Addiction' project intended to help community understand the issue
Warwick Drugs and alcohol have had a devastating effect throughout the country from small, bucolic towns to affluent suburbs to gritty city streets. They know no boundaries-white, black, rich, poor, male, female. It just seems that everyone, in some way, has been affected by the scourge of addiction. Earlier this year, HBO produced a documentary called “Addiction,” a feature-length documentary film, which is part of the Addiction project. Richard Links, director of English Language Arts, Social Studies, and Academic Intervention Services at the Warwick Valley School District, was very moved by the film. Links is on a mission to make this a community project. He has contacted town and village leaders, the Warwick police, clergy members of various faiths throughout the town, merchants, restaurant owners, reporters anyone he could think of to get the community to come out and view this powerful documentary. The documentary deals with addiction at all levels. It is from a parent’s view, a life-long alcoholic’s view, a doctor’s view, and most sobering, a kid’s view. One section of the film deals with “The Adolescent Addict” and explains how a kid’s brain works. “We believe that together we may help today’s young people to better understand the many dangers that accompany a life of experimentation with alcohol and drugs,” said Links. “Addiction is an issue that tears apart the fabric of a community one family at a time, one life at a time.” So far, Links has commitments from six different community organizations to show the film seven different times. On Wednesday, Nov. 14, it will be shown at the Tuscan Café, the Warwick Valley School District’s Community Room, and the Lycian Theatre in Sugar Loaf. On Thursday, Nov. 15, it will be shown at St. Stephen’s School, Pine Island Volunteer Ambulance Corps, the Warwick Valley Community Center (Doc Fry), and again at the Community Room at the school district. “Maybe if kids see it, and see scientifically how their brains respond to drugs and alcohol,” Links said, “they will think twice before ever doing them.”