Brat Camps

Americans do not like it when there are no results. If we pay for something, we want performance, our moneys worth. Unfortunately, when parents start investing hard earned dollars into their troubled teenager’s drug rehabilitation, the return on the money more often depends on the teen, not the program. A good program delivers what it promises. It’s up to the teenager to receive it. The story linked below is really all too common and all too sad. A young girl starts smoking marijuana at 11. Her parents discover it, and the fight for their teen’s life begins. They send her to brat camps. For some teens, brat camps will do it. For this teen, it didn’t end until she was 18 - 7 years of her life charged off to drugs. During that time she endured devastating humiliations, but her addiction beat her down so much that she thought she deserved it.

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“Other times when I drank until I blacked out, when I woke up, my pants would be down or off or I woke up next to some guy. I wouldn’t remember who he was or what had happened…. I had such low self-esteem and I thought it was normal…” She was in out-patient care, in-patient care, NA - fortunately for her, the degradation of addiction brought her back to sanity. “My counselor told me: You’re 18. Only you can help yourself. You need to ask for help, or you need to get up and get out of my office. I decided I was going to leave. What came out of my mouth was, “Please help me.” (unknown source) And that, in the end, is what parents have to wait for - the addict’s heart felt plea for help By Ann Walker