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Reality Tour back and more vital than ever

Tara Maziarz, left, Julie Wilczynski and Colton Bittner perform a reenactment of a fatal drug overdose during CANDLE Inc.’s 2016 Reality Tour. Butler Eagle File Photo

In the three years since the Reality Tour took a hiatus for the coronavirus pandemic, more lethal street drugs and easier ways to ingest them are threatening young people in Butler County and across the U.S.

So Norma Norris, executive director at CANDLE Inc. and founder and creator of the Reality Tour, decided it was time to once again give families the tools to avoid the heartbreak of drug abuse by bringing the tour back.

Norris said Butler Area, Mars Area and Seneca Valley school districts have again partnered with the Reality Tour, and she is in talks with Karns City Area and Knoch school districts.

The Reality Tour is publicized at schools in the districts and students age 10 and older and their parents sign up online to take the tour, but any parents can attend with their children.

What to expect

The Reality Tour is a two-hour program where families go through a heart-wrenching fictional addiction story that uses brief acted-out scenes at the arrest, imprisonment, emergency room visit and death of a person suffering from drug addiction.

The brief scenes are narrated by the teen addict who is the subject of the story. Those in attendance stand among the volunteer actors as the scenes play out, not in chairs as an audience.

Related Article: Reality Tour back and more vital than ever

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