Randy Haveson: Recovery Schools

Drug and alcohol abuse among young people is currently on the decline in the United States. According to a survey by Monitoring the Future in 2014, drug use, and the attitudes about drug use in Middle School and High School age students is changing for the better. There appears to be a decreasing use of alcohol, marijuana, and synthetic drugs. Even the use of cigarettes is on the decline.

In spite of these encouraging numbers, however, many young people still find themselves using drugs and alcohol every year, and cases get so bad that many students are forced to withdraw from school in order to seek treatment for their problems. This can set up a problem when they are ready to go back to school: returning to the environment that fostered the original problem sets up a strong possibility for or relapse.

Attempts to address this problem have led to the rise of what are known as recovery schools: a school where students can sustain their abstinence and their recovery, while they resume their education. The first recovery high school in the United States was established in Minnesota in 1987, and preliminary evaluations indicate that those recovering students who enroll in these types of schools are much less likely to relapse than if they returned to their regular school.

There are twenty-two member high schools in the Association of Recovery Schools, or ARS, a nonprofit association that supports the recovery high school movement. Randy Haveson, a longtime drug counselor, served as a member of the inaugural Board of Directors for the ARS, and has been a strong advocate of providing easy access to addiction recovery services for students.

Sources: https://www.recoveryschools.org/about