Parents Fight Teen Drug Abuse

Parents in the fight against teen drug substance abuse have an arsenal of weapons out there these days. There are thousands of programs for troubled teens, more books than you could ever read web sites for parents to gather and exchange thoughts, counselors for addictions, ADHD, sexual promiscuity and on and on. But that wasn’t always the case. A mere twenty years ago parents had few support groups to turn to.

Troubled Teen Programs Are Relatively New

“About 25 years ago, Bill Oliver walked his 15-year-old daughter up the lonely sidewalk of a drug treatment center in Florida. When he discovered that his oldest daughter had an addiction, there wasn’t one juvenile drug treatment bed in his home town of Atlanta, Georgia. He never considered that his precious daughter, just fifteen, could be addicted to drugs. As he tells it, the world was just starting to realize that children could become addicts. As Bill walked up that sidewalk with his daughter, he was struck with how alone they were. The school wasn’t there. The church wasn’t there. He and his family would face this battle alone. These were the first few steps in what would be a long journey to recover what was lost. That day he promised himself that if he ever got his daughter back he would help keep other parents from ending up in the same situation.” (Unknown source) And so he has done. The Passage Group offers parents easily accessed videos; pod casts and downloads from their website, in addition to conducting seminars at schools and churches across the nation. Their material covers the gamut, including video excerpts compiled from You Tube that will be a wake up call for some parents, and a strong reminder of the world teens live in for others. By Ann Walker