a point right now in your lives where your frontal lobe is developing. That’s the first part that alcohol hits is your frontal lobe. It’s called the no button. And it says, don’t do stupid stuff. If you’re drinking, that’s the first place it hits. And it turns the no button off, which is why we do stupid things when people are drunk. Like if you look at that, that’s like, huh, that person was intoxicated. That was really stupid. Well, a person who wasn’t drinking probably wouldn’t make that decision because they’ve got the no button.

And so then we actually show them different drugs, different combinations, and what your brain looks like when it has those drugs introduced to it. And it’s so powerful. It’s so incredible because you look at like what alcohol does to your brain. As we’re learning more about like neuroplasticity and the fact that your brain can grow and develop throughout its journey, throughout its entire life. But if you’re doing drugs and alcohol when you’re young, you’re stunting the growth.

And that growth then, if like, let’s say you start drinking at 15 years old, your brain kind of freezes at a 15 year old’s brain. And then you start looking at it you go, well, wait a minute, now you’re a 30 year old adult, but you’re acting like a teenager. That’s not very good for the workplace. That’s not very good for social interactions. And everybody goes, well, wait a minute. They were drinking a lot when they were a teenager and then they just kept going. And so now you have habitual use, you have addicts and alcohol is one of the, mean, honestly, because it’s legal, it’s one of the worst. It’s one of the easiest to get. And everybody’s like, you know, is a gateway drug. I’m like, it’s tobacco and alcohol are generally the first ones because those are the easiest ones to get. And smoking is going down, which is great, but we’re still fighting against vaping now. And you can look at, mean, there’s just so many things, so many aspects. you look at the amount of money that tobacco spent and I mean, I was, I hate to say it, but in college I was desperate. needed money. So I took a job with a major tobacco company and I was one of their reps for just their thing for bars. I’d go out to bars and we would, I’m not kidding. Every night in little Spokane, Washington, we would give away $10,000 in prizes every single night in just Spokane. $10,000 is what we gave away. And this was in like, the late 90s, early 2000s. Like, it was insane. And it was like, this is what we’re giving away. And all you had to do was take a puff of a cigarette. And that was it. Because they knew, they knew that if you did that, if you were at a bar and you’d been drinking just a little bit and you start to take a little puff of a cigarette, they know the mixture of nicotine and alcohol is so incredibly addictive because the immediate instant feel that like where you feel you’re like, this is great. Right. And they know that that creates a chemical cascade in your brain that makes you want more constantly. And so they were helping like, and I didn’t know any of that. I know that now. And I’m like, my gosh, I’m such a terrible person. I need to like hail Marys and all the fun stuff. I got to do it all. Cause like, I got to make up for it, but it was such a, it was such an interesting, interesting time to watch and see how that process worked.

Yeah. Well, that’s really interesting and it is very effective to teach young people, number one, about their brain and two, about marketing, because none of us want to feel like we’re being sold to and that we’re suckers for this industry, just trying to get us hooked on a product. But I mean, that’s exactly what it is though. And whenever I talk with young people, it’s kind of like, hey, you have all these things that you want out of life, correct? Like all these goals, all these that you strive for, you want to have healthy family and maybe a family of your own one day. And using a substance is never going to help us get all those things. If anything, the substance is going to distract us from those things that are difficult. But it’s sold to us as a quick solution, right? Well, you want to feel successful. I’m going to market success to you in form of this product. Or you want to feel attractive. Put this in your hand or your mouth and then you’ll feel attractive. And it’s very genius marketing. But the helping a student realize that you are now dependent on that to feel that way, therefore you need it, that you’re an amazing consumer now. Like that company, would, like you said, I’ll spend $10,000 a night to get a few new customers because the lifetime value of that customer is so great. Even if their life is cut short by it, it’s still a great value because you are using this every day or every week.

It’s amazing. And I like what you said about showing the brain scans and the, yeah, the scare tactic. I feel like there’s still regions where like regions of the country that still love scare tactics because as adults, we try to protect things, right? We have the frontal lobe, we have the no button and we think scare tactics work because they scare us and we’re not scaring our kids. I’ve heard professionals in our field say, yeah, we did this scare tactic. We did a car crash. We did this. We did the scary posters. And they’re upset because students are laughing at it. And it’s like the data shows it’s not working. Yes, they’re laughing at it. They know it’s manipulation.

Yeah, but also, right, also look at what the like, so when I was a kid growing up, what we had for television and access on a computer was nominal. We didn’t have the information. These kids now have it. They can look things up on their phone. They’re seeing like the video games that they’re playing, the stuff that they’re like, whatever they’re YouTube or whatever they’re watching, they’ve seen death, destruction, horrible things.

And so you try and scare them with that stuff. They’re like, yeah, I’ve already seen that. Who cares? I play that on GTA all the time. know, Grand Theft Auto, woo, I can go murder people. No big deal. Like it’s pretty gory. Okay, cool. What else do want to do? You’re going to try and scare me? Like that’s real life. Who cares? Like it’s not effective for that reason. You have to like, you have to get into their brains and be like, wait a minute. They, again, they don’t have a fully developed frontal lobe for a very long time. And we need to educate them and then give them a community.

I think that’s one of the brilliant things that you do that I absolutely love is I’ve watched you do it. And I think we are very similar in that we create communities of people that care about each other. And when you belong to something that’s like bigger than you and people say, you’re welcome, come in, let’s play, let’s have fun. You’re accessing the brain chemistry in a positive manner that helps the brain grow versus is diminishing the brain’s capacity to think and grow and do great things. And so again, it’s one of those things, like you can go, there’s really two paths. Like you can do something awesome and positive, or you can do something negative and destructive. And unfortunately, the negative destructive thing, I can’t remember the speaker that told me this. I watched a speaker once when I was younger that somebody asked him like, well, why do people do drugs? And he goes, well, why do you think? And people were like answering questions like, they had a hard life or all these different things. And he goes, yeah, that. And he goes, guess what? Drugs work. That’s why people do drugs, because they make you feel different. They make you feel good for a little amount of time. And he goes, the good changes. And he goes, I’m not trying to scare you, because that doesn’t work. But what I want you to know is that your instant gratification right now in this moment might become your biggest Achilles heel later, because it takes control of you.

And you no longer have choice, you no longer have freedom. He goes, if you can choose now to make better choices, to say, you know what, I’m gonna put off, and I’m like, that’s one of the things that I love about Idaho Drug for Youth. We’re not saying don’t ever drink alcohol. We’re saying wait until your frontal lobe is developed, give yourself a chance, and then as an adult, it’s legal. You can drink if you’d like to, but if you put off that first use experience until your brain is developed, you’re so much more or less likely to become an addict. You’re so much less likely to become a lifelong user. And a lot of kids that do that go, well, I tried alcohol. Yeah, it wasn’t my jam. No big deal. So they just don’t now. And I’m like, that’s awesome. That’s great. And that’s what we want. We want responsible people out there making good decisions for themselves because those people end up helping create positive decisions and positive lives for others. You don’t see a lot of people who are truly addicted to things out there giving back to the community.

Yeah, well, my gosh, there’s, I’m gonna have to rewatch everything you just said, because it was so good. What comes to my mind though is that when you were saying that story and how it affects your brain and like, because it works, I almost, when I’m making decisions and I don’t know, I think there’s something in my upbringing instilled this, but it was, what if I make a decision and something bad happens? That’s part of it. But what if something quote good happens? What if it works? Do I wanna be the person who uses this all the time? So when I thought of substances, people in college were asking me all the time, Jake, like, hey, you can stay over for the night. Nothing bad will happen. You won’t have to drive. We’ll take care of you. We got plenty of water. We got food. Like they wanted me to safely drink with them.

Because they love, in their mind, they loved it. That’s how they connected. That’s how they got this good feeling. And my whole thing was, well, I don’t want to like it because if it feels good, that means I’m going to do it more. And if I do it more, it leads to addiction, like negative things. So I didn’t even know all the brain science, but I had enough examples in my life of it. I see it could go here. So to mitigate or minimize my risk, it was like, I’m just not going to do it personally. So now what I have to learn is how do I just make you feel comfortable and okay with my decision, even though it’s not yours? Because I don’t want to compromise my values, you know, I want to do my thing. And to this day, like, I don’t know what people might think, but right, I don’t drink alcohol. People know I’m 33 years old. I could drink it. I don’t drink coffee because I know if I like it, it’s just going to be more of my money. It’s expensive. Yes, you got your coffee. Hey, no shame. No shame, But that is that’s one of the things that makes me quote weird, you know, in a society that we like to have the things. Now, my vice is sugar, though. I love me some sugar, some Dr. Pepper. I got my vice, but I’m I’m working on doing that less.

But that’s another brilliant thing is we can talk about, like there’s so many things that people are addicted, you can become addicted to health and fitness. You can become addicted to working out, right? And there’s always consequences for any kind of addiction. And let’s face it, everybody is a food addict. Every single human being on the planet. Like we have to have food to survive. But it’s what happens is now you look at the food and like the amount of sugar that’s in food or MSG or different chemicals, and you can look at, there’s a consequence for those foods.

And so, I mean, I just learned recently, I didn’t know this, when Philip Morris and like the old tobacco companies, when all of a sudden they had to testify in front of Congress and then they got caught saying, yes, okay, our drugs are, nicotine is addictive. What did they do? They pivoted very quickly. And what they did was they bought the major food companies. Yeah, they bought the major food companies, Kellogg’s, I think it was Kellogg’s, was Kroger or no guy. Okay. I shouldn’t say it online because I don’t actually know I could I’d have to go back and check and see which ones is but it’s major food manufacturers and they took their scientists who had done chemistry with nicotine and addictive nature and the addictive nature of the brain and they turned that into food substances and so now you see people with addictions to food and you look at what’s healthy happening to the health of our entire nation and you go well, it’s the food scientists from the chemical lake. It’s literally the scientists from the smoking from the tobacco companies that now run the food agencies.

Whoa, that’s incredible. I’ve never thought that. that, mean, food is addictive depending on the ingredients, just the nature of food, right? And our brains, it should be a little bit addictive to keep us alive. But this, Yeah. Yeah. It is. It’s supposed to release dopamine, right? It’s supposed to release dopamine so you feel good like, I ate food and your body goes, that’s really good. You did that. I feel good. You can go do some stuff, but then you know what? In about six hours, you’re probably going to want to do that thing again. Like it’s a survival mechanism. Right.

Yeah. Yeah. Which is cool. Which is that to me also was just like, blew my mind. It’s like, addiction is human nature. I need to choose what I get addicted to. Just like you said, you can get addicted to healthy things. that’s so, that’s so fascinating. I don’t want to end this episode, but we’re going to have to do another one. We’re going to have to do another one. But tell us a little bit as we sign away.

Building Community and Making Choices

How can we follow you? How do you work with organizations? Because there’s coalitions that are listening to this and different schools. So how can they work with you and find out more about you?

They can they can find me on social media. Let’s see here. I’m on LinkedIn at Jeff McLaughlin professionals at play you can look up professionals at play you’ll probably find me Instagram is professionals at play or you can find me on the interwebs the good old interwebs at www.professionalsatplay.com Yeah, and that’s that’s kind of where I do things Yeah, everything’s like so far everything I’ve done has been word-of-mouth and just like working with great people and they’re like, hey, by the way, do you know so and so? And I’m like, no, could you introduce me? And they’re like, sure. And then I go work with that person. And then I meet somebody like you. And we like go, wait a minute. my gosh, you got to meet Ray. like, it’s such a, it’s the prevention community is such great people. It really is. And it’s people out there trying to make the world a better place for everybody. And knowing that yes, there’s, there’s alcohol is legal. Tobacco is legal. Marijuana is becoming legal in so many places.

But how do we help people make good choices so that they don’t become an addict, that they don’t become a lifelong consumer of something that’s really truly bad for them, right? All those things are generally poison. So how do we help people make good choices so that they can have the best life possible? It just makes the world a better place. It’s that simple. Not saying you don’t, never get a beer or something like that. You can if you want, if you’re over the age of 21. But make good choices. And if you make those choices when you’re younger, that will carry over into lifelong habits and makes the world a better place.

Yes. Yes. Well, Jeff, thank you. This was, this was awesome. Everybody listening, go to professionals at play.com, check out all of his stuff. you’ll see. He, we like, we got the same vibes. So that’s why I love what you’re doing. You make prevention fun. You make it engaging, you build community and that’s sustainable. So if you’re building, check them out, all that good stuff. And for everyone who is listening, whether it’s on YouTube, Spotify, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen. If you like the show, please do me a favor quick. We want to keep making episodes. The way that you can say thank you is by leaving us a review and saying kind things. If they’re not kind, email me at jake at Vive18.com and I’ll make it better, but don’t put that online. Yeah, that’s not cool, man. I need the private feedback for that. And then, yeah, we will see you all next Monday for another episode.