Newport Academy is dedicated to a supportive and collaborative relationship with our clients, treatment providers and professionals. Welcome to the conversation.

Posts Tagged ‘Teen Drug Rehab’

Rockstar Superstar Project Helps Parents in Search of Teen Drug Rehab

Sunday, March 13th, 2011

Rockstar Superstar Project Blog has a great article up for those who are looking for teen drug abuse treatment. Parents who are concerned about the health of their teens or in finding a teen drug rehab for their child will find it extremely helpful. The article offers success stories, blows open the “hitting bottom myth” and provides an overview of the different teen addiction treatment serves that can help including transport services, professional interventionists, outpatient addiction treatment, inpatient teen rehabs, therapeutic boarding schools and educational consultants.

The importance of finding the right treatment program for your teen cannot be stressed enough. Here are a few tips to help you in your search for the right teen drug rehab:

  • Inpatient versus outpatient. Depending upon the environmental issues your child may be facing – peer pressure, availability of illicit substances in the neighborhood or at school, siblings who use drugs and alcohol, home life – an inpatient or outpatient treatment may be more or less appropriate. Discussing the specifics of your teen’s experience with drugs and alcohol and how it has thus far affected your child’s life with an expert can help you make the decision if you are unsure.
  • Educational considerations. A high school education should be a priority for any teen, and it’s certainly not a goal that should be forgotten during teen drug rehab. An effective addiction treatment center for teens will provide teachers who will assist your child in advancing their education through an independent program designed to help them advance with their peers.
  • Co-occurring diagnoses. Many teens who struggle with drug and alcohol addiction have co-occurring diagnoses that may include eating disorders, ADHD, depression, anxiety, and other issues. If your teen is among them, choosing a teen drug rehab that offers treatment for these problems as well as addiction will give them a better chance and remaining clean and sober when they return home.
  • Family therapy. Almost every successful teen in recovery remains drug-free due in part to the support and understanding of their family. Family therapy provides parents with the education they need to better understand teen drug addiction, allows them to avoid enabling that addiction, and increases the flow of communication between parents and teen. The best teen drug rehabs will encourage parents to be active in their child’s treatment and recovery.
  • Emphasis on experiential therapy. Personal therapy is important and most certainly should play a part in your teen’s drug rehab experience, but experiential therapy can help even the most hostile teen open up and begin the process of exploring the issues that underlie teen drug addiction. Sexual abuse, trauma, death of a loved one, divorce and other challenging issues that are difficult for teens to discuss are often more easily explored during action-based therapies rather than talk therapy.

If you would like to learn more about our teen drug rehab program, contact us today. We can help your teen begin the process of rebuilding a positive and healthy life without drugs and alcohol. Call now.

Do you know what pills your teen is taking?

Sunday, June 27th, 2010

Prescription drug use is on the rise… BIG TIME!

Prescription pills are the number 1 killer of teens!

Prescription pills are the number 1 killer of teens!

Prescription drugs are the Number 1 killer of teens… Number 1.  This past year, for the first time in history, more teens died from prescription drug overdoses than from automobile fatalities.  There is no sign that this trend is going to slow unless something is done.

The most commonly abuse prescription drug that lands teens in treatment, the ER, or the morgue is oxycontin, or oxycodone.  Oxycontin is an opiod pain reliever that was originally created to treat cancer patients on hospice so that they could die without pain… Now pain clinics that dole this stuff out like candy are just as common in Florida as the marijuana clinics are in California.  If you have cash and a sprained ankle, you can score some pain meds.

One example of the drastic increase in the abuse of pan medication is in Fairfield County, Ohio.  In May of this year, opiod addiction accounted for 67 percent of patients in treatment, up from 4 percent in 2000!  Hello, that is almost 17 times more patients due to one classification of drug! Red flag? I think so!

Another example is provided to us by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), who provide unparalleled data and research.  The yearly number of Emergency Room visits linked to the abuse of prescription pain relievers rose from 144,644 in 2004 to 305,885 in 2008.  That is a 111 percent increase.  Yes, another red flag.  Guess which drug was most common?  Yep, oxycodone.  Oxycodone related visits were up 152 percent over 4 years and accounted for 35 percent of the visits. Red flag.  The number two increase was hydrocodone, up 123 percent.  According to the CDC, ER visits for prescription drugs are just as common as visits for illicit drugs.  Personally, I think they are more common, but then again, there are some very large pharmaceutical companies that are working very hard to not let all these numbers become common knowledge.

I would love for everybody to know how bad these drugs are… that they are the Number 1 killer of our teens! Please help me in spreading the word, talk about it with your peers.

Where do the kids get their drugs?  Most teens say their parents medicine cabinets… Do you know what’s in your medicine cabinet?  Go check right now and properly dispose of ANY medication that you are not currently taking.  If you do take any narcotics, lock them up so that your children cannot access them.

If you know a teen that is abusing prescription medication and may need teen rehab, please give us a call.  We are always here to help.

Old School vs. New School Treatment – Part 1

Tuesday, April 27th, 2010
Let's get with the times...

Let's get with the times...

“Institutions become fossilized because they become more concerned with preservation than with the mission upon which they were founded.” – Former US President

The most common question I get is “what makes Newport Academy different from other treatment centers?”  Allow me to answer that in a series of blogs…

Most of the treatment programs out there are stuck in the Stone Age and their treatment modalities are outdated.  When I was a teenager, I was sent to a teen treatment center founded in 1949.  At first thought, you may think, as did my family, “oh, these people have been around a while, they must be good at what they do.”  And they may well have been back in the 50′s compared to the alternatives. Well, in the late 90′s, they were a little behind the times.  You see, the traditional 12-step* treatment model suggests that you write all of your problems down on a piece of paper, then share them with another human being (sponsor), ask “god” to remove your problems, and then go about your business… Are you kidding me?  No, seriously.  So, if you were raped, fondled, molested, assaulted, you have issues over your parents divorce, or your dad beat you as a child, you write this down, tell someone and then it is ok.  Sorry, that didn’t work for me.  When I went to this very well respected (why? I have no idea) teen treatment center, we sat in co-ed groups all day long and read the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous (informative, but not too interesting for a teenager).  Seriously, all the groups we had were centered on the Big Book.  I met with my counselor (no, not licensed psychotherapist) once each week for about 50 minutes.  Other than that, if we made our beds and cleaned our bathrooms, we got to go to the YMCA once a week (yay!).   Let me also mention that the facility was represented as “residential” but I will tell you that the accommodations were not much more than that of a hospital (food included, you know, the super high sodium stuff that is so good for you).  The facility was co-ed, so yes, there were boys and girls living close enough to each other.  Most of the down time was spent wondering how I could get Sally into the closet for one-on-one therapy (can you blame a teenage boy that has been taken out of his comfort zone for wanting a little loving from someone that “understood” where he was coming from?).  While I was at this treatment center, my parents were invited to come once for 3.5 days and spent their time with 20 other families watching videos and listening to lectures.  I met with my family for a total of an hour (yes, 1 hour of family therapy).  How much did this program cost?  Around $28,000 for 30 days.  Yes, their program was and still is just a 30 day program.  As we see in countless studies, 30 days doesn’t really do much in terms of long term effects, as was my case.

So, being a fairly high functioning, athletic, high IQ kid, my first glimpse of sobriety was not a shining one.

More to come…..

*I should clarify by saying that I am a big fan and member of a 12-step program that I attend on a somewhat regular basis.  Thanks.

© 2009 Newport Academy
Newport Academy is a gender-specific, comprehensive, residential treatment program for teens suffering from substance abuse and co-occurring disorders. If you or your child needs help, please do call us as soon as possible. We are always on call and willing to help if given the opportunity. Please call Newport Academy at 877.628.3367.