St George

I went to St. George, Utah this week for the annual Utah Fall Substance Abuse Conference. The theme for this year was "Just Say Know!" (Side note: besides working with a lot of substance abuse issues at work, I am also working towards receiving my LSAC - Licensed Substance Abuse Counselor) It was great, I learned a TON of information, and have decided that I like visiting St. George for a vacation. St. George has grown so much since I was last there. I didn't even recognize it, or could find anything (which was sad, as somehow I was made the navigator in the car I was in). But they are building an outlet mall there, and have a Mongolian BBQ restaurant in the outlet mall. Of course, I convinced my colleagues that we needed to check out the Mongolian BBQ place before we left. I was not disappointed. It made me wish that they would open one up in Utah County.

With the conference theme of "Just Say Know!" they focused a lot on the importance of educating the community on what drugs are and what they do to you. Also educating others that if they are going to do drugs, how to do it responsibly. This was emphasized more with alcohol. They talked about how we are always telling kids to just say "no" that when they do decide to drink, or try drugs out of curiosity, they don't know how to do it responsibly, that is why there is a lot of binge drinking at college campuses. I liked the idea of teaching others what drugs are and what they can do to you in addition to telling them to say "no." For me, the more knowledge I have about something and what it can do to you, the less tempting it will become.

But a down side to the conference was hearing all the statistics with drugs and alcohol. I am now scared to be on the road with the high statistic of being injured by an impaired driver. You can even become impaired through energy drinks, as many add alcohol but don't state it well. There are more deaths to Americans through alcohol related incidents then there were deaths from the Polio epidemic or the current war going on.

Oh, one scary statistic is that 1 in 4 kids in high school have tried alcohol. Also 1 in 4 children have an alcoholic parent.

So on that happy note, here are some pictures of the motel I stayed at. It was weird for me, as I was given my own room. But I can't complained. I was able to do a lot of reading at night.




Here is the motel we stayed at. It was the Comfort Suites.







Her is the car we took to St. George. It was hospital car - Ford Focus. The drive was good, especially with only 3 people in the car, and I had the entire back seat to myself:)









Here is a picture of a view from my motel room to where we needed to travel to go to the conference. It was right by the Jack in the Box and Texaco sign.







This is a morning view from my motel room. The weather was absolutely beautiful! I was not ready to go back to Orem and today's weather of 53 degrees.