On February 29th, Chris Skinner came to Midlothian to deliver a motivational speech to the entire student body. The students filed into the auditorium not knowing what the presentation was going to be about. Upon entering, they were shocked to see a young man in a wheelchair on the stage. Puzzled, the students felt curious about the presentation. Chris Skinner introduced himself and began an autobiography, beginning with his life as a teenager in high school and his personal experiences with alcohol.

Skinner went on tell the students about his constant reliance on alcohol during his time at Radford. By flashing his college transcript on the screen, he illustrated that when he used alcohol his grades suffered tremendously, enough to put him on academic probation. His story suddenly took a sudden turn when he shared his experience at a wedding reception. He made an agreement with a friend that he would not drink any alcohol at the reception. Skinner admitted that he was about to leave the reception when a keg of beer caught his eye, and he could not stop himself. As he walked toward the keg, his friend stopped him to remind him of his promise and tried to stop him from the drinking. Unfortunately, he laughed at his friend and told him to buzz off. He now regards this decision as the worst of his entire life.

After a night full of drinking, Skinner, just a kid in his twenties, got into the car with his friends who were also drinking, to go to an after-party just five miles away. During the car ride, he unbuckled himself to spit tobacco out of the window. Unfortunately as they made the last turn before their destination, the driver ran the car into the ditch and flipped the car, throwing Chris Skinner like a ragdoll. When he tried to get up, he could not, and then he found it hard to breath. His friends came to him and realized he was seriously injured. Before calling an ambulance, they made sure to remove all evidence of alcohol use from the vehicle to ensure that they would not get DUIs. Skinner carefully points out the the teenage audience that true friends would have called 911 first; however, he had left his true friend at the reception. As soon as Skinner went to the hospital, doctors performed  intensive surgery on his spine. He was in a coma for over 10 days and awoke to find that he had broken the upper part of his spine, causing paralysis in all of his body except his arms and head.

By telling his story, Chris Skinner hopes to encourage teens to think and consider the risks and consequences of alcohol use. He ended his presentation by saying that he misses when he could get up out of bed and stretch out his hands and feed himself, instead of having someone else do it for him. In that accident, he lost many freedoms that we take for granted.