A Wilderness Treatment Program: Is It Vacation Rehab?

Your friends and relatives may think that sending your child to a wilderness treatment program is a lot like sending them on vacation. You might even get teased or a few jokes thrown your way when you tell friends and relatives that your son is going to embark on outdoor activities, listen and play music and draw and paint.

Look, the thing with adolescent drug rehab is a lot of times a teen who has taken to drugs and alcohol as their recreational activity instead of sports or the arts is because they aren’t feeling good about themselves. They are in an environment where they’ve already been labeled the nerd, or the bad student or whatever it is that they’ve been labeled as and therefore they can’t seem to break away from that mold. As a way to cope with it they give themselves their own label, the druggie. Being the druggie is what they’ve become good at in high school.

It takes a dual diagnosis therapy program that offers wilderness treatment to give them something to care about again. Not to just put them in a room for an hour with other kids and talk about why drugs and alcohol is bad but instead show them what’s good about life. Maybe open them up to something they never thought they could do well at.

If they are in a wilderness program and they go whitewater rafting and they have to paddle the rough waves they just might realize through hard work and perseverance that they can accomplish anything. They may also realize they can change other people’s perception of them. Their story is not written in permanent marker.

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