Counselor serves students warnings on binge drinking

by Johanna Ginsberg
NJJN Staff Writer

Four students at Rae Kushner Yeshiva High School in Livingston unwittingly demonstrated the importance of a lecture on alcohol abuse delivered by Mike Green at a school assembly on Jan. 31.

Toward the end of his talk, Green, a recovering alcoholic who lectures widely on substance abuse, invited four volunteers to the front of the auditorium. Four cups were lined up behind them on a table. He offered $20 to the first student to drink the entire contents of their cup. All four grabbed the cups behind them and drank as fast as they could.

“What did you drink?” Green asked when they finished. “Not one of you asked what was in the cup.”

For an hour, in a sometimes dramatic, sometimes comedic manner, Green, who runs seminars on drugs and alcohol at colleges and high schools, held the attention of the eighth-to 12th-graders as he offered examples of the lasting consequences of binge drinking.

Rather than focusing on alcoholism, Green turned his attention to “one-night problems,” instances when people overindulge on a given evening and are then left to cope with the consequences for the rest of their lives.

“I’m more concerned right now about someone getting drunk one night and doing something reckless than about an alcoholic.… Do you have to be an alcoholic to have an alcohol problem? Absolutely not. Ninety-nine percent of the people I talk to are not alcoholics. They are normal students like yourselves who go out one night and get drunk.”

Green’s appearance was the latest in a series of programs meant to educate students at the Orthodox yeshiva about the risks of alcohol and substance abuse. It follows a year in which Orthodox educators in and around the metropolitan area, led by the Orthodox Union, increased their focus on the issue. Projects include the OU’s anti-abuse task force — “Safe Homes, Safe Shuls, Safe Schools” — and educational materials distributed by the National Council for Synagogue Youth. The efforts were sparked in part by news of a raucous party in Livingston last year that included students from Kushner and other area day schools.

Green, a former football player, spends 80 percent of his time talking to university audiences. He peppered his talk with examples of “one-night problems with secondary consequences,” like the athletic trainer at North Carolina State University who was hit by a drunk driver. After “six people came over to help him,” said Green, “one young man passed out behind the wheel of his car [after drinking] and killed all six of them.… The people on the ground don’t get a second chance.”

Green, who recently celebrated 28 years of sobriety, has spent the last 20 years lecturing about drug use and responsible drinking. The founder and president of Collegiate Consultants, he has given testimony before the United States Congress Select Committee on Narcotics Abuse and Control.

At his talk at Kushner, Green never directly asked students to refrain from drinking. Instead, he urged responsible drinking and an understanding of the poor decisions that often accompany drinking “to get wasted” as opposed to social drinking that might entail a glass of wine with dinner.

He urged students to offer friends who are drinking too much a free drink in exchange for the car keys, as he did for a friend who was “chugging” Long Island iced teas while the two were out to dinner. “I have yet to see someone turn down a free drink,” he said. Taking the car keys, he said, might save victims and perpetrators from the tragedy of a drunk-driving accident. “Be your brother’s keeper,” he told the Jewish day school students.

He also described the dangers of the “date-rape” drugs Rohypnol (roofies) and GHB, warning students, particularly women, to drink only what they have seen opened and poured and never to drink from a cup they have left unobserved, and advising them even to hold drinks close to their body to avoid having drugs slipped in.

Scott Oster, another former football player who is now a teacher and a drug and alcohol counselor, also addressed the group.

Their message was not lost on the students. “It was a great program,” said Aaron Marcus, 17, of West Orange. “He showed the things that can happen and kept you listening, especially when it came to GHB and roofies, and how he consciously got kids to drink by giving them $20. You’ve really got to pay attention.”

And Katherine Bodner of Highland Park, 17, added, “The fact that he made the students laugh made him more effective. It was all valuable. There was nothing he said that was extra or not needed.”

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