Troubled Teens Resources

A new series by HBO, Addictions, is bound to add more fuel to the debate surrounding the causes
of substance abuse. Is addiction a disease? If so, does that absolve the addict of responsibility?

“Intended to do more than entertain or alarm, then, “Addiction” is meant to sober people up. To that end, its message is this: Drug and alcohol addiction are diseases of the brain, and they can be treated, at least partly, with medicine.

This straightforward message is remarkable for at least two reasons. First, it’s intrinsically controversial, since A.A. for a long time expected its participants to refrain entirely from drug use, even prescription pills. The model of addiction presented here — addiction as a brain disease — is somewhat at odds with the cognitive model used in classic 12-step programs.

Second, it’s remarkable that so many top-notch filmmakers have consented to push someone else’s point so hard. It’s almost ominous. The sameness of the films in “Addiction” might aid its effectiveness as propaganda, but as art it’s monotone; it’s hard to believe it’s the collaborative work of so many otherwise individualistic artists.”
When Cravings Don’t Quit/Virginia Heffernan

Frankly, parents of a drug abusing teenager don’t care to parse the root causes of their child’s misery, they want to get immediate help. Addiction is dependency. Addiction is giving up your power. Disease or not, the fact remains that the troubled teen still needs to  learn how to realize the power of choice and how to effectively choose what is right.

Like so much else concerning teenage drug abuse -the appropriate therapies, the effective schools, the types of discipline - there will be many conflicting schools of thought. Perhaps a friend, an ex-addict as well as a cancer survivor, frames the nature of the debate best of all.

“I remember choosing to buy a bag of dope and I remember choosing to put a needle in my arm and I can remember choosing to quit. Thing is, when they told me I had cancer, well, i don’t remember having much choice about that at all.”