KINGSTON — When registered psychiatric nurse Colleen Williams spoke to students in Christine Jamison’s Kingston Junior High School classroom Thursday, she had a bluntly resounding message.

“It’s not good to light anything on fire and suck it into your lungs,” Williams said during “The Real Inside Story,” a presentation from the Choice and Consequence Organization.

The Arlington-based program has visited and educated school kids around Washington since 2002, comparing real human organs — both clean and with cancer — and allowing students to see and even feel, the effects of drugs, alcohol and tobacco.

“The difference is so dramatic,” Williams said. “I think with kids they hear, they see, and they need to touch. All that kind of stuff combines and things really sink in.”

Made possible by a $1,000 grant from the Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe, Williams and her assistant — and mother — Marylou Hoidal spent the entire school day speaking to students at KJH. But before laying the organ evidence down in front of the class, Williams shared her past.

During a turbulent and troubled teenage stage of life, Williams — now a grandmother — found herself making poor decisions that would affect her for the rest of her life without a second thought.

After starting smoking in the fifth grade, she didn’t let up for more than 15 years.

In 1995, she got a wake-up call, she said, when her young son asked, “Mom, if you love me, why are you committing slow suicide?”

“I haven’t been able to pick up a cigarette since because I realized at that moment that that’s what I was doing,” Williams said.

Through “The Real Inside Story” she relayed that stark message to KJH students, rattling off shocking statistics in front of a backdrop of drug-free informational posters.

Inhaling one cigarette is inhaling 4,000 chemicals, she said.

One’s aorta — the human body’s largest artery — cinches slightly for two hours after one cigarette, therefore raising blood pressure.

Minors (ages 12-18) are more likely to become addicted to chemicals due to the immature protein that makes up their organs, she said.

Those are just a few of the facts Williams provided the class with before students got a chance to see what she was talking about.

After showing a smooth, healthy lung, Williams told the story of Jeff, whose grayish organs were ravaged, stripped and discolored.

It took 15 years for Jeff to die after he was first diagnosed with lung cancer … but it took Tim only six months, Williams said.

“(That’s) because everybody is different,” she said. “When you put something in your body, it’s going to do something with it. And that may be different than everyone around you.”

But, she reiterated, every choice has its consequence. In her case, Williams was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2002.

That prompted her to quit her job and use her past indiscretions to speak to kids about the dangers of drugs, alcohol and tobacco for a living.

“You can be anything you want to be if you’re drug and alcohol free,” she said.