One of Minnesota\u2019s few remaining sober schools is expanding its support services for recovering drug addicts from classrooms to chat rooms.<\/p>\n
Peers Enjoying a Sober Education (P.E.A.S.E.) Academy, one of four sober schools still operating in a state that was once considered the national model for recovery education, partnered with Minnesota Virtual High School this past semester.<\/p>\n
Students and their families from across the state can now use online forums to communicate with chemical dependency counselors and social workers at the Academy\u2019s brick and mortar location in Minneapolis. The Virtual High School provides the online academic curriculum.<\/p>\n
\u201c(The Virtual High School) built us a platform where we can provide virtual support to our students regardless of where they live,\u201d said Michael Durchslag, the Executive Director at P.E.A.S.E., which began operating in 1989 at a time when districts all over Minnesota offered recovery based schools.<\/p>\n
But sober schools struggled to maintain sustainable operating systems and enrollments, according to a former director of alcohol and drug abuse at the Minnesota Department of Human Services (DHS).<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the challenges over the years with sober schools in Minnesota was finding out how you could make them work in our overall school system,\u201d said Carol Falkowski. \u201cTransportation was a big issue,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
Falkowski, who began offering educational services through her business Drug Abuse Dialogues after retiring from the public sector, said the P.E.A.S.E. online model is \u201ca great step in the right direction\u201d and the \u201cwave of the future\u201d that other districts should explore.<\/p>\n
\u201cKids need all the support they can get,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The number of children in Minnesota seeking treatment for drug or alcohol addiction has decreased in recent years, according to a DHS report submitted to the state legislature in 2015.<\/p>\n
The most recent Biennial report on Drug and Alcohol Abuse in Minnesota showed more than 3,500 children between ages 8-17 were admitted to treatment centers in 2014, down from nearly 4,400 in 2012.<\/p>\n
But Falkowski says seeking treatment at the age is only the beginning.<\/p>\n
\u201cRecovery is longer term,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Preston Grundy, a senior at P.E.A.S.E., says he initially struggled with recovery after leaving treatment junior year and returning to his former school.<\/p>\n
\u201cI immediately went back there and relapsed,\u201d said Grundy, who is scheduled to graduate this June and plans to enroll in a sober college program.<\/p>\n
Durchslag, the executive director at the Academy, says any addict will struggle with recovery when they return to the same environment.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not the school that\u2019s the problem, it\u2019s the peers that they are associated with,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Durchslag compared it to telling a recovering alcoholic to sit in a bar six hours a day, five days a week and not order a drink.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn a strange way, that\u2019s what we ask adolescents to do all the time,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
By: KSTP-TV, LLC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One of Minnesota\u2019s few remaining sober schools is expanding its support services for recovering drug addicts from classrooms to chat rooms. Peers Enjoying a Sober Education (P.E.A.S.E.) Academy, one of four sober schools still […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n