USD 490 middle and high school students attended a substance abuse and mental health presentation by Tony Hoffman on Feb. 14, 2024. Middle school students and the community were invited to a morning presentation and high school students attended an afternoon presentation.
Hoffman was a professional BMX racer whose life changed drastically when his mental health issues led to substance abuse and eventual imprisonment. He was able to get back on track after sobering up, going from prison to the Olympics, opening a non-profit and eventually becoming a motivational speaker. His presentation focuses on the tie between mental health and our behavior.
“I’m not here to tell you not to do drugs,” Hoffman said. “You all already know that.”
Hoffman told students he was not there to tell them how to live their lives either. He told them he wanted to share his life experiences to provide them with tools they can use to help them navigate challenges and emotions in their own lives.
As a child, Hoffman dreamed of being in the NBA. He planned to graduate from the University of Michigan and get drafted into the league after that. Athletic talent came naturally for Hoffman in pretty much every sport and recruiters were coming to games to see him play as early as sixth grade.
During basketball season of his seventh grade year, Hoffman began feeling extremely uncomfortable going to school and was having thoughts of self-harm. He had developed social anxiety but did not talk about what he was feeling and began avoiding people. This led to isolation, depression, and apathy. With that negative state of mind, his dad missing his games because he had to work turned into negative self-thoughts.
Hoffman told students that the story he was telling himself at that time – that his dad didn’t come to his games because he didn’t love him and he wasn’t good enough – is what fed his apathy and “why should I care” attitude. In reality, his dad was working tirelessly to provide more opportunities for his sons than he had when he was young because he loved them so much.
“The story we create about our experiences is more important than the experience itself,” Hoffman said. “The story we tell ourself is what makes us go out into the world and do what we do.”
One of the ideas that Hoffman reiterated throughout his presentation is the need to find a trusted adult that students can talk to about what they are feeling. That adult can help connect students with resources or be there to help them navigate difficult emotions or situations in a healthy way.
The second thing students need most is a community of friends and supports that encourage them to love themselves and others and to continue to work to better themselves.
He told students there are only two mindsets and they have to decide which one they are going to live in: I can, I will, I am able or I can’t, I won’t, I’m not able. The people we surround ourselves with and the stories we tell ourselves can significantly affect which of those outlooks we choose.
After being kicked out of school in seventh grade for selling weed to another student, Hoffman’s dad told him to go with his brother to learn BMX racing. He became a top competitor with several sponsors and a spot on the cover of a magazine by the time he was in high school. Other people saw his success, but did not see his struggles with anxiety and depression.
Sleep was the first thing Hoffman used to escape his head. He told students that he used to think the goal was to stop himself from feeling uncomfortable, but what we need to do is find out why we are uncomfortable and deal with the underlying issues, not just temporarily block them.
Hoffman told students that our brains trick us into thinking the substances are fixing the issue, but they are not. Then, our brains begin to think we need that substance to feel better, which is when addiction kicks in.
At 18 years old, Hoffman thought money could buy everything he needed to fix himself. That the material things would somehow rid him of the uncomfortable emotions. When he was promised a job making six figures after he graduated high school, Hoffman quit BMX racing. That racing community was his support community and without it, he began subconsciously looking for a new one.
Other teens his age were partying, so he went to parties too. He began smoking to have an excuse to get away from the crowds. After the job did not pan out, he moved back home and began partying even more.
Hoffman equated addiction to an invisible door. Once someone steps through it, they cannot simply decide they want to go back through and leave. He told them that he knew 17 people that had gone back through the door in a casket, one of whom was his best friend.
When Hoffman was younger, nobody worried about dying of an overdose until after they had gone through that invisible door. These days, all it takes is trying something one time to die of an overdose because so many substances are being laced with fentanyl. The way opioids work is to make the brain stem sleepy. Fentanyl paralyzes the brain stem, meaning the person cannot blink, talk, breathe, and their heart cannot beat. It takes less than five minutes to die after a fentanyl overdose.
For people between the ages of 18 and 45, the number one cause of death is fentanyl-related right now.
Hoffman talked about his progression from cigarettes to smoking weed, to sharing a half of a prescription opioid pill, to full addiction. He talked about how the withdrawals are so painful that people will do almost anything to get more of whatever substance is going to make that suffering stop.
At 21 years old, Hoffman robbed a friend’s mother at gun point to obtain more opioids. He told students that was the biggest regret of his life and he decided he never wanted to do that again. It was not enough to make him sober up though. Eventually, Hoffman’s addiction led him to sleeping on the streets and he was arrested for breaking into a rental house to survive a particularly cold night.
In prison, Hoffman sobered up. He found something written on his ceiling that inspired him to turn his life around. He went to therapy to identify his emotions and get help navigating them. He set four goals for himself: to race BMX professionally, go to the Olympics, start a non-profit that helped youth, and to become a professional mental health and substance abuse speaker.
Hoffman told students that discipline is a muscle that has to be developed. He said that it is important that when they feel like they do not want to do something that they should, they need to do it anyway. We need to adopt small behaviors we have control over and keep adding to them until real change is made and we reach our goals.
“How we do the small things is how we do the big things,” Hoffman said.
After being paroled, Hoffman achieved his goal of becoming a professional BMX racer. A couple of years later, that career came to an abrupt end when he was injured during a race. He told students that just because we want something and work hard to get it does not always mean we will have it.
“Sometimes life takes us in directions we don’t want to go,” Hoffman said. “That’s why it is so important to have a safe adult to talk to and a community of supporters that love us.”
After the injury, Hoffman became a BMX coach and started his first non-profit Freewheel Project. One of the racers he coached made it to the Olympics, so Hoffman was able to reach his goal of participating in the Olympics, it was just as a coach instead of an athlete. He began talking to local groups and eventually his speaking engagements expanded into a full-time career talking to people across the country about mental health and substance abuse.
Hoffman allowed students to ask questions after each presentation and left them with parting advice: find a safe adult to talk to and surround yourself with a community that loves you and is willing to grow and get better. What seems to fix someone instantly will take them to a place of misery. Dealing with emotions takes time and can feel bad at first, but that is what ultimately takes them to a place of genuine peace and happiness.
To learn more about Tony Hoffman, visit his website: https://tonyhoffmanspeaking.co...