Universities Focusing on Student Recovery Amid Rising Addiction Concerns

When it comes to drug abuse and addiction problems, many individuals agree that programs focused on prevention and recovery are far more effective than punitive measures. To this end, universities across the nation seem to be recognizing the value in providing more student recovery activities and programs, making it more acceptable for students to get the help they really need.

A Center for Recovery in Texas

At the University of Texas, the Center for Students in Recovery is located inside the university’s beautiful athletic facilities and provides a safe, clean, supportive environment in which individuals can be aided in their drug recovery efforts. Rather than some hidden activity that induces shame and embarrassment, the Center for Students in Recovery offers students an opportunity to safely reach out and take charge of their lives and futures by resolving their problems with drugs and alcohol.

This opportunity for recovery is absolutely invaluable to individuals like Lizette Smith, a young woman and UT student who was born into a well-to-do family and was smart, popular and successful in school until she found Adderall. Eventually, she was abusing everything she could in order to get her fix, and she soon found that she needed a drug for everything – to wake up, to relax, to feel numb, to fall asleep. Drugs essentially ran her life and were the only way she survived.

Through the gentle support offered in the Center, Smith was finally able to open up about her childhood and admit that she was physically and sexually abused, despite having grown up with the outward appearance that everything was fine. Finally, Smith was pushed into recognizing that hiding the truth only deepened the pain. While seriously intoxicated, Smith was raped and while the perpetrator was caught and arrested, Smith was completely devastated. She went to rehab and then enrolled at the University of Texas and immediately joined the Center for Students in Recovery.

Smith says that the Center gives her an environment where it is entirely safe to socialize, to meet new people, and to be honest about her past. Building her self-esteem is the most effective way she has found to strengthen her resolve to maintain her sobriety.

Expanding Student Recovery

The Center for Students in Recovery is largely run by university students themselves, and it has been so highly successful that it’s being expanded to every other campus in the UT system around the entire state. Students in the Center mentor one another, socialize together and watch for various signs of relapse in self and others. A Thursday night “sober check-in” is an opportunity for all students in the Center to come together and check-in on their week and how they are doing.

Another big benefit of the center is the focus on having students reach out to help others. They talk at high schools and drug treatment facilities, sometimes even giving seminars to emergency room doctors. By reaching out into the community, students are being more pro-active about their own recovery and their place as a contributing member of society, further strengthening the need to maintain their sobriety.

Student recovery programs are growing in colleges and universities around the country – with roughly one hundred thirty-five institutions out of roughly forty-five hundred now hosting these programs. This is up from just thirty-five institutions hosting recovery programs two years ago, and only ten institutions hosting recovery programs ten years ago. These programs indicate a shift in attention from shaming and alienating those individuals who struggle with these problems to extending a helping hand so that they too can break through the barriers of drug abuse and addiction and move forward into healthy, happy and productive lives.