Sara, from Virginia, is like many teens in that she has a friend that experimented with drugs. However, Sara decided to use her writing talents to communicate with her friend about his feelings and ended up giving him strength perhaps that even he didn't know he had.

Sara writes:

"One person that I'll never forget was a good friend of mine. He was into a lot of different things...bad things. I knew that I had to help him somehow. After all, he had been there for me and I knew that if I didn't help him now, he would never be there again.

One day when I had gone to visit him (he lives right down the street) I caught him smoking a joint. I was so upset. I expressed my feelings to him and he said that if I started smoking it would make my disappointment go away. I reached for my pen in my back pocket and started writing on a piece of paper that was lying on the floor. I wrote for about 5-10 minutes straight. This is what I came up with:

Drowning
Imagine being LOCKED in a room. You can hear people putting the key in
the hole but you tell them to go away. You like the way it is in the
room. Then water starts to fill it. You bang on the doors and windows
but no one will come. Soon the water is up to your ankles but it's rising
faster now. Then it gets up to your knees...faster...
your waist...faster... your neck. By now the water is gushing in. It's
OVER YOUR HEAD. You swim around frantically screaming for HELP, but
you've already PUSHED IT AWAY. You swim to the surface but your head hits
the ceiling. As you gasp for your last breath the water gushes in your
mouth and chokes you. You go under and beat against the doors and windows
again, but this time you know there will be no reply because IT'S TOO
LATE. Everything slows down, even your heart. THEN IT STOPS.
This is what happens when you do drugs. You can drown in your own
WRONGDOING and you can die. DON'T DROWN. DON'T DO DRUGS.

I gave it to him after I read it through once...taking it in for myself. As he read, his face softened and then he broke into tears. I hugged him and comforted him. Since then, whenever he gets a feeling like he can't stay in control, he takes it out of his back pocket (he takes it with him everywhere) and reads it over and over again until he gains control. My writing keeps me from doing drugs and it's keeping someone else off them too. It might sound insignificant to some but, for me, it keeps the stress away."