by Nathan Mol­loy – 14 Aug 2025

PREVENTION is Bet­ter is a sub­stance abuse pre­ven­tion train­ing pro­gramme. Their mis­sion is to break the cycle of sub­stance use dis­order by provid­ing evid­ence based pre­ven­tion edu­ca­tion in schools, work­places, and com­munit­ies world­wide.

Its CEO and founder, Ryan Ulrich, has over 20 years of exper­i­ence work­ing in addic­tion and treat­ment and drug pre­ven­tion space. Speak­ing to the Sligo Week­ender, Ryan says that he uses his own lived exper­i­ence of over­com­ing addic­tion to treat people and that he has worked in this field across many dif­fer­ent coun­tries.

Its CEO and founder, Ryan Ulrich, has over 20 years of exper­i­ence work­ing in addic­tion and treat­ment and drug pre­ven­tion space. Speak­ing to the Sligo Week­ender, Ryan says that he uses his own lived exper­i­ence of over­com­ing addic­tion to treat people and that he has worked in this field across many dif­fer­ent coun­tries.

“I have my own lived exper­i­ence of over­com­ing my own sub­stance use addic­tion and I’ve been in healthy recov­ery for over 24 years. I’ve been work­ing in this field in the US and I spent quite a long time, 16 years in China, work­ing there and about four years here in Ire­land. So I’ve worked with many schools and in dif­fer­ent coun­tries across the world deliv­er­ing these kind of pro­grams.”

The ideal Pre­ven­tion is Bet­ter pro­gramme in a school accord­ing to its CEO is one which is run over the course of a week. After that, Ryan says that he hopes either schools or cor­por­a­tions keep them on for a period of three years as that is when they can note the changes in atti­tude in people towards sub­stance abuse.

The ideal Pre­ven­tion is Bet­ter pro­gramme in a school accord­ing to its CEO is one which is run over the course of a week. After that, Ryan says that he hopes either schools or cor­por­a­tions keep them on for a period of three years as that is when they can note the changes in atti­tude in people towards sub­stance abuse.

“Ideally, we would love to work with the school or cor­por­a­tion over a two to three year period. That’s where we can really see the changes in atti­tudes and beha­vior just to really pre­vent and make an impact. That’s really our mis­sion. So it’s quite flex­ible depend­ing on the needs of the school or the cor­por­a­tion.”

“Ideally, we would love to work with the school or cor­por­a­tion over a two to three year period. That’s where we can really see the changes in atti­tudes and beha­vior just to really pre­vent and make an impact. That’s really our mis­sion. So it’s quite flex­ible depend­ing on the needs of the school or the cor­por­a­tion.”

Pre­ven­tion is bet­ter than the cure is a com­monly used pro­verb defined by that it is bet­ter to stop something bad hap­pen­ing than to deal with it after it has happened. Ryan believes that in his field, it is massively import­ant to pre­vent someone get­ting addicted to alco­hol or drugs as it can have a dev­ast­at­ing impact not only them but their fam­ily and friends.

“I think it’s very import­ant and it’s abso­lutely pos­sible [to pre­vent sub­stance abuse].

“I think it’s very import­ant and it’s abso­lutely pos­sible [to pre­vent sub­stance abuse].

“There’s a very evid­ence based way to go about that as well because as we all know when some­body’s addicted to even vap­ing or cigar­ettes or alco­hol, it’s dev­ast­at­ing, not only for the indi­vidual, but for the fam­ily and the com­munity.

“From a health per­spect­ive, each euro inves­ted in pre­ven­tion saves about nine times that in terms of costs over­all, jails or health care. That doesn’t even include the impact on the com­munity. So it’s kind of an over­looked but extremely import­ant part of the broader part of health care and treat­ment over­all.”

Efforts to stop people using drugs has changed over the years. In the 1970s, the phrase “War on Drugs” was pop­ular­ised by then US Pres­id­ent

Efforts to stop people using drugs has changed over the years. In the 1970s, the phrase “War on Drugs” was pop­ular­ised by then US Pres­id­ent

Richard Nixon when he declared drug abuse “pub­lic enemy num­ber one” in June 1971. Accord­ing to Ryan, sub­stance abuse pre­ven­tion has changed a lot since then and that now they’re using a trauma based approach which is more evid­ence based.

“I think even longer, maybe about 40 years ago from the US there was kind of just say no or these scare tac­tics in terms of pre­ven­tion, which was shown sci­en­tific­ally to not work at all. And then there more of an edu­ca­tion approach, which is good.”

“But now we’re mov­ing more towards a trauma-informed approach, where we under­stand the impact both on the fam­ily and the com­munity, the impact on the body in car­ry­ing the trauma. So we take all those evid­ence-based approaches into the classroom. And that’s shown to be more and more effect­ive and have greater impact.”

“But now we’re mov­ing more towards a trauma-informed approach, where we under­stand the impact both on the fam­ily and the com­munity, the impact on the body in car­ry­ing the trauma. So we take all those evid­ence-based approaches into the classroom. And that’s shown to be more and more effect­ive and have greater impact.”

The rise of AI has also help Pre­ven­tion is Bet­ter to get more data to help with their pro­grammes.

“I think the rise of AI and data has had a sig­ni­fic­ant impact as well. So now we can col­lect more GDPRcom­pli­ant data. We can make more impact assess­ments. And that’s part of everything that we do, very datadriven as an organ­iz­a­tion.”

Earlier this year, the HSE’s clin­ical lead on addic­tion, Pro­fessor Eamon Keenan said that approx­im­ately 20% of young people show­ing up to addic­tion ser­vices are using HHC, syn­thetic marijuana. Accord­ing to Ryan, his organ­isa­tion are see­ing this becom­ing more of a prob­lem along with dual addic­tion issues which affects people’s men­tal health.

“So we’re see­ing, espe­cially with the leg­al­iz­a­tion of marijuana in the US, in other coun­tries, that’s become more of a prob­lem. There’s new sub­stances, new psy­cho­act­ive sub­stances that are com­ing into the mar­ket. Dual addic­tion and issues around addic­tion and men­tal health, which has always been there.

“These are becom­ing more pre­val­ent. And so these are just some of the trends that we’re see­ing and the changes over the years.”

Vap­ing and cocaine use has caught the national media’s atten­tion over the past few years. Accord­ing to the rehab­il­it­a­tion facil­ity, Rut­land Centre, women rep­res­ent one of the fast­est grow­ing groups seek­ing treat­ment for cocaine. Treat­ment for the drug as a primary addic­tion rose from 17% in 2023 to 23% in 2024, sig­nalling one of the sharpest single year increases recor­ded for any sub­stance at the centre.

Accord­ing to Ryan, both vap­ing and cocaine have a lot of mis­in­form­a­tion online which makes people think they’re not harm­ful.

“Young women look­ing at cocaine, cocaine has no cal­or­ies, is the typ­ical thing they’ll say. And sure, but that’s not, it’s not a healthy option, to say the least. So there’s these mis­per­cep­tions about these sub­stances being safe or not very harm­ful. There’s a tre­mend­ous amount of mis­in­form­a­tion, espe­cially with things like Tik­Tok or social media. The same with vap­ing as well.”

“For the young kids, they see celebrit­ies vap­ing or blow­ing smoke rings. It looks very attract­ive and all the dif­fer­ent fla­vors. That’s abso­lutely not the case.

“Nicot­ine is one of the most addict­ive sub­stances. Even using a vape one or two times with a high con­cen­tra­tion of nicot­ine is enough to get some­body addicted for life. It’s dif­fi­cult to quit after that.”

“Nicot­ine is one of the most addict­ive sub­stances. Even using a vape one or two times with a high con­cen­tra­tion of nicot­ine is enough to get some­body addicted for life. It’s dif­fi­cult to quit after that.”

Source:  https://www.pressreader.com/ireland/sligo-weekender/20250814/281977498705333