GREEN BAY, WI – (WGBW & WISS) – Douglas Darby and Jacob Jansen came from different backgrounds. Both battled addiction, have recovered, and now have created Turning The Page, a for-profit drug use prevention program that works to normalize the discussion around substance use disorder and mental health for students.

Darby and Jansen are experts in addiction, treatment, and recovery. They’ve shared their stories of experience, strength, and hope with over 300,000 people to date and counting. They focus on providing what they call an alternative to ineffective drug use prevention programs.

How substance abuse starts

Adolescents face issues with mental health and substance use and abuse. Darby said the important thing to remember with students and adolescents is that trauma affects us all.

“Me going through a loss. You going through a loss. That pain may be understandable, but it’s not linear,” said Darby. “When I got my life together as a 28-year-old grown man, it hit me that I still dealt with all the issues I should have been dealing with when I was 15 years old.”

Jansen said his story starts with a lack of connection to others.

“You know when I was growing up, I got picked on. I was bullied a lot. I felt like I was excluded from that group of friends. And it drove me to look toward substances,” said Jansen. “I didn’t fit in with my peer group. I fit in better with the adults in my life, at 13, than I did with the kids. When they adults first handed me that beer and I drank it around the campfire, I thought ‘Wow, I fit in. I feel like an adult.’ It was that idea of connection. That this connects me to people.”

Drugs lead to jail

Both men have a history of substance abuse and addiction that led to jail terms. Darby said he was a 7-time convicted felon before he found the motivation to get the help he needed to break his addiction.

Darby robbed two pharmacies in the Green Bay area for which he spent almost five years in jail.

“I begged for a second chance, and I got that,” Darby said. “When I went away, the difference was….after the detox and stuff…I got to find out who I was. And that was something that I ran from since my dad died at 15.”

Jansen said he was a hedge fund manager, with billions of dollars going through his hands at 20 years old. When he was arrested the first time, he was wearing a suit. It took him some time to reach the turning point as well.

“I was facing 57 and a half years in prison for distribution of a little less than half a gram,” said Jansen. “And it was at that point that my lawyer said, ‘Jake you’ve been making some enough bad freaking decisions – and I’ve cleaned up the language – But you need to get some help. I decided to get some treatment and that really taught me that there are some steps and some things I could do to start rebuilding my life.”

The drug use prevention program

Darby and Jansen go into schools and use the T.R.U.T.H. presentation they’ve created. It stands for Teaching Resilience Using Trust and Honesty. Darby says they bare their souls to the students for 90 minutes, holding nothing of their story back.

“We relive those hard days. I’m up there talking about the suicide of my father. The day I walked into those pharmacies and robbed them, the day the machine guns were put to the back of my head and I was arrested. We talk about that to show that the pain is still real,” said Darby.

Jansen added, “It’s about that connection. After we speak they are more likely to access the resources that are already available in their schools.”

Darby said creating a community is the best drug use prevention program.

“When we talk about changing the world, I’m talking about the three minutes it takes to walk from math class to science class. That’s the world I want to change,” Darby said.

The students are connecting with the program. Jansen said students complete a non-invasive survey after their presentations. He said 99.7% of the students said the presentation helped and they should continue the work in the schools.

The drug use prevention program doesn’t eradicate the need or the want for the drugs as a way to escape. But Darby said they can offer better coping mechanisms.

“We know the rate of success if kids just wait,” said Darby. “So we’re going to let them get through the survival part of growing up. And hopefully, give them better services than we received.”

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