Dan Perry, the director of Alcohol and Other Drug Prevention and Education (AOD) at NC State, has been a counselor for 18 years. He first worked with high school students as a counselor in a walk-in treatment center, and was later in charge of building a recovery center for a private boarding school in Virginia. He then moved on from the treatment side of harmful drug and alcohol use to the prevention side, taking a position at Duke University which is comparable to his current position.
The AOD was formed in July 2015 to counter the aggressive stance that institutions have taken against drug and alcohol users since the “war on drugs” and other abstinence-based policies became the dominant ethos.
AOD works separately from, but in partnership with, the Office of Student Conduct, accepting students referred to them following student conduct violations but also advising the office on how best to handle students who may be struggling with substance use in varying degrees of severity.
Perry works with a very small unit, comprising himself, one other staff member and an intern, and is seeking grant money from the UNC System to allow them to expand. Still, the unit has set ambitious goals to engage NC State’s faculty and the Triangle as a whole, focusing on harm reduction rather than punishment.
The following is a transcript of a conversation with Dan Perry. Some changes have been made to the original for clarity and to fit space requirements.
Q: What is your role within AOD?
A: My role is to look at the bigger picture at the school here, look at the culture, look at various groups and how individuals interact within those to create strategies to bring harm reduction into the community. My job is to have the vision and see it through by working with others.
Q: What is the big picture for NC State in your mind as it relates to drug use? Is there a benchmark you are reaching for?
A: There’s about 13 percent of students at NC State that drink in a way that is considered problematic or that are “heavy drinkers.” It would be nice to lower that number because they’re in the way of harm but mostly what they’re setting themselves up for is an unhealthy relationship with drinking as they get older. They’re reinforcing substance abuse issues in themselves and they’re also making other people uncomfortable.
The attention always goes to that 13 percent and I want to shift the focus to everybody else — the majority at NC State that don’t drink that way — and how to interact with people who are drinking in a way that bothers them.
Q: That seems like an attempt to change the culture around those problem drinkers, rather than discourage their behavior directly. How did you identify that as a more effective strategy going forward?
A: We recognize that there’s more people putting up with problem drinkers than there are problem drinkers so we want them to feel supported. I think a lot of people don’t understand that there is support for that side of things. We feel like if we can empower those folks then we can help bring some of the more out of control drinking into some level of control.
Q: Does that mean you’ve stopped trying to help the 13 percent? It sounds like you’ve hit a brick wall with trying to directly help problem drinkers. What does that say about the people that are in that 13 percent?
A: We definitely are still supporting them and have our hand out to them. A lot of them are at a level where they’ll probably end up at the Counseling Center. We have a threshold here for what we can handle. Some things we do for those beyond that threshold are to inform them about how to drink safely and how to use Howl for Help.
With that there’s a paradox. Harvard School of Public Health did a study and they found that the majority of the damage comes from people that aren’t the problematic drinkers. You’ve got the 13 percent, but then you’ve got first-year students who aren’t used to drinking or are trying to model how someone else is drinking, but their body isn’t used to it. So the paradox is that they wind up causing a lot of the turmoil on campus as compared to the others who are more experienced and who know better than to get caught but still damage those around them.
Consistently over the last six years, 23 percent of the incoming first-year class are the highest risk drinkers. A year later, that number is down to 13 percent. So they’re either naturally learning their lessons or interfacing with Student Conduct or something like that.
Q: How do you define a problem drinker?
A: There’s different definitions. The official definition for someone born male is five or more drinks in one sitting in a week. For someone born female it would be four. For a college I think that’s kind of low. We look at problem drinkers as people who are drinking at least once or twice a week every week or more. Most of those are drinking four or five times a week.
Q: What was NC State’s goal in creating your position?
A: They wanted my position to be someone that would reset the vision for what drinking and drug use looks like was and they didn’t really know what that was. The main thing was to bring some compassion into this rather than trying to bust people and have a “police state” kind of thing. The police here do a great job but they’ve reached maximum capacity for changing the drinking culture. I ran the data for the last six years and nothing’s changed, it’s all the same. So the idea would be to add to their efforts.
Q: This is a still a new program. Where does NC State stand in dealing with drug and alcohol use in relation to other schools?
A: I would say we’re a little more blatant about our harm reduction focus. We’re very clear — this is what we’re doing. Some people are afraid we’re breaking the law or encouraging younger people to drink and I just believe in getting it out there and being transparent. I think being clear that we’re going to go straight up harm reduction as a method going forward is maybe a step above what other schools are doing.
What we’re trying to get away from is the “war on drugs” mentality. To me, forcing people to do drugs and drink in secrecy is an unhealthy dynamic. We want everybody to trust us and come to us for help rather than being worried about getting in trouble.
Q: How does your unit reach students?
A: A majority are referred to us because they’ve gotten in some kind of trouble and have gone through Student Conduct or [University] Housing. In the last month we upgraded our system so that we can deal with a bigger capacity of students. Once we get used to that we’ll be able to promote the fact that you don’t have to get in trouble to come here — that could be our motto.
Q: Where is AOD in terms of its vision for the future?
A: Right now we’re working on getting on the same page with the Department of Academic and Student Affairs. The vision would be to have everyone moving in the same direction and understanding that the “war on drugs” didn’t work, bringing everybody into 2016.
What we would like to see is information about AOD included in syllabuses. Then the faculty would know that they can refer students here if anyone is showing signs that they are struggling with drugs or alcohol. That’s the beginning of our vision. The larger vision is getting athletics and Fraternity and Sorority Life involved which are high-risk drinking populations.
Q: Is there anything else you want students to know?
A: If students want to help with the cause or have ideas, thoughts, concerns we’d be happy to hear. We have an open door policy. We’re a service for all students, not just for people who got in trouble.
