Title: Curiosity – Sex and Alcohol
This talk may be best used if you’re specifically asked to speak to the school, year group or youth group about sex and alcohol, excessive partying etc.
Activity:
You’ll need a dice, Six prizes laid out on a table: one of them must be a £5, the others range between naff and good eg, Onion, mars bar, big bar of chocolate, 2p coin, bag of seeds. You’ll need a bag of lollies as well.
Announce what the prizes are, saying £5 note last. Get three volunteers to come and roll the dice, should be easy. Say you have a list linking numbers to the prizes. You can either be really honest about this and choose the numbers beforehand, so if they roll a 3 and you’ve said 3 is the £5 they get it, or you choose the numbers on the spot whilst looking at the list, which isn’t entirely untruthful eg look at a blank piece of paper without hinting that there’s anything on it and say ‘number 2? that’s the brussel sprout I’m afraid.’ This way you get to keep the fiver if you so wish!
IMPORTANT: when they roll the dice say ‘Number 4 you can either have the actual prize linked to No 4 or you can have a lolly here and now and forfeit the prize whether it’s good or bad.’
Talk:
Curiosity is a real motivation for a lot of what we do. Most people in this game could have got the lolly but they all wanted to see if they’d won the fiver or not. Now we often don’t know where curiosity will lead us but just as in that game, the outcome can be either negative or positive. Most of us would be willing to take the risk to see if we’d won the fiver, but sometimes when curiosity presents us with an option even though it might seem like an adventure we have to work out whether it’s worth the risk or not.
For instance can you remember ever eating something weird just to see what it tasted like? Have you ever fancied trying one of those big slimy grubs from ‘I’m a celebrity get me out of here.’?
The Harry Potter author, J K Rowling, when asked what her earliest memory was, claimed that it was her sisters birth. Whilst her mother was in labour upstairs Joanne – that’s what the J in J K stands for - was given some play-doh to keep her busy. She said she didn’t remember meeting her new baby sister but she did remember eating the play doh.
Or have you tried an experiment with disastrous results?
An English Lord from the last century said that the reason he threw his mother’s Spaniel dog out of the window as a young boy was because he’d been told that if you throw a dog into water it would instinctively learn to swim. He wanted to find out if a dog thrown out of a window would instinctively learn to fly.
Now you might have thought that that was a pretty stupid risk considering that dogs don’t have wings.
But often we can take pretty big risks when we’re curious even though we know the outcome might be harmful.
For instance not many people realise alcohol actually acts to depress your nervous system, meaning it stops you functioning properly.
One of the first parts of the brain it affects is your ability to make decisions, it affects your judgement.
So you maybe curious about just having one or two drinks at a party but having even one drink reduces your ability to be able to say no to another and another drink.
And when you’re completely drunk it’s almost impossible to say no to things you would never agree to sober:
Giving up your virginity to a bloke or girl who you know sleeps around a lot.
Having sex without a condom.
Having sex at all. Judges recently ruled in a rape case that saying ‘Yes’ to sex - even if you’re argument is you did it while you’re drunk - is still giving your agreement so people who take advantage of you while you’re drunk will always be able to claim you said ‘yes’ - and in those situations could you remember if you said ‘yes’ or ‘no.’?
Even having sex with a condom has risks. Professor Norman Hearst a leading authority on Sexually Transmitted Infections says that ‘even if condoms were 99 percent effective, whether you use condoms is less important than knowing the risk status of your partner’ have they slept around, have they been tested?
And at a party where everyone is concentrating on getting as drunk as they can who stops to find those things out?
You may be curious about getting drunk, having sex, doing what everybody else is doing but at the end of the day what’s it going to cost you? Is it worth the risk?
For Further Illustration:
Christian/ Faith Perspective:
Sometimes we lack curiosity: We think we have all the answers, we think we know what will make us happy whether that’s money, that latest greatest bit of technology or fame or sleeping with the right person. Often we’re so intent on getting hold of those things we never to stop to ask the biggest and most important question in life - why are we here on planet earth? Now that’s something worth being curious about.
More facts:
Alcohol, type ‘Young people and alcohol’ into the search engine on www.dh.gov.uk or head to www.hopeuk.org
And look at www.famyouth.org.uk for their info on ‘sexual spin.’
Powerpoint Hints:
Main points, image of grub from ‘I’m a celebrity’ image of J K Rowling and Play-doh, image of Spaniel dog! Quote from Professor Hearst.
The London Institute for Contemporary Christianity
