Teen drug programs turn curious teens into crackheads

[Guest guest]

A friend in LiveJournal showed me the essay below. I thought

it might be of interest here. URL first, then the entire text in

case the link breaks at a later time.

 

Alobar

 

 

 

http://slate.msn.com/id/2076329/

 

Trick or Treatment

Teen drug programs turn curious teens into crackheads.

By Maia Szalavitz

Posted Friday, January 3, 2003, at 10:38 AM PT

 

 

America loves its quick fixes. Think your child might be on drugs?

Test him. Think your child's school is full of addicts? Test them

all. Institute a policy of zero tolerance: One strike and it's off to

a drug treatment program. Get those rotten apples out and clean them

up before they can poison the whole batch. Last year's Supreme Court

decision in Board of Education v. Earls allowed for a massive

expansion of drug testing in schools. And increases in drug testing

increase the numbers of offenders. As a result, schools and juvenile

courts are increasingly turning to both " zero tolerance " and

" treatment, not punishment " as a remedy.

 

The number of teenagers in drug treatment as a result of court

coercion and school diversion increased by nearly 50 percent between

1993 and 1998 according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human

Services' Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration,

and the number of teen admissions to treatment programs in general

rose from 95,000 in 1993 to 135,000 in 1999. But what if drug

" treatment " doesn't work for teens? What if, rather than decreasing

drug use, teen treatment actually encourages it by labeling

experimenting kids as lifelong addicts? What if it creates the worst

sorts of peer groups by mixing kids with mild problems with serious

drug users who are ready and willing to teach them to be junkies?

What if suggestible kids respond poorly to the philosophies that have

made Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous successful for many

adults? Then we'd be using " treatment " to turn ordinary adolescents

into problem drug abusers.

That's precisely what we're doing. A 1998 study of nearly 150

teenagers treated in dozens of centers across the country found that

there was 202 percent more crack abuse following treatment and a 13

percent increase in alcohol abuse. In other words, recent research

suggests that parents and schools may be sending

binge-drinking/social marijuana smokers off to treatment and getting

back crackheads in their stead.

Michael's case illustrates some of the dangers inherent in shipping

youngsters off to treatment programs. An 18-year-old marijuana smoker

and cocaine user I interviewed regarding drug treatment, Michael was

recently sent by his parents for drug treatment at the respected

Caron Foundation. But his $11,000 one-month treatment program

degenerated into a fruitless debate when his counselor wanted him to

admit that he was " powerless " over drugs. Michael, who didn't use

daily, wouldn't accept that. What teenager would admit to being

" powerless " over anything? Michael used again within four hours of

leaving treatment.

Michael's reaction may be the rule for teenagers, not the exception.

For an adult who has lost his wife, his job, his health, and his

home, admitting to a loss of control might help him recognize that

quitting drugs is the only way to solve his problems. But a teenager

may not be " in denial " when he says he can control his intake. Most

teenagers can. Conversely, forcing a teen to assert that they have no

control may do more harm than good, if they have only been

experimenting with drugs but are convinced, via treatment, that they

are serious addicts. If a teenager has been persuaded that she's

powerless and has a 90 percent chance of relapse, she's far less

likely to exercise self-control when confronted with a drink or

drugs. In fact, a 1996 study published by Bill Miller, professor of

psychology at the University of New Mexico, found that those adults

who most accepted the idea of personal powerlessness had the most

severe and dangerous relapses. Since teenage identities are fluid

anyway, encouraging them to view themselves as powerless addicts may

cement an anti-social identity that a teen was just trying on for

size.

The core problem with teen treatment programs is that most teen drug

or alcohol users are just not out-of-control addicts. More than one

teen in six who's forced into treatment does not even fit the

criteria for a " substance abuse disorder " (the less serious diagnosis

for an abuser), and most also don't have substance dependence (the

psychiatric term for addiction) at all, according to SAMHSA. More

troubling, SAMHSA statistics also show that about three-quarters of

the U.S. teens now being sent to treatment programs are diverted

there by courts or schools, rather than being referred by

professionals. In other words, many have problems no more serious

than those of their friends who've escaped detection.

In addition to labeling kids as addicts, drug programs may also

surround them with the worst possible influences. Studies show that

teens are more subject to peer pressure than adults-and more

influenced by the people around them. Teen treatment programs remove

teens from a healthy peer group and surround them with other problem

kids, virtually guaranteeing that their role models will be negative.

Group therapy during such treatment invariably involves discussions

of their drug experiences-which only makes the hard-drug users seem

" cooler " because their stories are so much more exciting. Worse,

aside from providing a way for relatively inexperienced kids to learn

about different ways of getting high and obtaining drugs, these

programs frequently offer kids new connections. One 17-year-old girl

from Florida told me that she hadn't used cocaine until after

treatment-her new best friend from rehab scored it for her.

There are treatments for teens that don't reinforce the labeling or

peer problems inherent in most drug programs. Research presented at a

spring conference held by the National Institute on Drug Abuse

compared teens who'd been sent to traditional group sessions with

peers to teens who received family therapy, with a third group who

had both kinds of care combined. The kids in the peer-group sessions

used 50 percent more marijuana after treatment, while the kids in the

combined treatment used 11 percent more pot. The teenagers treated

with their parents, however, decreased their marijuana use by 71

percent.

The greatest irony in the current well-intentioned treatment efforts

is that they ignore the few things we do know to be effective in

helping teens stop getting high, and chief among them is finishing

their education. The better educated someone is, the less likely he

is to become an addict or to have a lengthy course of addiction if he

does. So removing kids from school and placing them with a more

deviant peer group in an unproven therapy is madness-and not much

smarter than simply expelling them and tossing them on the street.

Not only is the education provided in treatment programs often

inferior to that in ordinary school, but having a drug-related

disciplinary record diminishes the chances of admission to a decent

college.

Ultimately, it's clear that the vast majority of teenagers (even

those with the very worst problems) simply " mature out " of drug use.

This natural recovery process is seen in statistics from the annual

federal household survey of drug use, which, for example, find that

while 18.4 percent of the population ages 18-24 in 2001 qualified for

a diagnosis of alcohol or other drug abuse or dependence, only 5.4

percent of those over 26 meet these criteria. Since less than 2

percent of the total population annually receives treatment

(including self-help), most of these young people are clearly

recovering on their own.

Why, then, do we insist on herding teenagers into inappropriate

treatment programs when allowing them to finish school works better?

Do parents really want their pot-smoking, experimenting

binge-drinkers (who are actually typically more moderate than their

own parents were at their age) tossed into " therapy " with heroin

injectors and told that they are powerless to resist?

Studies show that family therapy and behavioral one-on-one counseling

work better for teens than programs modeled on adult addicts. Even

for kids with genuine drug addictions, these sorts of treatments may

be more helpful, and it's long past time that such programs were

implemented in communities rather than debated in the academy. For

kids with minor drugs problems or-as is more often the case-for kids

who are just being kids, the philosophy must be: First, do no harm.

Although we may hate the idea, leaving kids alone and letting them

grow out of their habits makes far more sense than testing,

punishing, and " curing " them-by making them worse.

 

Maia Szalavitz is co-author of Recovery Options: The Complete Guide:

How You and Your Loved Ones Can Understand and Treat Alcohol and

Other Drug Problems.

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=53

RO5I2SP7 & isbn=047134575X & itm=1

She writes frequently on health and science.