Progress Not Perfection

The most important thing I have had to accept since being in Dual diagnosis treatment is that I have to have a lot more patience with myself than I am used to. I have had to learn to forgive myself for not being perfect. I think going into treatment, both the teen and the families can fall into thinking that the teen will emerge “cured”. In my first few months home in Orange County, California, any time I felt weird or had an emotional day, all of us would get worried that everything was unraveling. What I have learned, is that that just isn’t true. I can have bad days, and I can have good days. A bad day doesn't mean I'm not recovering.
I can feel discouraged from time to time but the most important thing is that I pick myself up and keep moving forward. This is recovery to me- to be able to keep making the effort regardless of how I feel. I have had to redefine my definition of success. In treatment, I learned how to believe in myself, even when the going gets rough, and to use the tools given to me. The tools aren’t there for perfect days- they’re there for challenges and for growth, and growth is sometimes awkward and uncomfortable. I made a commitment to myself to change my life, and thanks to that, regardless of how difficult the changes may be, I have maintained the willingness to keep growing. It's not something I can really explain to my family, and in the beginning, that was really frustrating. I realized that I just had to show people my commitment to change, by continuing with the process long after treatment ended. That's the neatest gift I've received: the ability to keep using these tools for years after I was introduced to them.if you have a loved one that needs to be introduced to these tools please contact us at adolescent dual diagnosis treatment.

Dual Diagnosis Residential Treatment

Dual diagnosis residential treatment is often the last resort for parents of dual diagnosis teens, so it is important that you chose the right one. Residential treatment should be a safe place for teens to adjust to a new way of life without the use of drugs and alcohol, receive a proper diagnosis and medication management, continue with schoolwork to avoid falling behind, and explore group and individual therapy to treat all areas of a teen’s life.
Visions Adolescent Treatment Centers address all of these requirements and more, ensuring that teens experience exemplary care in a comfortable, homelike environment. At Visions, I went to group and individual therapy, and met with staff doctors, but I never felt like I was in a hospital. We had a good time, ate really good food, and went out and did exciting things like equine therapy and field trips to museums and recreational outings to the movies. As a dual diagnosis teen, it was helpful to address my borderline personality disorder and depression as well as my addiction and alcoholism issues. Being dual diagnosed can be challenging, but Visions helped me get some great tools to make my life fulfilling and awesome and my disorders manageable.

Bear Grylls vs. Teen Rehab

I love watching Bear Grylls in Man vs. Wild on the Discovery Channel. He is amazing. He makes snow caves and wrestles wild pigs to death and bites through the spines of live fish to survive. He is constantly informing the viewer about the basic survival tools one would need to get by in any situation. While this may be a stretch, it got me thinking about my own survival tools that I learned in teen rehab.
The first thing I need is a good support group. This can include my Visions treatment team, my peers in recovery, my family, and my sponsor. My sponsor is another survival tool I definitely need. Visions helped me find a sponsor when I entered treatment, who is someone that helps me work the 12 steps and was initially my personal introduction to the 12 step fellowships. I call my sponsor daily to check in, a habit I began in teen rehab which I continue to this day. Another tool I can’t live without is my journal. I use writing as a great way to process feelings or to just check in with myself. When I can’t get a hold of anyone, my journal is always there to listen. Along with meetings and activities with my clean and sober peer group, these survival tools are there to help me make it through every day clean. Each one of them was given to me in teen rehab, and I use them on a daily basis years later. It may be weird to say that knowing how to call my sponsor when I need help is the equivalent of knowing how to trap and kill a bird in the middle of the Swiss Alps, but to an addict just out of teen rehab in Palo Alto, it’s the little things that can end up saving your life. For More information about treatment services please click here teen drug rehab.

Teen Drug Help

Yesterday was the memorial for my friend who overdosed. I am sick of going to memorials. I am sick of watching people I love get caught up in using again and die. I don’t want to go to any more funerals. I’m not big on quoting recovery literature, but there is a line from the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous that always comes to mind when I think about my friends who are caught up in active addiction: People like you are too heartbreaking.
It is easy to get discouraged. Getting clean and sober in Palo Alto is hard work. When I entered teen drug treatment, I was never promised an easy road, but I was promised a better life. It is hard to work through difficult feelings. It is hard watching people go in and out of recovery. It is hard watching people die. The thing that sticks with me though, is that no one ever gave up on me. When I was in drug treatment and threw tantrums or resisted change as much as possible, no one gave up on me. No one told me I wouldn’t stay clean. The odds were stacked against me, but no one ever told me I couldn’t do it. Instead, the staff at Visions let me know on a daily basis that I could stay clean and have a better life. It took a while to believe them, but I am so glad they never gave up on me. They always believed in me. So even though I feel really discouraged this week, and really sad about my friend dying, I’m not going to give up on recovery. I’m not going to give up on my friends who are struggling right now. No one gave up on me, so I can’t give up on them. This is a difficult journey sometimes, but with the foundation I got in adolescent drug treatment, I can do anything.

How to Make Marijuana Brownies?

When a group of California pre-school teachers came down with nausea and tingly limbs after consuming some street bought brownies, Los Angeles health officials launched a full investigation. The cause? The brownies were laced with weed, leading the CDC to caution the nation that weed must now be considered “a potential contaminant during foodborne illness investigations.”
Yep, CDC, people put marijuana in food. It’s one of those ways people get high without a whole lot of evidence. There are entire cookbooks devoted to the cause of how to make marijuana brownies. I especially think teenagers are enticed by this novelty. With all of the talks about the legalization of marijuana, it’s important to remember that weed isn’t necessarily harmless. Like alcohol, marijuana can still be a devastating force in certain people’s lives- especially teenagers’. Getting clean at a young age sometimes made me question my drug use. Was it bad enough? I often thought that because I “just smoked weed,” that I wasn’t a real addict. The reality was that marijuana made my life truly unmanageable, and I couldn’t stop even when I wanted to. I truly felt like I would rather die than have to keep being a slave to using drugs. In teen drug treatment, I began to see that my addiction wasn’t about the substance, it was about the feelings behind my drug use. Today, I am free from using. I don’t have to use drugs and I certainly don’t have to worry about my brownies poisoning anyone. If you think your teen may be struggling with marijuana abuse, contact us today.