No world-renowned experts or academics stood before the middle and high school students,

preaching about the danger of drugs.

Instead, it was survivors of drug abuse — young people who have been on the streets,

gobbling Loritab and OxyContin, shooting heroin and living to tell about it — who

provided the life lessons Thursday.

People such as Alicia Hoffmann, 21, and Brian Kruszka, 24, two survivors of the drug wars

who talk from experience and from the heart, speaking the kids' language.

This was all part of the third annual Face2Face drug summit, which brought about 700 local

students, teachers, administrators and parents to Hamburg Wesleyan Church on Thursday morning.

The idea was to work with student leaders, raise their awareness about drug abuse and

encourage those leaders to return to their schools and help find ways to discourage other

students from using drugs and alcohol.

"Face2Face is all about opening up the dialogue about the disease," said JoAnne A. Hudecki,

executive director of Kids Escaping Drugs.

At the session for 10th- and 11th-graders, for example, about 100 students learned why drug

abusers often start with prescription pills and why they sometimes advance to heroin. The

students learned what a gateway drug is, how to approach a friend who's getting hooked on

drugs and what to do when that friend won't listen.

"If you know someone who's using, have the courage to talk to them, to pull them aside,"

Hoffmann, a graduate of the Renaissance Campus in West Seneca, told the group.

"They may blow you off," she told the students, who listened with rapt attention. "They're

probably going to tell you to mind your own business."



Hoffmann then asked the students to raise their hands if they have a trusted teacher or

some other figure with whom they can talk in school. Virtually everyone raised a hand.

"Then have the courage to raise a voice to speak out on your friend's behalf," she added.

Kruszka, also a Renaissance Campus graduate, talked about his progression from smoking

marijuana at age 11 to Ecstasy, LSD, mushrooms, cocaine and prescription pills.

Then, one day, no pills were available. So he moved on to heroin.

"The progression is real," Kruszka said. "It's scary, and it's worse now."



"Heroin is easier to get [than pills], and it's a lot cheaper," said Hoffmann, alumni

coordinator of Kids Escaping Drugs. "It's the same high."



Drugs took their toll on Kruszka. He stole thousands of dollars from family members. He

wasted away, down to 110 pounds, and he spent six days in the basement of the Erie County

Holding Center.

Kruszka then spent 10 months as an inpatient at the residential Renaissance Campus in West

Seneca and an additional 4 months in a halfway house.

As the students listened intently, one asked him his motivation for stopping his drug use

and staying in rehab.

"I can't put my finger on what made me stick it out," he replied.

"Near-death experience is what got me in," Hoffmann said of her motivation. "Family is what

made me stay."



Cassandra Schumacher, a Starpoint Central School senior, summed up the feelings of the

students listening to drug abusers only a few years older.

"It gives you a face, not a statistic," she said. "You could have a middle-aged person

trying to relate to students, and it's too big a gap."



Face2Face, which started with six schools in 2007-08, has grown to 57 schools in 22 local

districts, according to Stacy Roeder, the Kids Escaping Drugs community relations director.

Its goals are student education, adult education and early intervention for young drug and

alcohol abusers.

Early intervention often is used when a student is caught with drugs in school. Then the

school district may agree to a shorter suspension if the student goes out to the Renaissance

Campus, to talk with young inpatients.

"When the child comes back from speaking with our kids, the child will say, "No offense,

but I don't want to come back here,' " Roeder said.

About 100 local youths have gone through early intervention so far this school year, in

addition to 143 last year. About a dozen of those students have become inpatients at the

Renaissance Campus. Many are given outpatient referrals in their home community, to address

the drug abuse before it gets worse.

"Actually," Hudecki said, "we're trying to prevent people from using our campus."