A speaker who spent 22 years in drug use, crime, and incarceration tells young people they're more than what society expects. He describes a gun incident, solitary confinement, and his decision to change, arguing that rejecting a destructive path and getting help makes a limitless future possible.
Chapters
You are more than that. Say it, say it to yourself. You are more than that. I am more than that, right? So, you know, when your parents show up at the school event, at your Little League baseball game, the last thing on their mind is that that same child will be looking down the barrel of a gun. Are on the street strung out on drugs, addicted to fentanyl, missing school, getting arrested, ending up in jail. Any of these things, this is not what's on a parent's mind. These are the farthest things from a parent, because guess what? You are more than that. You are better than that. You didn't grow up— no parent raised a child to be a criminal, to be hooked on drugs. But there's a way out. There is a way out because you're better than that. You have to say this to yourself every day. You wake up in the morning, look at yourself and tell yourself, I'm better than that, than that out there in the world. You can do it. It's really up to you. You just need a little help. You just need a little nudge, a little push. With that little push, you will find yourself leaps and bounds. The sky's the limit. You can achieve anything that you set your mind to. It just requires you to have a clear state of mind. Just, just say, I'm not going to do it anymore. Just stand up for yourself as a human being and say, I'm not going to do it anymore. I'm not going down that path anymore. The path that I went down for 22 years, I went down that path. The barrel of a gun. Incarceration, solitary confinement. I went down that path, and I was on that path for 22 years. And when I arrived back among society, amongst my community, I
