Dr. Poppins
Medicine Wisdom for Modern Minds
Just a spoonful of prevention…
Dr. Poppins is a non-profit organization providing practical, science-based drug safety education for teens and young adults. Founded by a clinical pharmacist specializing in addiction medicine, psychiatry, and harm reduction, we offer a variety of programs to educate individuals and communities about substance safety and ultimately reduce the most serious risks of drug use.
About Dr. Poppins
About Our Mission
Our organization is dedicated to expanding honest, compassionate education around substance use, consciousness, and healing. We believe that informed choices, supportive communities, and thoughtful guidance can transform how youth, individuals and communities engage with substances.
We provide educational programming for teens and young adults that goes beyond traditional abstinence-only messaging. Our programs focus on empowering youth with accurate information, critical thinking skills, and real-world strategies for making safe and informed choices around alcohol, drugs, and emerging substances. By fostering open dialogue, reducing stigma, and emphasizing harm reduction and wellbeing, we help young people build the confidence and awareness needed to navigate complex social environments.
About Our Founder
Dr. Melissa Brewster is a drug safety educator with 20 years of experience in psychiatric pharmacology, addiction medicine, harm reduction, and clinical pharmacy practice. She received her Doctorate of Pharmacy from the University of Utah and completed a residency at Alaska Native Medical Center. A nationally recognized leader in addiction and harm reduction, Melissa is dedicated to educating both youth and adults about substance safety. She has served as a lecturer and/or faculty for OHSU Addiction Medicine, University of Utah College of Pharmacy, pharmacy residency programs, and multiple psychedelic training programs throughout the country. Her approach combines scientific rigor, clinical expertise, and cool mom vibes… and students LISTEN.
Melissa is a mother, a flower farmer, a thru-hiker, and a dedicated student of consciousness.
Youth substance education in the United States has failed to prepare students to make informed choices around substances, instead teaching students to obey the rule of abstinence (“Just Say No!') or commit to being substance free (D.A.R.E.) without providing a framework of HOW to THINK about substances.
In this 2-hr interactive presentation, Dr. Brewster (aka Poppins), a Clinical Pharmacist specializing in drug safety education, addiction medicine, and psychiatric pharmacology, gives youth a model for how to think about drugs starting with the key principles of substance safety including: dose (and overdose), source (and purity), intention (why am I doing this right now? What might it bring me? What might the consequence be? Have I stopped asking myself why?), set and setting, and addiction potential. Most critically- we introduce the concept of “death drugs”, the substances we recommend nobody use, not even once, because the risks are too high.
Examples of real-world concepts from her curriculum include: legal frameworks as poor indicators of drug safety as alcohol and tobacco remain the two deadliest drugs, how to respond to a suspected overdose with naloxone, drugs most likely to kill teens, cannabis risks to youth specifically, and self-reflection questions around personal substance use which reveal high-risk behaviors and loss of control, if use does occur.
Dr. Brewster strongly believes in bodily autonomy as a basic human right. She believes providing drug education with specific tools supporting safety and self-examination supports more conscious, informed exploration (or abstinence) with less stigma and secrecy. After raising two daughters, she recognizes that youth have autonomy of choice informed by less developed brains- meaning teens require both education and boundaries. She teaches young people to think critically, practice intellectual honesty, and explore the natural world safely, a holistic approach to helping kids navigate the real world. Dr. Poppins does not condone nor condemn substance use of any kind.
Dr. Brewster continually updates curriculum with current evidence and data, but admits she cannot keep up with Gen Alpha vocabulary. She has taught hundreds of middle and high school students about drug safety since 2013.
