Adolescent Substance Abuse Treatment

My name's Greg Williams. I'm a young person who's been in long-term recovery since age 17 from alcohol and other drugs. Whenever I tell my story, I always say, “I was whoever I thought my friends wanted me to be.” Throughout my teenage years, my human need for belonging drove me to conform to peer groups around me.

Whoa. My brain is full.
I just finished watching, "Brain Science as a Means of Understanding Delinquency and Substance Abuse in Youth," a video you can watch online or download to your computer. It records two faculty lectures given at the University of Washington in 2006. The video's about 75 minutes long, but I assure you, it's worth watching. 

I'm a huge fan of the Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (ADAM) program, now run by the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP). The program tracks, as you might imagine from its name, drug use among arrestees. Because data is taken from multiple cities around the U.S. -- and variations from city to city can be quite large -- the data's used to track and predict drug use trends over time.
The program was axed in 2003 because of budget constraints, so I was pleased to learn today that ADAM was reinstated in 2007, this time as ADAM II.

• Interested in what restorative justice looks like when it's implemented in juvenile court? Here's a long article about two restorative justice programs in Oakland: one uses a peer court to address low-level offenders; the other works with kids leaving detention after many months.
• Want data on the well-being of kids in your state? Want to know how your state ranks compared with others? Check out the KIDS COUNT Data Center just launched by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, which also released its KIDS COUNT Databook for 2009.

When it comes to treating adolescent substance abuse, providing culturally-appropriate care is critical -- though easier said than done.
Here's two culturally-specific resources that might prove useful: 

[This post was written by Ashley Edwards, Kelly Graves, and Claretta Witherspoon, of the Reclaiming Futures site in Guilford County, NC.]
North Carolina’s Action for Children recently released the 2009 Youth Delinquency Prevention Report Card.  The release of these data will inform service delivery and outreach to adolescents throughout the state, and can be instrumental in helping us advocate for continued investment and expansion of the Reclaiming Futures program. 

The Addiction Technology Transfer Center (ATTC) Network has an amazing number of resources available to help treatment professionals and agencies.
For example, I just found a very interesting set of videos designed to recruit people to work in the field of addictions treatment on the ATTC Network's Facebook page. (For some reason, I had better luck viewing the videos when I used Internet Explorer as my browser, rather than Firefox.)

• Children and Juvenile Justice: Proposals for Improvements is the title of a new report from the Council of Europe's Commissioner for Human Rights. (If that interests you, you might also want to see this 2007 summary of trends in juvenile justice systems across 15 countries.)
• 13 Myths and Facts about Drug Abuse and Treatment - an excellent short document from the Partnership for a Drug-Free America.

It's remarkable how suddenly the debate over marijuana legalization has moved from the fringes to mainstream.
Decriminalizing possession of small amounts of pot (but not its cultivation and sale) has been implemented in Massachusetts, and is being considered in Chicago, Rhode Island, and other communities.

• Teens in the juvenile justice system are more likely to commit crimes as adults because delinquent behavior is "contagious", according to a 20-year research project in Canada. The solutions? More investments in prevention programs for pre-adolescents, and ending the practice of grouping delinquent youth together in services designed to help them. (No advice on how to accomplish the latter item.)
  • UPDATE Feb. 2, 2011: A&E's recent reality TV show, "Beyond Scared Straight," actually increases teens' contact with adult prison inmates in an attempt to terrify them into “going straight." Maybe the producer's didn't read the above study, which indicates that contact with the justice system increases teen recidivism. Check out these facts about the program from the Coalition for Juvenile Justice (CJJ).