On Sept. 17, De Soto High School students were addressed by Joe White, who gave a presentation against underage drinking.

White was a high school senior at Washburn Rural High School in Topeka when he made one decision Homecoming night that changed his life forever.

After a night of partying and drinking in 2006, White jumped from a car that was going about 35 mph, imitating a stunt from the movie Jackass, while his friends filmed him.

“I was so stupid,” he said. “I was so ignorant. I was drinking.”

White and three other boys had planned to film themselves imitating various stunts from the movie and then sell the film to make money. Their plan cost them much more than what they had bargained for.

A portion of the videos the boys took was shown to DHS students before White spoke to the students. During the video, one of the other boys shot White in the chest with a BB gun, and after being shot, White was said he wouldn’t have done that if he had been sober.

Later on in the video, DHS students witnessed White jump out of a moving car and land on the ground, injuring his head along with the rest of his body.

He was taken to the hospital where he was treated for traumatic brain injury. He had to wait three days before the doctors could perform brain surgery to reduce the swelling of a blood clot because his blood was too thin from the alcohol. He gradually got better and started therapy. White’s condition continued to improve and he decided to spread his story and advise other teenagers not to drink.

“Look at me,” White said. “Every day is a struggle. College, I can’t do it. Short [term] memory, I can’t do it, at all.”

White’s injuries include paralysis on the right side of his body and a limitation on his reading, writing and speaking.

White’s story has had a large impact on DHS students such as sophomore Tori Marshall.

“I thought that it was pretty moving,” Marshall said. “A lot of people willl come in saying someone they know did this. Not very many people come in and say, this is what happened to me.”

Marshall thinks the presentation “will have an impact on a lot of people.”

White has spoken in front of about 60 to 70 different schools in Kansas, and he hopes that he can spread his story across the entire country.

“Think really, really hard,” White said. “Look at me. Be wise. Be smart. Don’t do it.”