Teens say recovery high schools keep them clean and sober
BOSTON - Sitting on a marble stair at the Statehouse, Sabrinna Clark, 17, waited for her chance to tell a legislator how a state-funded high school for those recovering from drugs and alcohol helped her deal with her own demons.
Clark has lived everywhere from Quincy to Florida, and tried everything, from heroin to pot, she said. She is now a student at Northshore Recovery High School in Beverly and said she's been sober for one year.
On a recent day, when she felt upset and thought she was going to go back to drinking, she ran to her school, she said.
"I had the bottle of vodka in my hand," she said. But once she got to school, she changed her mind: "I just turned around and saw all I was going to lose."
Yesterday, Clark, along with about 40 teenagers wearing blue T-shirts with the recovery school's logo, joined hundreds of others in treatment for alcohol and drug abuse to lobby for governmental support on Massachusetts' 16th annual Alcohol and Drug Addiction Recovery Celebration Day.
The Statehouse activities were sponsored by organizations from the Massachusetts Coalition for Addiction Services.
The Northshore Recovery High School is one of three state-funded high schools starting classes this fall. The others are in Boston and Springfield. There are approximately 25 such schools nationally.
"We are here to celebrate what these students have achieved," said Michelle Lipinski, director of the Beverly school.
Lipinski said 15 students from Salem, Lynn, Marblehead, Gloucester, Beverly and Peabody are among the students enrolled in the school.
State Rep. Ruth Balser, D-Newton, said it was very hard for these students to go back to their old schools after they started a recovery treatment.
"All the associations are there," said Balser, the House chairwoman of the Legislature's Mental Health and Substance Abuse Committee. "It's important for them to be in an environment where there are no drugs."
Connie Peters, vice president for substance abuse at the Mental Health and Substance Abuse Corporations of Massachusetts Inc., said the three recovery high schools were established with part of a $20 million supplemental budget the Legislature approved in July.
Peters said, historically, limited treatment funds usually went to the adult population. With this year's increase in funding, "a lot of new sources will go to adolescents and families."
Among the new projects for adolescents are a service for families and youth, called Casa Start, and a project for creating adolescent stabilization units across the state, she said.
Tim O'Hara, a councilor at Jackson House in Lawrence, who has been working for the mentally ill and addicts for 30 years, said the programs for teenagers are critical.
"Our population keeps getting younger," he said.
And programs like the recovery high school in Beverly give North of Boston teenagers a place to belong.
"It's nice to go there every day," Clark said, "it makes me feel that I am not alone, that I have somewhere to go."