Midlander David Gutierrez certainly has a story to tell. He grew up in a gang-infested neighborhood in the greater Los Angeles area, his mother was an alcoholic, his dad wasn’t around. His brother was in and out of prison and his sister was a drug addict. He started drinking and doing drugs at age 12, was addicted to meth and marijuana by 14 and arrested by age 15.
Now 36, he is three years sober and a substance abuse counselor for troubled teens at Palmer Drug Abuse Program (PDAP). About half of the kids he works with are court-ordered to attend the weekly meetings with him -- their probation officers call him often to make sure they’ve been showing up. It’s common for the kids he sees to be on probation or to have been at one time.
“A lot of times people think drugs are the problem,” Gutierrez said. “Drugs are rarely the problem, with kids anyway. A lot of times they’re using that drug to block out whatever the real problem is. Most of them are not addicted; they’re just experimenting or got caught. The danger is that they’re teaching their brain at an early age to self-medicate. This goes wrong, OK, get high. It becomes their coping mechanism.”
Read more: Program offers support to youth probationers - MRT.com: Top Stories http://www.mrt.com/news/top_st...0.html#ixzz40qpS9NON
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution
[For more of this story, written by Erin Stone, go to http://www.mrt.com/news/top_st...0b-2faf34e85140.html]
Comments (0)