Troubled Teens Resources

“Matt says at the facility they were forced to wear the same clothes and shave their heads, and they aren’t allowed to speak unless spoken to. “They strip you of your identity,” he says. Matt spent three months at Casa by the Sea, but “most people are there for years,” he says.
[…]
“They scared me straight,” he says.”

Not even the most severe schools for troubled teens will put you through that. But if it is your third time in rehab for meth addiction and you aren’t even out of high school yet, severe consequences are in order.

The frightening aspects of addiction may however follow troubled teens far into adulthood. Because it re-trains your brain. It acts on reward centers in such a way that they may ultimately be incapacitated, suggesting an addicts ability to “activate” the pleasure or reward centers in their brain just may not function anymore.

“When a person uses a substance for a long period of time, the neurons that produce dopamine can become impaired, and they appear to turn off. When this happens, the body stops producing dopamine because the drugs look and act just like it, Parker says.

“The trick is to find behavioral ways to turn them back on,” he says. “But it’s unclear whether that is always possible.”

Some drugs, Parker says, can damage a person’s neurotransmitter systems so badly that he may never be able to return to homeostasis, the body’s normal state before the addiction.”

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