Adolescents of All Ages

I had the pleasure on Thursday morning of attending and staffing a LifeRing exhibit table at the 13th Annual Northern California Tobacco, Alochol, Drug, School Wellness & Youth Development Conference for Educators, held at the Clark Kerr Conference Center of UC Berkeley.

The attendees were teachers, counselors, and community leaders from seven Northern California counties. All were concerned with prevention and treatment of the tobacco, alcohol, and other drug issue among young people, particularly teenagers.

The most frequent question to me was "Do you have meetings for teens?"  Since, at the moment, none of our meetings is limited by age group, my answer had to be, "Our meetings are open to adolescents of all ages."  That got a laugh.

There was a universally positive reaction to a secular option for sobriety support.  A number of people volunteered that a lot of teens tended to resist the religious aspects of the 12-step groups.  

The problem is how to convert the positive reception we get from educators working with teens into actual meetings -- or some other organized presence -- in the schools.

A few years ago the counseling staff at a local high school wanted to start a set of support groups, including LifeRing, on campus.  The initiative was killed by the principal, not because of any animus toward LifeRing, but -- observers believed -- because the program would call attention to the campus drug problem and taint the school's reputation.

I had brought only 50 local meeting schedules to the conference, and these went quickly. This wasn't a book-buying crowd -- didn't sell one book -- but the schedules and brochures got into a lot of hands.  Maybe some of them will trickle down into the hands of some wide-awake students.

The keynote speaker at the conference, Dr. Ken Winters of the U of Minnesota, presented a PowerPoint entitled "This is Your Brain on Adolescence."  It featured MRI scans of brains lit up by cocaine and charts of dopamine levels -- the scenes a faire of addiction lectures.  It carried a sound and important message about the lifetime dangers of early alcohol and other drug use.  The adolescent brain is engaged in a major neural reorganization, a very bad time to be throwing addictive drugs into the works.

Still, the notion that teen behavior and attitudes generally, and the proclivity to do drugs in particular, are rooted in developmental brain anatomy, is overly broad and unfair. Only a minority of teens do drugs.  Some teens are impulsive, others are cautious.  Some take risks, others avoid them.  For every teen who has impaired judgment, there is another who is wise beyond their years.  We certainly see kids who do drugs and hide it from their parents, but we also see kids who fight hard to get their parents off drugs and into treatment.  Bottom line:  teens deserve as much respect as adults for their individuality, their wisdom, and the choices they make.  

We Need to Teach the Teachers

I had the distinct pleasure this afternoon of speaking about LifeRing to a group of interns in San Francisco.  These were all students at different colleges, ranging from trade schools and community colleges to UC Berkeley and even an Ivy League school or two.  Some were undergraduates, some were working on a Psy.D. degree or M.F.T. certificate. They were all interning at New Leaf, the major center for counseling services to the LGBT community in San Francisco and the region, and they were a bright lot; you could feel the electricity from their brains crackling in the air.

Just one problem:  almost none of them had heard of LifeRing before.  You'd think, wouldn't you, that their teachers somewhere along the line would have mentioned to them that there are other approaches to substance abuse besides 12-step, and named some names?

In a recent New Yorker article, the writer tried to find out whether professors of economics in the universities had updated their theories in light of the recent economic crash.  The answer was mostly negative.  Most of them got their minds cast in cement a couple of decades ago.  Could it be that something like that is going on with the professors of addiction studies?

I can think of some honorable exceptions: teachers who regularly send their students to check out support group meetings, including LifeRing.  But clearly, judging by the experience of these interns, we have work to do.  We need to educate some educators.

If you are a student in addiction studies and related fields and you have a teacher who has never heard of LifeRing, please forward their contact information to service@lifering.org, and we will undertake to send them some educational materials.  Or, if you prefer, we'll send you the material and you can hand deliver it -- the best way.

And if your class would like to have a live LifeRing lecture, we can probably arrange that, too. Get in touch with the LifeRing Service Center, service@lifering.org or 1-800-811-4142.

P.S.  Pietro Carnini, the New Leaf staff counselor who set up the gig, sent a very nice follow-up letter saying:

The interns found your presentation to be very informative, and they were pleased to hear about an alternative self-help program for those struggling with addiction.  Their knowledge regarding this topic has been increased, and I believe that this is a result of your excellent presentation.  I would welcome you to return next year to provide training on this topic.

And thank you, Pietro, for the invitation.  I look forward to doing it again.

Education level of CA counselors

CAADAC, one of the California addiction professionals' organizations, has released a membership survey showing, among other things, the highest educational level reached by its membership. It shows that 29 per cent, the largest single category, do not have a junior college certificate or college degree; they have completed unspecified drug/alcohol studies only. Another 18 per cent have a junior college degree. Twenty-eight per cent have a B.A. as their highest degree; 20 per cent have an M.A., and 5 per cent have a Ph.D. Altogether, 47 per cent don't have a college degree; 53 per cent do. The association's membership includes counselors and program administrators. Source.

Learning from educators: "The Virtues Project"

Teaching kids who have got in trouble with the law and are booted out of the regular schools into alternative schools is a challenging educational assignment. You might think that with these "bad kids," teachers have to be super-authoritarian, try to take the kids' power away, and get them to surrender. Guess what, that doesn't work. By contrast, a highly successful approach in use at the Sacramento County Boys' Ranch begins with The Virtues Project. The secretary who handles the kids' enrollment asks:

Do you know what virtues are? Then she launches into how virtues are the 'good seeds' in us which make up our character. Usually, the student is momentarily dazed, first by an adult in an institution asking him personal questions that aren't tied to his criminal or school history, and secondly, by the word itself -- 'virtue.' Given a few examples, the student then looks over a giant poster listing 52 Virtues and selects -- often with encouragement -- one or two that he feels are his 'strength virtues' and explains why. .... Teachers recognize, acknowledge and reinforce the virtues of students, which forges a vital link and connects with them on a level beyond the stereo-typical teacher-student superior-subordinate relationship. A whole new world of significance is opened up for both teacher and student ... which creates greater student buy-in.

("Forging Vital Links with Students in Alternative Schools," by Brett Loring, in The Journal of Juvenile Court, Community, and Alternative School Administrators of California," Spring 2007, p. 10.) Since adult alcoholics and addicts have so much in common with these "bad kids," I thought that educators' experience with these kids might be relevant somehow ....
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