10/08/2026
🎀 Celebrate Red Ribbon Week! This Red Ribbon Week, let’s celebrate healthy choices and all the positive things we can do instead of drugs. Playing team sports is a great alternative to drugs, but abusing any drug, whether to try to enhance your performance, improve your physique, handle pain, deal with stress, or for recreational purposes, will contribute to the end of your sports career. It will also cause problems with your health and overall ability to perform in the long run.
Sports places physical and mental demands on your body and mind, and so do drugs. When you’re active, your body adapts to provide you with the support you need. Your heart may be pumping more blood to supply oxygen to your muscles, or your brain may be helping to maintain your body temperature, coordinating your movements, or making sure you’re alert. Your body works to coordinate all these actions so that you perform your best. If you add drugs into the mix, you are changing this process.
Drugs affect your breathing, heart rate, muscles, concentration, coordination, senses, pain level, and brain activity. They interfere with your body’s normal process and response systems. The drugs also affect your judgment and decision-making capabilities.
If your physical and mental capabilities are reduced, your performance will be as well. It will drop the level you play at. You will make more mistakes, affecting both you and your team’s outcome.
Whether you use illegal drugs, abuse prescription drugs, or performance enhancing drugs, in the long run, none will pay off the way you want them to!
