Christopher S. Johnson was 13 when he took his first sip of beer. By 14 he was drinking three or four times a week, trying to drown his depression, and smoking marijuana with his friends. At 15 he ran away from home to a nearby town in Minnesota, where he partied every night and popped dozens of pain-killing pills per day.
For seven months he spent his days in a laundromat, sleeping at “whoever’s house would take me,” he says.
Then one night in November 2001, he passed out in the bathroom of a Cambodian restaurant. He says he wanted to kill himself, but that he was too drunk to do so.
When the restaurant’s manager chased him outside to a pay telephone, Mr. Johnson says he received “the gift of desperation.” That night he turned himself in to the police and told his parents that he wanted to stop drinking. A few days later he entered a substance-abuse treatment program.
Mr. Johnson, now a 19-year-old rising senior at Sobriety High West, a school for recovering alcoholic teenagers in Edina, Minn., has been clean for two years. He is looking for a college that will help him stay that way, and a handful of institutions have developed programs designed for just such a purpose.
As more students with drug and alcohol problems come through the doors of academe, a small but growing number of colleges are offering specialized support services for those who have received treatment for their addictions. Some substance-abuse experts say the programs are crucial for recovering alcoholics and drug addicts, who need help navigating life in the campus party zone.
Designed both for students who complete treatment before they matriculate as well as for those who overcome dependencies while they are in college, the programs create support groups and help students avoid the booze-soaked social scenes that could lead them back to bad habits. Most require weekly attendance at Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous meetings on the campus. Some provide students with special housing.
Augsburg College, in Minneapolis; Dana College, in Nebraska; and Rutgers and Texas Tech Universities are among the institutions with established recovery programs. And this fall several colleges, including Case Western Reserve University; Grand Valley State University, in Michigan; and the University of Texas at Austin, plan to introduce recovery programs of their own.
Representatives of the programs met on the Rutgers campus here last month for the third annual conference of the Association of Recovery Schools, a Nashville-based organization that helps colleges and high schools develop and strengthen services for students in recovery for alcohol and drug dependence. One of the convention’s guests was Mr. Johnson, who told the officials what high-school students like him are looking for: a college that will support them without exiling them to the fringes of the campus.
“We do want to be normal and do want to have some sort of tie-in with people who don’t have an alcohol or drug addiction,” Mr. Johnson says.
David T. Hadden, assistant director of Augsburg’s recovery program and a member of the association’s executive board, says the programs not only keep students who have been through exhaustive -- and expensive -- treatment from backsliding, but help them succeed in college and become “good, tax-paying citizens.”
“If they go back to a regular college campus where they don’t have support, where they don’t have a community environment where it’s really actually cool not to be drunk or party,” says Mr. Hadden, “it makes it lonely.”
An Alcohol-Free Haven
Rutgers started the nation’s first on-campus alcohol- and drug-recovery program in 1983. At first the participants attended weekly support-group meetings, and those who were having trouble staying sober received individual counseling as well.
After some of the students said they needed more than just meetings, Lisa Laitman, the program’s director, developed an alcohol-free dormitory -- a haven where students in recovery would not have to share rooms with their former drinking buddies.
Despite the initial apprehension of some administrators, she says, the program has been a success, involving 15 to 25 students each year.
Augsburg’s program includes a dorm with spaces for more than 60 students. Dana does not set aside a separate area for recovering alcoholics but does allow them to room together. Students in most of the programs do not have to pay extra for such housing.
Officials at Case Western say they decided to build their program around a dormitory because they were dissatisfied with the results of outsourcing their recovery efforts. James E. Sellers, director of University Counseling Services and the Center for Collegiate Behavioral Health at the university, had helped counsel students with drug and alcohol problems and referred them to off-campus locations, including halfway houses in downtown Cleveland, for recovery services.
But some students came back with horror stories. One such student went through treatment and started in a recovery program, but ended up relapsing and failing to graduate. “It really moved me that this student was failing in his recovery program in the sense that he had no other place to go except home or a halfway house in the inner city, where it’s quite a shockingly different reality,” Mr. Sellers says.
Joseph, the resident coordinator in Case Western’s recovery dorm (he asked that his last name not be published), dropped out of the University of Akron in 1996 to undergo treatment for alcoholism. He might have been able to return to college sooner, he says, if any of the colleges near him had had a recovery program.
Instead he attended a community college for three years before he felt comfortable returning to a four-year college campus. Even then he lived alone.
Now a graduate student in Case Western’s academic program in chemical-dependency counseling, in the social-work school, he hopes to help students in his dorm stay sober and graduate on time. “As the RA I’m going to try to make sure we’re aware of what’s going on with each other and be supportive,” he says.
Texas Tech has taken a different approach in its program, which began in 1985. It does not include housing, but participating students share common requirements. Each must attend at least two 12-step-program meetings on the campus every week and take a special one-credit-hour seminar on recovery each semester. The students are also eligible for academic scholarships of up to $2,000 per year, which are financed entirely by an endowment.
Kitty S. Harris, the program’s director, says there is a strong sense of community among the students, even though they do not live in the same dorm. In fact, putting all recovering students in the same building can do more harm than good, she says.
“I think it stigmatizes the kids,” Ms. Harris says. “At the center we help them learn to live in the real world, so they’re better adjusted when they graduate.”
UT-Austin’s new program will also offer scholarships to participants and will require them to enroll in a course on recovery and relapse prevention, attend weekly meetings, and participate in community-service projects. The program will not have a housing component, although Laura G. Jones-Swann, director of the university’s new Center for Students in Recovery, says she would consider adding one.
Keeping a Pact
Officials who run on-campus recovery services emphasize that their programs are not punitive. Students who participate must want to be there. Many of the programs require participants to have at least six months of sobriety under their belts before they can enroll, to ensure that they are serious about cleaning up.
The screening process for most of the programs includes an interview with a university counselor. Students at Texas Tech must submit an essay and three letters of recommendation attesting to their recovery status.
The programs also usually ask students to sign agreements stating that they will stay sober and study hard. Students in the Case Western dormitory must develop recovery plans listing their academic and recovery goals, including any therapy sessions they plan to attend.
At Augsburg, each of about 60 students in the program must sign a contract developed by veterans of the program, who sit on a governing board. A student review board decides what to do with residents who violate the pact, which requires students to attend 12-step meetings, keep up with their studies, and avoid bars and keg parties.
The contract and the penalties give everyone in the program a “protective barrier,” says Eric W. Maurer, a senior who heads both boards. “It’s a lot easier to live somewhere where everyone’s sober,” he says.
The programs generally allow students to stay involved for the duration of their college careers, or until they feel confident in their sobriety.
Christin R. Crabtree-McWethy, a recovering alcoholic, participated in Augsburg’s program for one year. She was so successful academically that she was chosen to deliver the commencement address at her graduation, in 2003.
“I came into Augsburg with a concern that if I was going home to a dorm where there was drinking and drug use at night, it would be just like going to a bar,” she says. “What I like about it is I was still a part of the general community at Augsburg, but I had that safe environment to go home to at night.”
It is difficult to measure the long-term effectiveness of on-campus recovery programs because there has not been a major study of their impact. But Augsburg officials say they have been successful: Since the college’s program began, in 1997, it has attracted 365 students, only 62 of whom, or 17 percent, have relapsed.
Program officials say they compare that rate with recent statistics on high-school students in Minnesota. About 85 percent of those who go through treatment and return to regular high schools subsequently relapse, Mr. Hadden says, while high schools designed for recovering alcoholics and drug addicts report a relapse rate of about 20 percent.
Not everyone at Augsburg was convinced that the program would benefit the college when the Faculty Senate first considered the idea, in the mid-1990s, says Christopher W. Kimball, vice president for academic and student affairs and dean of the college. Mr. Kimball, who was then a faculty member, says that at first he and some of his colleagues had a “fear of the unknown.”
There was some concern that the dorm would scare other students away, he recalls. Faculty members worried that prospective students or their families would think, “‘Oh, my gosh, there’s a section of a dorm where everyone’s in recovery.’”
But the program has become an asset to the campus, he says, attracting a diverse group of students who are among the smartest at Augsburg. The college took a chance, he says, “and it’s been repaid many times over.”
Mark A. Murray, president of Grand Valley State, sees a clear need for the programs.
“We’ve got alcohol issues in middle schools and high schools, and we certainly have them at the college and university level,” he says. Mr. Murray adds that it is important to be straightforward and supportive of students who are trying to deal with their problems.
Some substance-abuse experts, however, say many of the nation’s top colleges are unlikely to develop the programs anytime soon. One reason is cost: Colleges located in areas with plenty of off-campus recovery services may deem it unnecessary to add a similar program on their campus, where most funds go to prevention and treatment.
Bruce E. Donovan, who recently retired as associate dean for chemical dependency at Brown University, says elite colleges tend to “focus much more intently on the basic academic purposes of the institution” than on specialized services for students.
The program that he ran at Brown provided counseling to students who were struggling with alcohol or drugs, but it referred them to off-campus recovery programs. That approach has worked well for the college, says Mr. Donovan, himself a recovering alcoholic.
“Particularly in a time of tightened budget, the main mission is academics,” he says. “Everything else is seen as a nice add-on, but decidedly add-on.”
William DeJong, director of the Center for College Health and Safety, in Newton, Mass., questions the wisdom of that approach. Top colleges, he argues, tend to think that they do not need to cater to a broad range of student needs, because they get to pick the “cream of the crop.”
“That’s a mistake because these schools -- Ivy League and others -- are among those with the highest alcohol rates in the country,” says Mr. DeJong, who is a member of the board of Substance Abuse Recovery on College Campuses Inc., a Minnesota-based nonprofit group that promotes a program based on Augsburg’s.
Andrew J. Finch, director of the Association of Recovery Schools, says administrators may mistakenly believe that they are doing enough for students in recovery by financing counseling services.
“There’s a misconception that because they may have a counselor in student health, that they’re somehow addressing the pretty unique needs of someone who is new into recovery,” Mr. Finch says. “When they’re coming out of a treatment facility right back into the atmosphere in which they were using drugs ... it can set them right back again into using behaviors.”
Looking Ahead
Like most high-school seniors, Mr. Johnson, the student from Minnesota, has begun his college search. He is looking for a campus with housing for students in recovery, but also one where he can major in physical therapy. After his visit to Rutgers in July, he put it at the top of his list.
If he chooses a college without a recovery program, however, Mr. Johnson’s biggest concern is that he will end up sharing a room with someone who drinks. He says he would be straightforward with his roommate about his alcoholism, as he has been with his friends who drink. “Usually I don’t expect a lot,” he says. “I expect them to just basically know that is something that bothers me.”
He is confident that he will find the right college, and that he will be able to handle the freedom of campus life.
“As long as I participate fully in my recovery program and in others’ recovery programs, that’s what keeps me sober,” says Mr. Johnson. “That’s what helps me not be so stressed out about what college to go to.”
http://chronicle.com Section: Students Volume 50, Issue 49, Page A31
