Grenfell -
You could hear a pin drop at Grenfell High as students listened to the shocking story of Michael Sarich, whose life has been drastically altered by drugs and alcohol.
He is a representative of Teen Truth Live, who has been responsible for over 300 school presentations throughout Canada and the United States.
Sarich flew all the way from California to tell teens about his experiences, in hopes that it will make them realize that if they choose to do drugs and alcohol, there will be consequences.
"One thing that Teen Truth and this movie has to offer is a unique perspective," he said.
The presentation included a graphic video that features real stories and images of lives shattered by drugs and alcohol.
The day of his Grenfell presentation marked a grim anniversary for Sarich. Exactly fifteen years prior, when he was sixteen years old, his father was killed in a car crash.
"When I was growing up, I had a best friend - my best friend was my father. Whenever I wasn't at school, I was always with my dad," he recalled.
His father's death triggered his downward spiral into drinking and drug abuse.
Sarich has since seen two of his best friends killed in drug-related accidents, both of which he feels responsible for. He convinced one friend to try magic mushrooms for the first time - the following day, his friend was found dead. He had plummeted 80 feet to his death after becoming convinced that he could fly.
The next tragedy occured when he and some friends were taking a road trip, and Sarich declared that he was too drunk to drive. His best friend Steve offered to drive instead, although he was just as inebriated as the others. Just a few minutes later, their car smashed into a mini-van.
Sarich suffered two cracked vertabraes in his back, as well as an injury from a thirteen-inch piece of wood that lodged itself into his back, missing his heart by a quarter of an inch.
"I eventually recovered from some of my injuries, but my best friend Steve wasn't that lucky - my best friend Steve died on the road that day.
"The images that I saw, I wouldn't wish those on my worst enemy - not in a million years."
With every tragedy that occured in his life, he became more and more dependent on drugs and alcohol to help him cope. He described one relationship, which he thought was love, in which he spent every minute and every penny on getting high. "To put in in perspective, over the course of a four-year period, I spent over $85,000 on drugs and alcohol."
The catalyst was the day he decided to end his own life. He took a gun from a friend's house, put one bullet in the chamber, and spun it. He put the gun to his head and pulled the trigger, but the gun didn't go off.
"So what did I do? I pulled the trigger a second time."
The gun never went off, and Sarich is convinced that it wasn't just a fluke.
"There's only one reason why I think that gun didn't go off - because somebody upstairs said 'It's not your time.' I personally think it was my father. I decided to make a difference that day."
What he and Teen Truth try and get across to teens is that they will not be teens forever, and their choices will affect them for the rest of their lives.
"I've made choices and decisions in my life because I never thought about the consequences. I could have saved my friend Steve by not letting him drink and drive. I could have saved my friend by not introducing him to mushrooms, but those are all choices that I've made because I never thought about the consequences. Everything you do today determines what happens tomorrow."
He stressed to the group that he was not trying to tell the teens what to do, he simply wanted to make them think.
"Never once have I said don't drink and don't do drugs. These are all choices that you have to make."
