Ray’s Journey into Substance Use Education
Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Drug Prevention Power Hour. Today we are hanging out with Ray Lozano. Now Ray has been in the field since 1990. He’s been answering questions about substance use to middle schoolers, high schoolers, even community adults and professionals in the field. So I’m excited today. He’s going to gift us with his time and expertise. So Ray. Thanks for being on the show with me. I’m excited to talk to you.
Oh man, yeah, you’re more than welcome and thanks for being so generous about that. But yeah, I am happy to be here.
Yeah. Well, tell us a little bit about how you became someone who is passionate about this for so long. How did this start for you?
Yeah, it started way back when I was a kid, actually at age nine, and all of my family was kind of crazy when it came to drugs and alcohol, so I had brothers I used, and my sister and dad drank, and mom drank, and all that kind of stuff. And one night, I was age nine, we were, my mom, me, my dad, and my sister were sitting on the curb in front of our house, and lights are flashing, and police are going through our house looking for drugs at my brother possibly had brought in from Mexico, because we lived right on the border of California and Mexico, and something just kind of clicked in my head and I thought, you why don’t people do drugs? And you know, I never saw like a good side of it. Maybe it was a little bit of good side, but not very much. And then I started to wonder, you know, why is my dad a good guy?
He drinks and then he fights. Why is my mom super nice? She drinks and then she yells at us and I wanted to know what that mechanism was. So everybody I talked to, I’d ask them, you why is my dad drinking fight? And everybody had the same answer. It’s cause of alcohol. And I’m like, yeah, I know that, but what is it? So my whole career, I’m gonna almost say started at age nine where I wanted to know just what happens inside your brain when you drink alcohol. And I just wanted to answer those questions about my family. And it’s crazy cause it’s turned into an amazing career that yeah, I’m doing every day and I love it.
Wow. Did you have this job out like when you’re done with school, you just started in this or was there a period of time where you did other stuff?
The Importance of Short-Term Effects
Well, I graduated quite a while ago. So I did my very first presentation in high school in 1982. I did another little presentation in 1983. And then when I got out, it was just like going around to youth groups or other organizations and just sharing information. So between 83 and like 88, I was doing it just for free and then working with another organization called Youth Youth.
And then, let me see, and then 1988, somebody called me and said, hey, we’ll give you like 500 bucks, an airline ticket, and a hotel room. like, yeah. And I’m like, whoa, maybe there’s money in this. And maybe I can support myself doing this. What was that?
Maybe this could be my one job. Like I could do.
Yeah, yeah. So then in 1990, I just started the Prevention Plus and yeah, I’ve been doing it pretty much. There’s been other jobs in between and stuff, but overall I’ve been doing this. Yeah.
That’s fantastic. I love to hear that too because I think it shows how we’re committed to the field. Like if you’re doing this work for seven years before you collect a paycheck, that kind of says you’re in it for the right reason and it’s who you are. So I just really resonate and admire that.
Yeah, I really like watching, like when I was speaking, I remember even back in the day, like people like, that makes sense. That’s why, you know, this happens or that happens. And, you know, I’ve taken a lot of questions over the years. And I remember when kid was, or the mom was turning beet red and the kids like, you know, he said to ask. And so I called on him. This was a high school student with parents and stuff. And he said, great question. goes, why do girls look, why do girls get better looking the more I drink? And the mom was like, totally embarrassed. I’m like, I can answer that. And that’s when I realized, man, I have this kind of crazy skill to answer those questions. Yeah.
Oh my gosh. I could see why she was embarrassed, right? She’s like, well, why would you ask that?
Yeah, but when I gave them the answer the moms like that makes sense. Yeah Yeah
When we last talked, Ray, you said something that piqued my interest and I wonder if you’d share it on here and why. But part of your Peer Plus program and you speaking across the country is you say that you only talk about the short-term effects to youth, not the long-term effects. Can you tell me more about that?
Right, yeah, kids aren’t concerned with 401Ks or retirement or even down the road kind of stuff, you know. And so there was a study that came out talking about how marijuana drops your IQ points, you know. And I remember seeing all kinds of people talking about that to high school students and, know, man, your IQ points are gonna go down by, you know, I forget what it is, like 0.2% or something like that or 2%.
And so we do surveys all the time. I just got a whole bunch of surveys in today about some information we did last week and found out kids are like, I don’t know what that means. Is that a big number? Is it a small number? And it’s kind of like if you had $600,000 in your pocket and I ask you for 20, it’s not gonna be a big deal. You’re like, yeah, man, not even gonna think about it, right? But if you had like $60 in your pocket and I asked for 20, you’re gonna kind of think about that. So in our program, Prevention Plus, we never talk long-term stuff. We talk about if you drink one beer, here’s what’s gonna happen right now. Or if you smoke one joint and you feel this way, here’s what’s gonna happen right now. So it’s all here and now because kids will go, that makes sense, I actually see that happening. So yeah, we kind of stay away from long-term kind of stuff.
Vaping: Current Trends and Concerns
Okay, okay, cool. And I know that you’re a very, very busy speaker too, like the number of presentations per year. When you told me, my jaw dropped a little bit. But it’s like more than a hundred. What did you say?
We do about 428 presentations a year. So let me see, what is today? Friday this week I did 15 this week. Next week I have another 20 presentations, so about four a day. So yeah, and then we have some school districts that, yeah, we just nail it down. And so yeah, I know it sounds weird when I tell other people like 400, how do you do 400?
But we’re out there hustling and on the road and I love it. Yeah, it sounds crazy and like, you know, but yeah, I have my own schedule. So I, you know, put them on there and I’m happy with them. So yeah, it’s nuts, huh?
Yeah, it is. And what is the most requested topic that you get asked for?
Right now it’s vaping is our biggest topic that we get a lot of requests for. And we just had this week, had a request to do a little bit of alcohol information, but vaping is the big one that we get right now. So our presentations are all vaping information. So there isn’t a testimonial part, there isn’t any kind of scared straight part. And all we’re doing is presenting like, and I know this sounds so boring, current studies when it comes to vaping, but we gear it towards junior high and high school kids. So lot of fun stories, but we really drive a couple points home about addiction and how quickly that can happen.
Okay, that’s great to hear. We both know that stories are powerful. How do you share a story without it being your testimonial? is it like case studies or what kind of stories do you share?
They’re personal stories, but they’re stories that are designed to drive the point home on like nicotine and stuff like that. Like when we’re talking about nicotine, inside your head you have these two buttons. You have a go button and a stop button. And I’m sure you’ve had somebody jump out and scare you, right? And you have a crazy reaction and you either run or punch or laugh or cry. The reason why you have that crazy reaction, cause it goes in and it hits your go button.
Yeah and then you get that jolt of energy, right? But the reason why, Jake, you’re not running, jumping, crying, punching right now is because your go button sends a signal to the stop button really fast. And so what nicotine does is nicotine gets in between that go and that stop button. So when a kid uses electronic cigarette and they breathe in on it, it hits the go button, but nicotine doesn’t allow a signal to be sent to the stop button. So when I want to stress that point and how quickly addiction happens, because all your brain sees is the good part of nicotine, it can’t see the bad part. I talk about a time when my son jumped out and scared me and I had this crazy reaction and I just, was half asleep when he scared me and I just started hollering and acting crazy. He started laughing, I got madder, but the reason why I didn’t punch him or the reason why nothing bad happened to either one of us is because my go button, when I got scared, instantly sent the signal to the stop button. So I wanna stress how nicotine goes in and your brain cannot see the bad side of it because it’s hitting the go button. So it’s stories like that. So all of my stories drive that point home.
The Role of Humor in Education
Yeah. Okay. That’s cool. And I think it’s, I’ll just say it because the data shows it, but like, for example, a story of recovery data shows it actually feeds permission for young people to think, well, I can go mess up now and then I can come back on track and maybe even get on stage and hear my story or what was fine for you and your development. So it’s fine for me. Whereas a general story that’s relatable, that’s not about drug use is as a helpful analogy or metaphor to drive the point home and then share the science. So I like that style a lot because it matches what studies have shown is working.
Yeah, have you, and I’m sure you’ve seen stand-up comics, right? And they do this comedy part, and then they throw in some kind of serious thing, and you’re like, wow, where’d that come from? And then they go back into comedy, right? So what I wanna do is I know I’m basically telling the kid, if you’re smoking, you’re gonna have an addiction. That’s terrible information, right? And if I present it like that, this kid’s guard goes up instantly. I’m gonna defend myself, I’m gonna justify my position when it comes to smoking.
But if they’re laughing and they’re having a good time and I take any kind of a defense away from them through laughing, it’s easy to get that information in super quick.
That’s good. Because I think that’s what adults, what we think is, hey, the recovery story or the scared story is going to scare my kid into receiving information. But like you said, in reality, it actually hits that fight or flight mode. And you’ll notice the students who need it most aren’t taking it seriously. They’re talking to their friends. They’re shutting down. They’re putting their hood up. It’s because they’re not in a mode to learn, just like you said. So your strategy is using humor to break down those walls, to reduce the cortisol in their brains so they’re not feeling stressed, they’re having fun, and then the brain is open for learning. That’s cool.
Right, Yeah, that’s so true on that. And then just knowing the way kids think, you know, because I have to present to kids or students, just they think different. So if we were having this big, huge meeting and there’s, you know, all different ages in there, and then when the meeting’s over, I go, hey, just right outside the door here, you’re go underneath this tree, there’s a cop that parks underneath that tree and they usually give out a bunch of tickets.
Understanding the Brain’s Response to Substances
Every adult in the room is gonna be like, hey, thanks for that information, man, that’s great, I’m gonna go slow. But you’re inevitably gonna get that one high school kid that’s gonna be like, I don’t know if that’s true or not, boom, you know, and zip through there. So what happens is when a person, know, testimonials are great, they fit with all our other stuff, know, but when you do a testimonial, what happens, it’s geared towards the adults, because kids don’t think like that. Kids you know on their again and i’m never gonna you know smuggle heroin in the u.s. and i’m gonna smoke you know crack you know because they just they can’t think like that it’s impossible
Right. And it is less relatable unless they are in that situation. Right. So there could be a few. And that’s kind of our balance. Right. Is we want to go to help as many people as possible. And there is a place for that recovery story, for the recovery environment and showing students that it’s possible. But that’s its own event. That’s its own purpose. Primary prevention, what you and I are doing, it’s a little different. So. yeah.
I wanted to ask you this because you were talking about vaping and the brain, the stop and go button. So I read this study that said that using nicotine and even THC, a lot of students now are using it to try and deal with stress and anxiety and these emotional feelings to escape it, right? But the studies say that it actually increases their anxiety. And do you know, do you have any other information on that? Like why or what happens to the brain? Is it releasing cortisol, like a stress hormone, while they use it? Or have you heard anything about that?
The Impact of Marijuana on Motivation
Yeah, one of the things and why kids use it to relax, I get that a lot, because if you’ve ever seen anybody smoke weed, they just kind of sit and stare at stuff for long period of time, and they just kind of giggle. Well, what’s happening is their brain is getting overloaded with information, and the brain doesn’t know what to process, what to look for, what’s important, what isn’t important. So when I’m talking to students about why your body slows down, and sometimes this example works, but I used to live in Southern California. And I tell the kids from my house to LAX is on Sunday morning at 7.30 a.m. Sunday morning, from my house to LAX is 45 minutes. All the kids are like, okay, that makes sense. And I ask them if I were to leave Friday night at 4.30, I said, how long do you think it takes for me to get from my house to LAX?
And kids usually guess pretty right on. They’re like two and a half, three hours. I’m like, yeah, about three hours. And I ask, you know, has the distance from my house to LAX changed? And it’s like, no. I said, what’s the difference? And they’ll say, it’s the traffic. And I’m like, exactly. So when you smoke weed, what happens is all of a sudden your brain can’t regulate the traffic coming in. So that’s why you stop and you stare and you look at stuff and it feels like you’re slowing down at feels like you’re relaxed, but the thing that’s happening is there’s just so much information coming into your brain that the brain feels like it’s relaxing, but it’s not. So then once you’re not high anymore, that’s where that anxiety actually goes up because your brain is used to that feeling and it seems like a huge gap between anxiety and not anxiety. When it’s the same distance, it’s just what how the traffic looks. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah.
That’s fascinating. It’s so interesting. I love learning about the brain and how stuff works. that is super, super interesting.
Like, I’m sure that you’ve driven home from the airport, right, and you don’t even think about it. You just get in your car and you drive and you’re thinking about other stuff. That’s because like right now, you have like several million pieces of information coming into your brain right now, but your brain goes, hey Jake, I’ll worry about the driving part, you know, I’ll take care of that. And you deal with the, you know, getting a donut on the way home, figure that out, you know. But I’ll take care of this other part. So when you smoke weed, then your brain is like, well, I want to figure out the donut and the driving and the gas and the lights and it just slows everything down. Yeah.
Wow, so it’s the regulation of all the thoughts and ideas and allows in. So that’s fascinating. I was going to say, what can you, because these are really helpful ideas and metaphors. are some really helpful things that you tell teens or studies or anything like this?
The Process of Developing Educational Material
Well, here’s the other thing that happens with the brain in that situation. So you get a kid that softball or baseball, super important in high school. And the freshman year they’re playing, when it’s off season, they’re practicing and baseball super important, right? And their brain says, wow, baseball is important. I love it. It makes me feel good. When I hit a home run, bing, bing, bing, bing, right? Serotonin, dopamine, noradrenaline all those good feelings. So the brain gets used to that, but then what happens is the kids are, I’m just gonna smoke weed on Friday night because my legs hurt, right? So then they smoke weed and all of sudden they’re getting those same good feelings, like when they play baseball, and the problem that weed does, and I know there’s parents listening right now who kids used to be great at something, started smoking weed, and now the important thing is weed.
And that’s because their brain is getting all that good feeling, everything they need, and they don’t have to put any effort into it. So we knew a kid that was great at track, started smoking weed his senior year, and by the time he was in college, his sophomore year, he wasn’t even running track anymore. He had lost interest in so many things, except for smoking weed. Because weed inside your brain takes away the rule for what’s important and what isn’t important so it is not smoking baseball’s important weed comes in rewires the brain a little bit and this is a weeds important more important baseball so we talk about that a lot with continuation school students because they at one point have like a desire to do something and now they’re whole desires to smoke weed that’s because it’s kind of rewired the important what’s important what is important part of their brain. So yeah, yeah, that’s a big one. We talk about that, especially with parents.
And so the reward system is the dopamine, the serotonin, those other things that you talked about, and it’s going off because the drug makes it go off. So then you’re saying like it doesn’t really want that other stuff anymore. All the things that used to make you happy, it becomes less important. And does it actually make the dopamine levels less than right. It changes the standard. I’m sorry, I mean to catch up. Yeah, it changes the standard and fentanyl does that super fast. Fentanyl changes the way that it works. Let’s say like you, Jake, to make 20 bucks, you gotta dig a hole, right? And so every time you dig a hole, you get 20 bucks, but then all of sudden somebody goes, hey, I’ll just give you 20 bucks, right? Which one are you gonna eventually take? Well, you’re gonna dig a hole and you’re gonna take 20 bucks. You’re gonna dig a hole and then pretty soon you’re like, I’m just gonna take 20 bucks. And so that’s marijuana does. It makes it easy to get that reward without having to do anything.
Wow. So the takeaway is, mean, if you want to try something, it’s almost like, well, do I really want to like it? Like, if I try this, it’s a drug. I kind of have to follow that path because my brain is going to make me love it. And then I won’t love the other stuff as much that I do right now.
Yeah, that’s so true, but nobody thinks about it when they go into it like that. So what happens is it’s so slow and so gradual that it takes over that the person who smokes weed cannot see it happening. And so we talk about that with kids. There’s like five things we used to tell kids that they cannot see happening. They can’t see that they’re getting angrier faster. They can’t see that things that were important are no longer important because it’s easy to justify your position and all that. So yeah, so we just yeah.
Cautions in Substance Use Education
Right. It’s harder to pick up because it is so gradual. Yeah. Okay. Wow. So for… I want to talk about one thing else that you mentioned at our last call, is that you actually have this process where when you workshop material and you’re bringing new stuff into your program, you do something first. Before you ever go talk to schools and stuff like that. Tell us about that process a little bit.
Okay, we find information that we think is relevant and important. And it’s not just us thinking it, it’s usually if we get two or three questions on the subject. So right now we got about four questions in the past three months or so about those little pouches, nicotine pouches that kids are using. They’re moving away from vapes, they’re starting to use nicotine pouches, right? So if we’re getting four questions from four different states, I’m gonna look at that as like a flag, like, wow, this is kind of important.
So then we go out and by we, it’s my daughter and I, and we have an administrative assistant, and schools are always sending me information. So we get this information, we find these huge studies, and they’re complicated, and they’re difficult to read, but we go through and we extract all the parts that we think are important, then we gear it towards junior high and high school kids. But before we go out and present it, we actually have a focus group of junior high and high school kids that we use. So we have a couple of eighth graders, we have a couple of freshmen, and we have a couple of kids that are seniors, and we have a couple of kids that I can’t let go, because they are so amazing, but I present that information in front of them and filter it through them.
Anybody who does marketing just needs to have a 13 year old kid on their staff just to go, that does not make sense or that. it shouldn’t be out, because this is how it actually reads. And I’ve done that. I’ve made the mistake sometimes of running information out without having it screened by them and it just sounds weird or it’s over their head or it has some kind of innuendo that I did not realize some word that kids are using now that I didn’t realize. So they are our guardrail on all our information. So if anybody ever sees me present, just know that all of that information has been filtered through kids. And I think a lot of speakers need to do that a little bit more. And so we just saw a speaker this past weekend who was presenting information and my daughter and I both looked at each other and they have not presented this information in front of anybody that’s gonna give them an actual critique because the information was, yeah, it just wasn’t age appropriate. And so we’re real cautious about that.
Introduction to Drug Prevention Strategies
Yeah, well that’s real and the age-appropriate thing is the information that you share with an adult that might be helpful for them to set up good boundaries and guardrails is really inappropriate for a student because it might give them ideas or find access to things. I mean, that’s the biggest thing that I’ve seen is sharing wrong information or just giving them the perception that everyone is using. So it’s reinforcing these negative social norms that everybody uses a substance when the reality is that’s not true. That’s the biggest thing. What did you mean by yours? Was there something else that, like a mistake that’s made normally that you see?
What do you mean?
Is there a commonality in prevention of things that we kind of make mistakes with?
You know what, I think some of the commonalities sometimes, I’ve even seen presenters either give out recipes. I saw law enforcement one time talking about, yeah, know, prisoners, they still are able to get alcohol because they, and they go into a little bit of a recipe, you know, and I’m like, wow, that’s kind of crazy. Or, you know, I’ve seen people that are just.
And it’s almost like an encouraging, you know, they’re just flying high as a kite and they have no problems and the world comes crashing down around them But because of this drug they just think everything’s okay and I’m like that is sounds almost like an encouragement a little bit, you know to a kid. I mean if everything’s going bad and somebody’s sending you this drug It’s gonna you know make everything seem okay, but don’t you do it? You know, I mean it just I’m real cautious about that stuff and you know, sometimes I’ll go in and they’re like, hey, can you talk about fentanyl to eighth graders? I’m like, it depends, but only if they’re in a high fentanyl area where they know about it, because I don’t ever want to introduce a drug to kid. I’m real cautious.
Yeah, yeah, that’s good. Thanks for being that way, Ray.
Yeah, thanks. You bet, And I wish more speakers were that way, you know, and real cautious with what they talk about, so.
Yeah. Well, let’s end the episode with any parting piece of guidance you can give people in this field to do just 5 % better over the next year. What would be your takeaway and tip?
My takeaway and tip would be to learn how to speak kid, right? And I think if you can learn how to speak kid, you’ll be able to talk their language. Like if I was speaking Spanish and you only knew Mandarin and I’m giving you these words of wisdom, you wouldn’t be able to understand it. So kids have their own language. And so I’m gonna encourage people to learn that language because you’ll be able to get a lot of information across.
Fantastic. And if people want to learn about you, Ray, they want to bring you in to speak with their community, where can they go to check out all your stuff?
Raylosano.com would be the best place to go And so there might be a link right below me right now. I don’t know how this works, but yeah There it is. It’s going to pop up somewhere on our blog.
Somewhere, yeah, yeah. And they can contact me there. But yeah, and we’ll see how we can fit them in.
Okay, that’s great. Thanks for being on the show, Ray. Appreciate you.
Yeah, you bet man. Thank you. Super good to talk to you today.
Of course, and for everyone listening, this has been another episode of the Drug Prevention Power Hour, and we will see you next Monday for another episode.
