The counseling department at Saint Patrick High School sponsored Drug & Alcohol Awareness Week from April 23-27. The week featured a variety of activities and lessons designed to heighten students’ awareness of the dangers posed by drugs and alcohol. Last year Saint Patrick staged an automobile accident in the parking lot to provide upperclassmen with an unforgettable visual image of the risks of drinking and driving.

The week culminated with the gathering of the entire school community for a performance of John Morello’s “Dirt”, a one-man show of substance abuse and choices. Morello’s play uses several different characters: a high school student beginning to abuse drugs, the town “stoner,” a girl dealing with date –rape, and a World War II veteran, to weave a story that is funny, entertaining, and poignant. Morello’s characters tell their individual stories, slowly revealing how these seemingly disconnected lives are intertwined. Morello finishes the show with Hank, the 79-year-old WWII veteran. Hank tells that audience that the little choices that you make every day add up, and in the long run, those little choices will make or break you. Morello closes the show with something Hank’s mother told him when he shipped out for basic training over 60 years ago, “You might be just another soldier to them, but your life is very important to me. Don’t you waste it!”

Morello is a survivor of a “high risk” childhood who saw friends and family members struggle with addiction, and who later worked as a teacher in a treatment center, wrote “Dirt” as therapy after his brother passed away from a drug overdose. Morello’s play has become a recommended assembly for young people by the New England and New Jersey chapters of Students Against Drunk Driving, and Mothers Against Drunk Driving. Morello feels that his message gets through to students because he speaks to them honestly, “Kids don’t want clichés and scare tactics, and they don’t need a big ‘high-tech’ production. Like all of us, they want honesty, respect, and someone who is real,” said Morello.