Troubled Teens Resources

The youth of today are faced with many different challenges and pressures on every front.  They are pressured by peers to experiment with drugs and engage in sexual activities.  It is difficult for the youth of today to stand up to the pressures of their peers they “hang out” with.  Some teens can experiment with drugs a little and decide if they like the experience.  If they decide they don’t like the way they feel when they are high they quit and move on.  The problem is some youth are unable to stop after their first experience.  With Meth such an affordable drug and so readily available many teens are unable to break the craving to continue to use it.  It is a fact that many people become a Meth addict after one experimental try of the deadly drug.   For more information on this popular drug follow this link to Meth information.  The link will take you to a site entitled Teen Success.  The site is very informative and can give you suggestions on how to help your teen succeed.  You can also find information on boarding schools for troubled teens.

Tipton Academy is one school that Teen Success refers to.   Tipton Academy is an all boy campus using positive peer pressure and a unique dog training program.  The boys are able to train a dog and then help the recipient, a physically challenged person learn to utilize the animal.  This method has proven very successful, and has assisted many teens in turning their lives around.  The positive peer pressure is very effective in helping teens learn how to motivate each other and how to receive constructive criticism.  The teen is much more likely to respond to direction from a peer than an adult.  This is why the positive peer culture has proven so effective.

Meadowlark Academy is another program the Teen Success refers to.  It is an all girl’s facility also using positive peer pressure combined with the dog training program.  Girls are able to train the dogs very effectively and the dogs respond very well to them.  The girls are also responsive to the positive peer pressure.  In many cases the problems troubled teens have in life are tied to following the crowd mostly because of the peer pressure that drives the crowd.  Once a teen learns to be free thinking, independent, and not so worried about what their negative friends think they are well on their way to success. 

“…the people were different but their look was the same - missing teeth, sunken cheeks, white skin, pus-filled sores and sunken eyes.”

Teen crisis intervention has never been more urgent than the current multi-state anti-meth campaign.

The TV ads, billboards and videos highlight the radical devastation that meth administers to it’s addicts. There is no mercy with meth. Though heroin, cocaine, and crack are just as deadly, their decimating effects are not nearly so evident as those left by meth addiction.

“This one didn’t survive,” Holley said about one the addicts, pictured on the big screen.

Another woman’s face illuminated with an air of lifelessness to it, but she was actually alive and in the middle of a meth “crash” - which is a multi-day long period of rest after a long bender.

“This is day two … After I got the tube out her throat,” Holley said.

“Why does it have to be so ugly,” she asked, before explaining that addicts have “chains” around their “veins.”

Different rhymes peppered Holley’s anti-meth points.

“The high is a lie,” she told the students, because meth gives people a feeling of power and control, even though addicts lack those virtues, she said.

The percentage of high school-aged people using methamphetamine has dropped every year for 10 years, Holley told her audience.

But meth customers die, and their pushers move on to look for new clientele - like the students in Monday’s audience, Holley said.

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Vanity, thy name is teenager. And that’s as it should be - for awhile. Narcissism will, in a healthy human being, give way to compassion, empathy and regard for others. But for awhile, teens are indeed vain. That is what the producers of the newest campaign against teen age drug abuse are appealing to when they developed and produced a short film depicting the grotesque results of meth addiction.

“To avoid tired clichés and hollow messages, the group attempted to appeal to an issue close to the heart of young people — themselves.

“ We really tried to get into the vanity issues of what you look like if you’re a meth user, ” Maloney said.

The spots, which are in both English and Spanish, focus on how quickly the drug ages users by rotting their teeth and wrinkling their skin and how easy it is to become addicted to the substance.

“ Young people will have a little bit more of an in-your-face experience with it in an entertaining way, ” he said. “ There’s no reason to try to sugar-coat this stuff. Be honest and sincere about what you’re trying to tell people, and it comes through. ”

It comes through on billboards, on TV specials saturating the local air waves, and in spots slotted to run between previews and movies at the theater. The power of meth to ravage communities is keenly felt by entire towns whose youth have been targeted by drug cartels from south of the border. A stark, candid presentation was deemed to be the right approach.

“Maloney determined that the same old educational techniques wouldn’t work anymore. Young people are relational, and their own encounters with the ill effects of drug use will convince them more than any cliché ever will, he said.”

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Do you feel blindsided? You just went through your son’s bedroom, you were only picking up laundry, and there it was. What is it, a stash, is that what they call it? You don’t know the lingo of teen age drug abuse yet but you do know your pain pills when you see them. And you know damn well that’s pot.

You look around the room at the trophies, the photos of him on the swim team, his awards. You just had a great golf outing with him. What in blue blazes is going on?

Some parents are just plain irresponsible. They don’t see casual drug use as any more than a rite of passage. But then there are those conscientious and dedicated parents who did it right, they feel that they have a good relationship with their kids. The possibility of their teen using drugs just didn’t ever seem possible.

“By all accounts, Jimmie Moyer was a typical American kid. He played sports, his family took vacations together, there was nothing – nothing at least immediately visible – to suggest that he was at risk for drug addiction.

But around the time he was 12 years old, Owens said, Jimmie began to smoke pot. Over an extended period of time, his drug of choice changed to methamphetamine and his usage soared, to the point where he was using significant amounts per day.”
[…]
After a long battle with methamphetamine addiction, he came to his family asking for help in his own personal war against the drug. His family sent him to a recovery facility out-of-state to separate him for the drug dealers and users that he knew.

Six days into that recovery program, he took his life.”

(source)

One front in the war on teen age drug abuse is the ongoing battle against meth. Meth takes an immeasurable toll on the communities it infests. Unlike other drug pursuits, meth carries with it the additional dangers of meth labs, volatile chemicals and explosions. Yet all drug battles need concerned citizens and funding. Take away support and the dealers win.

Michigan has made great strides in protecting their teens at risk from meth, but without continuing financial support, all efforts are for naught. As a parent, be aware of legislation and political maneuvering that might affect anti-drug programs in your area.

“Two years ago, southwestern Michigan was awash in methamphetamine.

Hundreds of meth labs had been discovered in homes, hotel rooms, trucks and woods. Houses were rendered unlivable by meth chemicals. Children of meth addicts were abused and neglected. Dozens of cattle died at a Richland farm after thieves stealing anhydrous ammonia — an ingredient in meth — left a valve open, allowing release of the poisonous gas.

Police, state and local officials took action. They poured time and money into combating the meth problem. The state Legislature voted to put pseudoephedrine — another ingredient in meth — behind the counter at pharmacies. Police worked overtime, money became available to help property-owners clean up contaminated sites, children were removed from dangerous homes where meth was cooked, addiction-treatment programs geared at getting people off of the very addictive drug were set up.”
[…]
…if the state government shuts down on Oct. 1…so would state funding to combat meth. Even the state Web site identifying contaminated properties would shut down.

This area has made important strides in fighting off a very dangerous plague.

We can’t afford to retreat.

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Teens at risk are not likely to imagine themselves paralyzed or disabled from a stroke. Unfortunately, too many able bodied, other wise healthy teens are putting their life on the line just so they can snort one more line of meth.

Teen age drug abuse has so many negative ramifications for the entire life of the teen, while all they think they are doing is “just getting high”, never considering that, even should they get clean, they still will have land mines left in their body from their drug use.

Studies conducted by doctors have indicated that troubled teenagers who make a habit of meth can look forward to a very increased possibility for a stroke.

“With help from his colleagues, neurologist Wengui Yu, now at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, examined two women, ages 29 and 36, both of whom used methamphetamine and then suddenly experienced weakness and difficulty in speaking. Brain scans revealed both women had suffered severe strokes from tears in the inner lining of one of the major arteries in the neck, an injury known as carotid artery dissection.
[…]
This suggests tears in arteries may be an effect linked to a class of drugs rather than to a specific drug.
[…]
“If larger studies confirm these findings and the suspicions of many that this is not a rare process, this could open up an avenue for intervention when it comes to methamphetamine. It could prevent a rise in frequency in the expensive and disabling condition of stroke,” says Cramer. Data from such studies could “help physicians to better diagnose, treat, and prevent stroke in young adults,” says Yu.”

(Source)

Those teens and many parents who think any type of teen crisis intervention is overblown hype ought to spend a few hours reading the stories of teens who have lost their lives or sanity, or both, on meth. Teens are notorious for “knowing it all and one thing troubled teenagers will flatly declare is that they can’t or won’t get addicted - nope - never happen to them.

“I met a few guys that turned me on to some meth one night. I wasn’t afraid of it because I knew I was different. I have been through a lot in my life and was always was always
ok. I could use a little and still get my life together in Atlanta.”

But that is not how meth works.

“Addiction happens quickly.

Within days, all I cared about was more meth. I started shooting meth.
[…]
I hadn’t been in Atlanta six months and I went from a guy with $15,000, high hopes and plans to homeless, penniless, sick and begging for money from passersby. In the bitter cold nights I could usually call my parents or grandparents and talk them into a hotel room. They would beg me to come home and get well, but I couldn’t. I needed the meth.
[…]
Meth is a killer.It presents itself as your best friend, but quickly becomes the antichrist in your life. Once you’ve been there you almost can’t escape — I’m still not sure I’ve escaped.”

(Source)

He is still haunted, still pursued, still vulnerable. To this day the boy can not go back to Atlanta, the city he used in, for fear of triggering the addiction one more time.

Guess I’m stuck on the meth meme today. There certainly are some compelling stories of how absolutely corrosive and vile this addiction is. One young man, when describing the destruction meth wrought in his life, said something that caught my attention.

“The meth gets you thinking three things. You have a fear of life, fear of success, and fear of self. When this happened I seemed to not have the will to go or ask for help. ”

(Source)

Just as that is the exact formula for a life of failure, it’s opposite is a good description of how schools for troubled teens and military boarding schools turn the addict around.

A good teen boarding school will have teachers and programs that teach teens to embrace life, not fear it. A good teen program will teach a troubled teenager the incremental steps of achieving success - the discipline, the perseverance - all of those little mental muscles that a recovering teen has to ‘work out’ until they are fit and toned.

Fear of self is also part and parcel of addiction. When your life is collapsed around you, friends gone, money depleted, health deteriorating, an addict grows to have a deep distrust of themselves. Unworthiness shrouds the self-image in a veil of self-recrimination and hate.

Fear of self can, however, be transformed into confidence in self. The troubled teen school dedicates much of their curriculum to helping a teen gain mastery over their talents, teaching them skills that the teen can leverage to pursue any goal that they finally decide on.

Attention deficit hyperactive disorder can set an at risk teen up for a fall if left undiagnosed. Or so it seems when hearing the story from a neighbor, Jean.

“I didn’t have a clue about ADD until my son was diagnosed. I’ve heard that a lot - parents discovering they had ADD that way - through studying their kid. Anyway, the first thing I was concerned about was that he would do what I did. I didn’t realize at the time, when I was a kid, that so much of my anxiety and frustration wasn’t normal.

But now, when I look back and remember going through my moms medicine cabinet and finding her diet pills and thinking I found heaven. The clarity and the relief - well, i can remember it to this day. And I think that was when I started self medicating and ended up using speed - well, that’s what they called meth back then. I was so grateful for Jason’s diagnosis. He doesn’t have to fall in the same trap.”

Jean’s trap lasted 16 years before she finally quit using drugs of all kinds at age 29. Back then there wasn’t nearly the amount of information on either ADHD or teen age drug abuse that there is today. Schools for troubled teens were not as proliferous and any type of teen age drug abuse was usually treated in a psychiatric hospital as a mental illness.

Testing your teenager for ADD doesn’t mean that you have to subject he or she to Ritalin. Jean worked with her son’s ADD with nutrition and classes that focused on teaching him to work with his condition.

Schools for troubled teens are often the last hope a recovering teen meth addict might have. Mosat troubled teenagers do not have any idea the horrific addictive power that this drug has. It is so severe a master, that it can turn a mother away from her own infant.

“I keep remembering a pair of fuzzy pink baby socks pinned to a bulletin board in a local residential drug treatment center. They were left behind by a young woman who walked away from her newborn baby because meth’s strident call was far stronger than the tenuous bonds of motherhood.”

All drug addictions are hard to kick, but meth may be the cruelest of them all. What teens at risk fail to understand or take seriously is that there can be permanent damage from meth use.

“…meth goes inside brain cells, damaging them. It takes at least a year or more for the body to heal itself, and not everyone’s brain recovers completely.

In the past year, absolutely none of the addicts I met were able to get clean and sober on their first attempt. They’ll often try rehab two, three or more times before finally breaking clear of the drug. It takes persistence and a program set up to counteract the long-term effects of this manmade substance, not just the initial issues of getting clean and sober.”

(source)

Troubled teen boarding schools allow a teen to have the time, support and psychological counseling necessary to put this monster out of their lives. Parents will, through research, be able to find good institution that specialize in addiction recovery.