Troubled Teens Resources

Often a parent goes back and forth, agonizing whether to send their son or daughter to a troubled teen boarding school, and then they read an article like the one about the new “choking game”, and they decide they’d rather place their at-risk teen in a facility that will teach the confused adolescent basic common sense. Teach the teenager the value of life. Teach the young person to assess every situation in view of it’s possible consequences.

So may parents choose a military boarding school or boot camp to make sure that a troubled teen who is already exhibiting dangerous lapses in judgement, does not make a faulty judgement that will end their life.

This teen is one lucky young man and a “scared-straight, been-there-and-back spokesman against the choking game.”

“Levi Draher, 16, walked to the front of the Navarro High School gym in early March and picked up the microphone before a hushed audience of fellow teenagers.

“I died and came back,” he said.

Levi was found by his mother last Oct. 28, clinically dead, suspended on a rope he had slung across a bunk-bed frame. He had pushed his neck onto the rope, he told the rapt audience, aiming to achieve a surging rush as his brain was starved and then replenished with blood just before the point of unconsciousness.

The rush is the appeal of the choking game — or space cowboy or cloud nine or any of a dozen other names. In most schools and families it remains a subject of deep shadow and denial, students, parents and health professionals say.

“I did it because it felt good and I didn’t think I’d get caught,” said Levi, a slow-talking, sardonic skateboarder and hockey player from San Antonio. “Do I consider myself a miracle?” asked Levi, who told the students he had played the game three times before his accident. “Yes, I do.”

What happened that October afternoon was that Levi passed out faster than he could react and suffered a heart attack, said his mother, Carrie. His brain was deprived of oxygen for more than three minutes.”
(Source)

Often mistaken as suicide, statistics are hard to nail down about the number of deaths there have been from the choking game. And parents and experts are starting to address it more openly. To find out more about the “choking game” and other “games adolescents shouldn’t play” (GASP) go to G.A.S.P.s website.