Richardson : Crystal was fast; it wasn’t even a year that I had been doing it and it just took me down. It was like a dream, I was totally outside myself, I don’t remember ever having any rationale thoughts, I didn’t know myself, I wondered where I had gone, where did my heart go, I didn’t care anymore.
Didn’t care about her mom, about school, eating, sleeping, not even bathing.
Life went from bad to worse. Abbie was kidnapped at gunpoint. She was run over by a car after a drug deal gone bad.
Richardson : I didn’t feel, I couldn’t.
After six months of smoking crystal meth, she hit bottom.
Richardson : I had to go to school, I don’t remember anything, but I remember I woke up in the ER.
For 17-year-old Olivia Yong, “bottom” was jail.
She started experimenting with drugs as 12-years-old, and got bolder in high school.
Yong : When I was high I felt fast, like I could talk to anybody you can come more outside yourself, like, you aren’t shy.
With a new-found false sense of confidence, Olivia started stealing, dealing and running away from home. She was busted by police pushing drugs in El Cajon.
Both girls ended up here at Phoenix House -- one of the largest treatment organizations in the country, this is the in-patient facility in Descanso.
The latest admission data for Phoenix House shows a steady increase in California teenagers entering treatment for methamphetamine abuse.
In 2005, 42 percent of new admissions were meth-related.
Meth is inexpensive and accessible, and the Chief Clinical Officer of Phoenix House, Doctor David Deitch, says that’s a dangerous combination.
Deitch : Whenever you have increased availability of that substance you are going to see increased experimentation and use of that substance. So meth became an inexpensive laboratory way, an underground bathtub way, of manufacturing a substance that didn’t have to be smuggled over borders.
It’s everywhere. In the hands of students, blue-collar and white-collar workers, male and female. Studies show, usually ages 12-50.
Deitch : It crosses the boundaries of age, gender and economic scales and ethnic groups.
At the Academy in Descanso, the diversity is apparent.
The treatment program is not a vacation from school. In addition to class time, there are five other critical categories.
The teenagers work on:
- Re-shaping Behavior
- Emotional and psychological activities, to learn about themselves
- Ethical activities, to build a moral base
- The development of work tasks, to develop attitude and consistency
- And there’s a medical and psychiatric component to treat co-occurring disorders like anxiety and depression
Phoenix House also runs inpatient and outpatient centers for adults. The programs are designed differently, mainly because of the differences between the teenage brain and the adult brain.
Deitch : Adults have the capacity to plan, but drug use has compromised circuits of memory, learning and motivation in particular.
Steven Christensen : I was 20-years-old the first time I did my first line of speed, from that point it was like, ok this is what I’ve been missing.
35-year-old Steven Christensen said he planned to fake his way through the program, but that’s not how things happened.
I’m a big believer that you can recover, meth is a horrible drug and does not have the greatest stats of people coming off it, it’s that powerful of a drug.
Steven has been sober for ten years. He went back to school and is now the director of a program at the Phoenix House facility in Campo.
And remember Abbie and Olivia.
Olivia is three months into treatment and thriving.
Abbie has been sober for a year, and busy planning for the future. She’s in college and hopes to be a mother someday.
Abbie Richardson : Really worth it, getting sober, life just keeps blowing my mind, I can’t believe the things that I can do today. You can do anything if you want; it’s just following your heart.
