TEACHER SEEKS THE `NATURAL HIGH'

During the first weeks of the semester, Dr. Edward Leoni takes his health management students to the cemetery. All roads in life lead to the graveyard, he explains to them. They must decide whether to take the fast or the slow track.

It is all part of Leoni's Contemporary Drug Use class at Southeast Missouri State University. Leoni, professor of health and leisure at the university, teaches students about substance abuse prevention.

To Leoni, substance abuse is the fast track to the cemetery. The slow track is a healthy lifestyle, he said. His goal is provide good reasons for people to not use drugs.

Though actively working to prevent substance abuse in the college and throughout surrounding communities, Leoni is not blind to the attractiveness of drugs. Drugs can provide pleasure, he readily acknowledges, because of the chemical reactions they produce in the body.

But the body produces the same sorts of chemical reactions if we tap into them, Leoni said.

"When we smile, we send a message to the brain to get excited and chemically intrigued," he said. "The best sense of stimulation and high is in the brain."

His job in part, as he sees it, is to teach people to be naturally high through improving their self-image and showing them how to respect their bodies, minds and spirits.

For Leoni, the natural high may include taking long walks in nature, reading, listening to music or engaging in exercise.

"I want people to see that pleasure and happiness are not the same thing. Pleasure does not always lead to happiness," he said.

Instead, he asks his students and others to look for the meaningful events in life to find what has made them happy and strong.

A valuable part of that lifestyle enhancement includes altruism, which Leoni considers essential in helping people find their inner strength. Through performing altruistic acts, people learn that they are strong enough to give, he said.

To prove his point to his class, Leoni requires his students to participate in acts of altruism. Some visit nursing homes and read to the people who live there. Others visit their own grandparents and record family histories.

"Things that help them feel connected with others," he said.

Although the class does discuss issues of treatment for substance abuse, Leoni's major approach to combating abuse is to concentrate on prevention. He has had experience with both.

Before coming to SEMO, he worked as a mental health professional in Pulaski and Alexander counties in Illinois. There his work was mainly in treatment.

"Treatment is wonderful, but it's at the end of the process," he stated.