TEEN ISSUES-----drug rehab
cool1 Posted - 17 April 2002 16:32
I’m wondering if anyone knows anything about this.
What happens AFTER drug rehab?
In other words, will a rehab center help you out long-term or are you on your own?
Ppl. who were once addicted are really very at-risk, so if there's no long-term help, why bother?
Please answer! Really important!
MODERATOR Posted - 18 April 2002 16:23
The drug rehab place itself will arrange a program for you when you get out. It may involve periodic visits, therapy, or even continued medication (such as methadone). The rehab people will assess what is needed afterwards.
but a word of caution: The relapse rate after rehab is very high. From my experiences, rehab usually does NOT work in keeping the kid off drugs, and sometimes is even counterproductive (such as when the kid gets new "friends", learns of new tricks and new drug connections in rehab).
If the kid in rehab is going to get clean, he has to commit himself to be clean, period. No amount of rehab is going to take the place of simple commitment and willpower. It’s the level of commitment that is the determining factor in the rehab patient's success.
!sos! Posted - 22 April 2002 19:22
Towards the end of your stay at rehab they will help you set up a treatment plan for when you come home. It may include therapy\group therapy ...AA\NA groups etc. A strong aftercare plan is important to staying clean and sober.
Rehab can help and is important if your health is at risk and your life is out of control (though the addict may not think this is the case with his or her addiction) you are right in that there is a long road ahead and rehab will not fix your problem.
To make it really worth it try to be as honest and open as you can.
Have you tried to get help on the outside?
Do people tell you that you’re in denial?
Try to get the help you need while you can still make some of the choices and have some control as to where you go, because when it gets real bad you may just be sent.
good luck.
Sorry if the info is not all sweet. It’s no fun to be going through or have s\o you know go through this ****!
judy Posted - 22 April 2002 19:22
I'm I mom of 2 teens who are post-rehab.
There's lots involved with this issue and both sides can get very heated. Yes, addiction is known for the relapse factor.
But we do have to try to save lives. Rehab helps the kid get some tools to change themselves.
Nothing is a given; even if the addict were to be locked up in jail.
My sons are both around a year clean. They also go to 12 step meetings and hang with others who are committed to staying clean and sane.
In the states, the Yatzkan center in NY has had great success.
This will keep the teen in treatment with others from the same background. They also help provide support for that hard time post-rehab.
My own boys were in treatment for 8-9 months over here in
Contact me if you wish. We've had/have others from
You have to start somewhere. If you make rehab seem so negative, then who'd ever want to attempt it? They'd just keep themselves in a cycle of fun/denial.
BTW: drugs do kill
Rehab, especially a Jewish one, gives you hope
judy Posted - 22 April 2002 19:22
Hi again,
I just reread this so I have more to add. Willpower minus the support and tools will only result in failure. Most rehabs have the kids searching past the surface and really try to work deep on themselves.
They also learn to avoid *people, places, and things* that are their own triggers to using.
Why not mention family support as well. I feel for you kids out there who can't yet begin the step towards healing. There are groups (Jewish, even) for your parents.
Ask yourself: What's the source of my pain?
Am I using to runaway from all of that? If
so, seek help.
MODERATOR Posted - 04 September 2002 20:45
Willpower alone does not always result in failure. It depends which drugs we are talking about and how deeply the kid is already innovated.
I know numerous kids who were hooked on weed, for instance (and occasionally tried something worse) and decided that they are going to stop and they stopped.
Smoking is an addictive drug, too. But nobody goes to rehab for smoking. It's not always the same, but it’s not always much different.
Rehab is a business like all others, and you should take their word as coming from a salesman tell gin you how vital it is for you to buy his product.
DORTY Posted - 04 September 2002 22:16
Mod, I don't agree. There's a difference between having a physical addiction and having an addiction that you can't get over because you have issue's to deal with.
And you need time to build strength of character. I think that the ppl that start rehabs (esp. Retorno) care... and are there to help you get your life together... they aren't there to make money off of you.
MODERATOR Posted - 04 September 2002 23:20
Sometimes. But you have to understand that in 99% of the cases, even when the rehab person really does care, they have a very serious "shochad" (vested interest) situation, in that they do make money off of you, but only if you go to rehab.
And even when that is not so, there are directors, and boards, and governments that involve politics.
Example: The
The Jonas's surly did not do this for the money - the place only costs them money, lots of it.
There is no gashmiyusdik benefit the Jonas' get from this. Only mass expenditures of resources and energy.
They also offered to take people for nothing if money was an issue. All this is wonderful and Hashem will repay them as they richly deserve. Couldn’t be better.
But the problem is, the Jonas's wanted to do something for the at-risk youth, and with those millions of dollars they could have done almost anything.
Yet they were told that what is needed to help the at-risk youth is a frum rehab.
What were the motives and political agendas and vested interests of the people who gave them this misinformation? Though it surely helps some kids (a very small amount relatively), spending their millions on a drug rehab which currently has only 14 kids in the whole thing - boys and girls - a mere fraction of its capacity - was NOT close to the great accomplishments that could have happened had they not been ill-advised.
Please don’t get me wrong - the center helps. I personally know kids who it did wonders for.
But the point is, because of the politics, the millions were spent on something that does very little help when you talk about the big picture relative to what could have been done.
But there are people running around saying that what we need is drug rehab drug rehab drug rehab. And guess what? They are drug rehab people. And gold-hearted philanthropists will never know if these people are right or wrong.
If you look at your post, you are not really disagreeing with me. I said sometimes rehab is called for, and sometimes the kid is able to get off it w/o rehab. I was responding to Judy who said without rehab, the kid will never succeed. That’s just not true. Sometimes he will. I am not saying to do away with rehab.
But I do know kids who went to rehab - repeatedly - and got worse because they learned more about drugs and connections in rehab - and in the end, when they decided to stop, they did. This was weed.
I am not saying that will work with crack.
All of medicine is a business, not only rehab. There are those who will tell you that the reason more effort is not exerted to find a cure for cancer is because it is more lucrative to treat cancer than to cure it. Maybe. But there is no question, to anyone who ever witnessed the internal working of hospitals, rehabs, or often even doctors offices, that maintaining a practice, enhancing a career, and making money often plays a big role in the decisions.
When Yochanan Danziger, a social worker for the MET Council in NY, was making a study on the so-called at-risk youth problem, he took a survey of "involved" people regarding what the solution(s) are to the problem. Numerous opinions were given, but what came out was, almost across the board, whatever was suggested as the solution would happened to be the thing that would enhance the career of the person giving the answer.
In other words, the drug rehab ppl said the answer is we need more drug rehabs; the therapists said they need therapy; etc etc.
I am not c"v saying that these people purposely tried to skew the answers, but shochad ya'avir ainei pikchim - when a person has a vested interest, it is hard to be objective. Both in terms of the money factor, as well as because often, when a person learns one specialized skill, he doesn’t realize the effectiveness of alternative approaches.
Here's an example of the underestimating of alternatives beyond that which you know:
Here's another example. The following is an excerpt from a transcript of a well attended and prominent assembly in Eretz yisroel regarding the at-risk issue in Yeshivas (you can see the entire transcript at www.atid.org/events/clinicalviews.rtf). A question was asked about how we can get kids not to start using drugs to begin with. the person answering the Q is Yonah Pollak.
Yonah is a phenomenal guy and I don’t know any drug counselor who does better work with Yeshiva kids than him. Not a single one. Yet on the following issue, he - or at least what he is quoting from Dr. twersky - is dead wrong (the emphasis is mine):
"Q: ... I don’t think the kids recognize [drug use] is a problem the way that they recognize eating disorders as a problem. What can we do to articulate the dangers more clearly so that kids won’t have the problem of starting because "it is really no problem at all"?
Yonah Pollack: It sounds like what you are talking about is called prevention. And when we did this first workshop in this field six years ago with Dr. Twersky, he said that prevention is usually not that effective. Particularly because you will say to kids don’t use drugs and they will say why not, what else is there.
And if you try to point out the dangers, look at cigarettes. We can’t clearly more point out dangers there than anything else there is. And look. So the whole way the mind works and rationalization and it won’t be me. It is hard. The way we can do it is through maybe making, the only product we do have to offer, a Torah life style, our family environments, our schools, and our relationships in those regards as fulfilling and as healthy as we can make them. Other than sitting down and enumerating the dangers of substances and things like that sort".
Sorry. Nope. This is wrong. Prevention DOES work. There are ways to convince people not to go on drugs, and just because Dr. twersky may not have been successful doing it, does not mean it cannot be done. Dr. Twersky is an expert rehab professional.
That is a different skill than what is needed to influence a Yididshe neshomah not to throw away his community, his family, and his life.
I personally met people who Dr. Twersky turned around completely. But the skill he has is not the only one out there. His statement, as quoted by Yonah, belittles helping solutions that are not within the parameters of his own training. In fact, the skills needed to convince a kid not to go on drugs are just the opposite of what they teach professionals - you must be a personally involved friend, not just someone who knows statistics.
The statistics aren’t going to convince him, true - but the person giving the statistics will.
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