Game Over: a Youth Substance Abuse Manual

It’s out … your secret. Everyone knows—your friends, your parents, your brothers and sisters, your teachers, your classmates, your significant other. They all know you have a problem. You’ve tried to mask it behind quick restroom encounters with eye drops, behind your lies, your “chilled” attitude, and your cracked smile. But now everyone sees it. Your secret is in plain sight. Like the heat rising from hot asphalt, we can see the abuse you have done to your body. The abuse grips like fingertips to sparked matches, and you tried to blow it out; only the harder you blew, the quicker it burned, and the quicker the light in your life began to get darker. If there was ever a time you thought you had this locked away … the game is over.


No longer can you assume “they don’t know.” No longer can you mask your innocence with perfume and cologne. It is time to get up out of the darkness. Put that shame down and walk into a new sunrise. You weren’t given into defeat; you merely postponed your victory. These words are sent to capture you back from within, to sweep you toward a better place. You might have thought you can quit at anytime, but you can’t dig your way out of a young addict’s hole. Today is the day you give it up for good. But you must first get up, admit your mistakes, and come to terms with the fact that …


The game is over.