OPINION RECOVERY HIGH SCHOOLS:
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2015 TREATMENT CENTER DIRECTORY ADOLESCENT & YOUNG ADULT PROGRAMS
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MINDFULNESS FOR TEENS COLLEGIATE RECOVERY Programs
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At Newport Academy our goal is sustainable healing. WE STRONGLY BELIEVE that the self-destructive behaviors in which teens are participating are external manifestations, or symptoms, of underlying, internal issues. Through healing the underlying issues that are causing teens to act out—trauma, abandonment, low self-esteem, anxiety, depression, abuse, neglect, and incongruent family systems—we achieve the most positive, long-term results. The maladaptive coping mechanisms for which we see teens enter treatment include self-harm, substance abuse, eating disorders, conduct disorders, and other forms of self-destructive behavior.
THE NEWPORT ACADEMY PROGRAM provides the safety and security, and above all, the unconditional love that teens and their families need in order to heal. By incorporating multiple modalities of psychological and experiential therapies, and a dedication to treating the entire family, we offer the highest quality teen treatment program.
contents Letter from the Editor
40
y Robert J. Ackerman, PhD B Editor
Mindfulness and Trigger Management for Traumatized, Substance-Using Youth
CCAPP We Need a Paradigm Shift
8 10
By Jon Daily, LCSW, CADC-II
Discusses interventions for complex trauma, presents the ITCT-A Trigger Grid as a method for trigger management, and describes mindfulness practices for youth.
NACOA COAs and Adolescence
12
By Sis Wenger
Cultural Trends
By John Briere, PhD
Wetted up in the Hood: Street Gangs, Rappers, and Phencyclidine
48 Three Common Factors: How EmpiricallySupported Treatments Approach Adolescent Substance Abuse Presents information on ESTs, describes how they are used with adolescents, and discusses elements of treatment. By Carrie Wilkens, PhD, and Nicole Kosanke, PhD
14
By Maxim W. Furek, MA, CADC, ICADC
Opinion Recovery High Schools 101
18
By Andrew J. Finch, PhD
From Leo’s Desk Twelve Steps into Spirituality, Part I
22
By Rev. Leo Booth
Wellness Optimism, Wellness, and Recovery, Part I
24
By John Newport, PhD
56 “I Don’t Want to Do Life Today”: Helping Adolescents Save Face in Treatment and Recovery Describes the problems facing today’s adolescents, presents bibliotherapy as a useful method of treatment, and offers suggestions for helping adolescents save face.
Creative Freedom
26
Topics in Behavioral Health Care
28
The Integrative Piece By Sheri Laine, LAc, Dipl. Ac
The Impact of Substance Use Disorders on Parents, Part I By Dennis Daley, PhD, and Joan Ward, MS
By Robert J. Ackerman, PhD
www.counselormagazine.com 3
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contents Rating the Emotions of Your Clients
32
By Michael J. Taleff, PhD, CSAC, MAC
Counselor Concerns Adolescents and Young Adults: Finding the Best Methods of Treatment
34
By Gerald Shulman, MA, MAC, FACATA
Substance Abuse in Teens Substance Abuse and Emerging Adulthood, Part II
36
A Unique Program for Children Affected by Addiction: An Interview with Karen Moyer and Brian Maus Provides information about the Camp Mariposa project, discusses the role of the Moyer Foundation and community partners, and explores the needs of children affected by addiction. By William L. White, MA
By Fred J. Dyer, MA, CADC
Ask the LifeQuake Doctor
62
38
From the Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment
By Toni Galardi, PhD
Treatment Center Directory
Special Focus on Adolescent and Young Adult Programs
Inside Books
Behind the Counselor’s Door: Teenagers’ True Confessions, Trials, and Triumphs By Kevin J. Kuczynski
70 A Mobile Texting Aftercare Pilot Program: Examining Youth Recovery Outcomes
80
Describes the Project ESQYIR study on mobile texting aftercare, provides the results of the study, and discusses implications for treatment centers treating youth.
88
By Rachel Gonzales, PhD, MPH, and Alfonso Ang, PhD
Reviewed by Leah Honarbakhsh
Also in this issue Ad Index
84
Referral Directory
85
CE Quiz
86
76 Welcome to a New Era: Collegiate Recovery Programs Discusses the issues that face a college student in recovery, presents an overview of collegiate recovery programs (CRPs), and provides resources for counselors who may want to start or locate a CRP. By Amy Boyd Austin, MSS
6 Counselor · April 2015
Photo Credit OMG Photography
Research to Practice
Scott Miller, PhD
Don Meichenbaum, PhD
Joan Borysenko, PhD
John Arden, PhD
Ron Siegel, PsyD
Letter from The editor
Teenagers
What would the world be like without teenagers? We wouldn’t have high schools. Parents would not have the opportunity to test just how good their parenting skills are. No one would have invented the word “Whatever.” Trying to actually use smartphones, iPads, headphones, and tablets would be left to frustrated adults. People who can text sixty words a minute would not exist. There would be no such things as Friday night football, music melodies louder than the lyrics, and therapists would quit saying, “I don’t think I have enough training for this.”
Beginning this past January Counselor was made available in all 650 Barnes & Noble bookstores. I want to congratulate the entire staff of Health Communications for their tremendous work to achieve this goal.
8 Counselor · April 2015
In spite of the tendency for adults to talk about teenagers negatively or to discount their behaviors, it might surprise you to know that teenagers often see the benefits of being a teenager. For example, they like playing both sides. They can be adults to children and children to adults. They don’t have to pay the bills or turn off lights. Their main job is to read books, although book reports are frowned upon. Doing stupid things is acceptable along with making out and best friends. You never need a reason for partying or falling in and out of love within the same month. Finally, you don’t have to act like a teenager because you are one. There is one teenager that I would like to call your attention to. She is nineteen years old and unfortunately will not live much longer. By the time you read this article, she might not be with us. Her name is Lauren Hill and she is from Ohio. Lauren is dying from a rare disease called diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma. She has a brain tumor and hospice has been called to her house. However, she is without a doubt an example of the best that any teenager has to offer. Her courage,
spirit, enthusiasm for life, and her abilities to think of others will always be a reminder to enjoy our lives to the fullest, no matter how short. Her dream to play college basketball was fulfilled this past November when the NCAA granted special permission for her college team to begin playing earlier than the approved schedule. Disease or no disease, there she was in the starting lineup, scoring the first and last points for her team. Since then she has played two more games, but it is unlikely there will be more. She has spent her time raising more than $500,000 for research to fight her disease. Her short life will touch the millions of people who were fortunate enough to know her or learn about her. I hope you enjoy this annual edition of Counselor on adolescents. It gives us the opportunity to appreciate not only adolescents, but the incredible work that so many therapists and others are doing to help them with this challenging part of their lives. The feature articles in this edition reflect some of the endeavors, suggestions, and guidelines for working with teenagers. On a final note, The Meadows Treatment Center recently announced the opening of the Claudia Black Young Adult Center. Congratulations to The Meadows and Dr. Black.
Robert J. Ackerman, PhD
Editor Counselor, The Magazine for Addiction & Behavioral Health Professionals, A Health Communications, Inc. Publication
CCAPP
We Need a Paradigm Shift Jon Daily, LCSW, CADC-II
T
een and young adult drug use is a growing epidemic and the way we have thought about teen drug use and when to refer to treatment certainly needs to be rethought. The view from many professionals working in law enforcement, school systems, health systems, and mental health systems is flawed and outdated with regard to understanding the illness of teen drug use. Many of these systems have views that are overly minimizing and hold prejudice about the severity of consequences which occur from one drug to the next. In addition, the magnitude and intensity 10 Counselor · April 2015
of drug use that must be exceeded before these systems make a referral to counseling is held far too high to allow for a more effective intervention. A paradigm shift has to occur. I remember when one of my mentors talked about educating therapists in the 1980s about how teen drug users needed to be drug tested. He was scorned by the industry, yet had the courage to push on with his clinical truth. He was shifting their paradigm. What David Gust was offering in his talks was not the norm and certainly felt uncomfortable for everyone to even think about.
His argument was that teen drug users lie—it is their way of keeping the relationship to intoxication undetected and ongoing. Clinicians thought that drug testing would create an injury to the therapeutic relationship and the parent/child relationship. David’s implicit point was that when teens are actively using, their primary relationship is to intoxication and not to therapists and parents. Further, people with a relationship to intoxication lie, con, and manipulate to protect and cover up their relationship to intoxication. However, drug testing does not lie when protocol is conducted properly. While drug testing is the norm today, the practice and implementation of this tool started as an uncomfortable leap in the mindset of many. In the early 90s and prior, it was thought that drug users could not be helped unless they “hit bottom” and wanted to be helped. Many families would call a therapist to get help for their drug-using teen and be told that, “Unless your teenager wants help, I can’t help him.” Today, it is widely recognized that it goes against the diagnosis for drug users, let alone teen drug users, to see their problem. Most of this is recognized as common practice, though sadly many parents and professionals still subscribe to the old belief.
So many paradigm shifts have occurred by persistent leaders in the industry, yet we are still seeing a growing epidemic of teen drug use. While many shifts are still needed at the macro levels of understanding this issue, here are two shifts which can occur and need to occur now by anyone working with teens.
The First Shift We have to see the illness as a pathological relationship to intoxication and realize that teens are not hooked on marijuana or alcohol or heroin. We are more effective when we understand that the name of the drug teens are using is irrelevant because teens are not at all hooked on marijuana, alcohol, and heroin; teens are hooked on intoxication. Our own bias that one drug is worse than the other significantly gets in the way of anyone being effective when it comes to identifying and helping teens and slowing or reversing the epidemic of teen drug use. What is getting in the way for parents and professionals working with young people is their own drug bias, which also gets in the way of intervening sooner and more effectively when it is discovered that a young person is using. I do the following exercise with many therapists when I am
CCAPP speaking at trainings and conferences, and I want to do it with you readers now.
from progressing than it is to reverse them. Wouldn’t you agree?
I want you to take a quiet moment and think about your own son or daughter. I want you to connect to your gut. Now I want you to hold that connection and think about how it feels when you get a call from the police and they say your child has just been busted at the park with alcohol. What does that feel like? How driven do you feel in the moment to mobilize and take action? Continue to stay connected. Now you get the same call, but the officer says your child has been busted with ecstasy. What is the reaction now? Your child has been busted with heroin. What is your reaction now? You see the visceral difference, don’t you? That is the drug bias that has to be removed. This is the paradigm shift: we have to see all drugs as harmful. Once a person forms a pathological relationship to intoxication, the symptoms and progression will all play out the same way. Certainly there are differences, but not enough.
Nine times out of ten when a teen shows up for outpatient treatment they have already been using for two years longer than the parents knew. You know those moments when a school finds that a teen has drugs on them, makes the referral to treatment, and the kid insists that it was their first use? That is just too statistically unlikely. So I pose the following issue to MDs and other clinicians, and I’m posing it to you now. Your child has just been busted as having used once. He or she goes to an outpatient program or therapist who specializes in working with teens with these issues. In the outpatient process, your child is evaluated to truly examine the history of use, educated about the effects of the drugs on the developing brain, mind, social group, coping, and how those parts of the developing person become arrested. Your child then explores how use has already
created consequences in his or her life with regard to family, school, health, mental health, sports, friendships, money, and other factors. He or she is evaluated to determine if there are any underlying issues as well. Meanwhile, you are also educated about all of these things and learn to develop a home contract and to implement random drug testing. This process then crescendos to a family session or two where your child shares with you his or her entire drug use history and how it has created consequences in family, school, money, friendships, and other factors. Then you as parents share your perception of how it has created consequences too. Then the home contract is implemented and the family carries it from there. What I just described is about eight sessions. This is an investment of time, money, and emotion. Wouldn’t you rather have that for your child or a client? It is easier to prevent symptoms than reverse them, but sadly kids are not being referred to
treatment until they are in a later stage of the illness when the referral should have been made at an earlier stage. Please help me help our youth who are progressing in addiction and dying; whose families and communities are being destroyed by this epidemic. We have to move into at least adopting these simple yet new ways of thinking to be more effective in dealing with this problem. Finally, it is also true that we are either a part of the problem or a part of the solution. Let’s be the latter. c Jon Daily, LCSW, CADC-II, is the founder and clinical program director for Recovery Happens Counseling Services. He also instructs a graduate school course on chemical dependency for the University of San Francisco and has been an instructor for University of California-Davis and Sacramento County Probation. He has given numerous local and televised presentations on substance use issues and is the author of Adolescent and Young Adult Addiction: The Pathological Relationship to Intoxication and the Interpersonal Neurobiology Underpinnings.
The Second Shift Referrals to outpatient programs need to happen the very first time it is discovered that a teen has used. When I lecture and train MDs, I am usually asked, “When should I refer a drug using teen to outpatient treatment?” My response is always “The very first time it is discovered they have tried alcohol or other drugs.” When I say this, the crowd usually thinks I am being intellectually tricky because this is a huge paradigm shift for most of them. I tell them that it is easier to prevent symptoms www.counselormagazine.com 11
NACOA
COAs and Adolescence Sis Wenger
T
When substance use disorders enter the family system, no matter when that happens or who is the primary patient, the children are the first hurt and the last helped. Without a supportive intervening adult in their lives while their parents’ lives are spinning out of control at multiple levels, they learn to freeze their feelings, to placate, to cover up, to achieve, and to succeed in an effort to survive and to hide the pain and confusion in their homes—while they often suffer in fear and silence— with a smile that deceives.
The Role of the Primary Care Practitioner Recognizing that addiction is a disease that often begins during adolescence or even in childhood, addiction can be visualized as a developmental or pediatric disease that has the potential to escalate in adulthood. Certainly, as previous issues of Counselor have demonstrated, along with the growing findings of the CDC’s Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) study, mental health problems that germinate in the chaotic environment of the alcoholic family begin to develop by adolescence and, without preventive interventions, can often trigger early use of substances 12 Counselor · April 2015
Photo Credit OMG Photography
his issue of Counselor focuses on adolescents, young adults, and their alcohol and drug use. The focus of the National Association for Children of Alcoholics (NACoA) is on young people who are living with parental alcoholism and/or drug addiction (COAs), or have lived with and are still impacted by it. From birth forward, these young people have been negatively impacted by various levels of chaos and chronic emotional stress that tend to characterize the addicted family’s home environment.
leading to adolescent addiction with the possibility of co-occurring mental health disorders whose roots were in their early childhood.
aftercare for adolescent and young adult patients completing substance use treatment programs as well as assist in their reintegration into the community.
Health practitioners who see children, adolescents, young adults, and families are in an ideal position to intervene at key points early in the evolution of this important health problem by providing prevention, early intervention, referral, and/or treatment services. Certainly those who are providing care to this population and have acquired the basic knowledge and skills needed can recognize the need and potentially prevent the mental health and substance use disorders from ever occurring. In addition, practitioners should be aware of community services for evaluation, referral, and treatment of substance use disorders and be available to provide
For over three decades, student assistance programs were bedrocks of recovery support for students who had slipped into substance use disorders. Although the drug-free schools funds that supported these effective prevention and intervention programs were zeroed out in the President’s budget in recent years, it is still effective when school and community-based clinicians partner with the primary care practitioner to prevent, to intervene when needed, and to support recovery for students and their family members who are troubled or in trouble. There is wide support for the primary care provider caring for children and
NACOA adolescents to routinely screen for substance-related concerns both in the pediatric patient and in the family. It is also increasingly recommended that they be knowledgeable about all aspects of screening, brief intervention, and referral to treatment (SBIRT). Health risk appraisal and preventive counseling throughout childhood preadolescence, adolescence, and young adulthood is a well-established principle in primary care. In addition, these visits represent multiple opportunities for screening, early identification, and intervention for children and adolescents affected by substance-related problems, including parental alcohol and other drug use disorders. For health practitioners, discussions about prevention of alcohol and other drug use related problems, including prescription misuse, should begin with the prenatal visit by focusing on the responsibility of parents, parental lifestyle, and effects of parental alcohol or other drug use on the fetus, infant, child, and adolescent. Parents serve as important role models for their children. The mental health and addiction professional can increase the likelihood of preventing adolescent substance use disorders by providing the same cautions to their adult clients who are parents. Children’s attitudes and beliefs regarding alcohol and drugs develop early in life, often by age seven or eight. All parents need to be aware that their attitudes, beliefs, and behavior can strongly influence and play a major role in shaping their child’s behavior. Hence, it is important for both health providers and clinicians to explore the attitude of the family toward alcohol and illicit drug use and provide basic education appropriate to the age and development of the children in that family. Guidance about alcohol and drug use should begin early in childhood when family standards and values are being assimilated. The community, the school, and places of worship can all play a role in effective prevention in early childhood. They can support the difficult role of parents to protect their children from alcohol and drug use and
their often devastating consequences. All families and the community at large benefit. Addiction professionals could help lead the way.
Adolescents and NACoA Affiliate Organizations Many of NACoA’s affiliate organizations offer preventive intervention programs to help adolescents in their communities, schools, and treatment programs. Others offer educational support programs for COAs as a component of their family treatment efforts. The following are a few examples of these creative efforts to help COAs. Links to all these programs and many more NACoA affiliates are accessible at www.nacoa.org.
Student Assistance Services
This organization in Tarrytown, NY provides an evidence-based program called Project SUCCESS (Using Coordinated Community Efforts to Strengthen Students). The program’s components include an eight-session alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs prevention program; individual and group counseling; parent programs; and when needed, referral of students and parents to treatment.
Lines for Life
Lines for Life in Portland, OR provides a peer-to-peer crisis line for teens every day. For more information on this awardwinning suicide prevention program that has helped to save and redirect thousands of teen lives, including COAs who had called believing there was no way out, visit OregonYouthline.org.
Betty Ford Center Children’s Program
This organization offers support programs for children aged seven to twelve from families hurt by addiction. All children’s programs are open to the public and scholarships are available; no child is turned away for lack of funds. Continuing care is also offered to the children and adolescents of parents who have been in treatment.
participate in traditional camp activities as well as groups providing supportive education for the COAs. The number of camps is growing and it is now in several cities across the country.
Father Martin’s Ashley
The Rainbow of Hope Children and Youth Program at Father Martin’s Ashley offers a supportive, educational program for young and adolescent children on the second Saturday of each month. The program runs from 8:45 am to 3:00 pm and is designed to help both the children and their parents.
NACoA Deutschland
This section of NACoA was founded in 2004 and is run primarily by volunteers. In ten short years it has become well established across Germany, hosting over eighty events and activities across the country for COA Week 2014. NACoA Deutschland has also translated and printed several thousand copies of many NACoA products and distributed them to pediatricians, teachers, early childhood professionals, and others, and has provided programs for COAs in the schools as well as trained teachers in drug prevention. The organization also advocates for children and families at the German Federal Parliament (Bundestag).
Familial Trust
Familial Trust is the only organization of its kind in New Zealand. It provides counseling, group therapy, children and youth programs for COAs, and intensive outpatient programs and interventions to support impacted families. c Sis Wenger is NACoA’s president and CEO.
Camp Mariposa
A program of The Moyer Foundation, Camp Mariposa offers weekend camps for adolescent COAs. Campers www.counselormagazine.com 13
Cultural Trends
Wetted up in the Hood: Street Gangs, Rappers, and Phencyclidine Maxim W. Furek, MA, CADC, ICADC
P
hencyclidine (PCP), that old street drug, has reemerged marketed in another form. What remains the same, however, are the innumerable horror stories involving paranoia, psychosis, and unimaginable acts of violence. Because of that, PCP has garnered sensational media attention and lurid headlines. A prime example is that of forty-five-yearold Ronald Singleton. On July 13, 2014, a cab driver reported that Singleton, a passenger in his taxi, was “acting overly irate and irrational, cursing and screaming and causing alarm” (Marcellino, 2014). A police statement documented that Singleton got out of the taxi and “became combative with (an) officer, trying to fight with him.” Police restrained him by placing him in a protective body wrap, but while being transported to St. Luke’s–Roosevelt Hospital Center to undergo a psychiatric evaluation, Singleton died. The medical examiner’s office declared the manner of death as homicide caused by the “physical restraint by police during excited delirium due to acute phencyclidine (PCP) intoxication.” The medical examiner’s office said factors such as “hypertensive and atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease” and obesity contributed to Singleton’s death (Marcellino, 2014). Even as the New York Police Department was being investigated by Manhattan prosecutors for the unfortunate death, Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association President Patrick Lynch said it was the PCP that placed Singleton’s life in jeopardy and that officers were just doing their jobs. “The drug puts the abuser in an extremely agitated state while boosting the person’s strength to abnormal 14 Counselor · April 2015
levels,” Lynch said in a statement. “Our members follow department protocols designed to best ensure the safety of the drug abuser and of the police officers who are attempting to get the individual the necessary medical aid,” he continued (Alvarez, 2014). Singleton’s heartbroken wife, Lyn Warren Singleton, admitted that her husband of nineteen years had a drug history and multiple run-ins with the police. Singleton had sixty-one arrests on his record including busts for drugs, assaults, and weapons possession. The five-foot-seven, 210-pound man “went into a panic” when cops approached him, Lyn said. “He was never good with police. He always
went into hysterics—this is before he even started indulging” (Bult, Paddock, & Tracy, 2014). She blamed the police for not giving the father of four and grandfather of three the medical attention he needed. “They didn’t pay attention to him when he was crying for help,” she said. “Someone having a heart attack has different signs than someone just bugging out” (Bult et al., 2014). New York Mayor Bill de Blasio called it a “tragic incident” related to drug use. “We have a lot of indication that he was in a very difficult situation, flailing about and not able to stop and a danger to himself and others,” de Blasio said. “And from everything we’ve seen so far,
Cultural Trends the protocol was followed to protect him and protect everyone around him by restraining him. Obviously, his other medical circumstances and the drug use then played a role in his demise” (CBS New York, 2014).
Clandestine Distribution Although the dangers of phencyclidine have been widely publicized, the clandestine PCP distribution network is mired in gang-related secrecy. In 2001, the FBI arrested seventeen people, including members of the Ambrose street gang, for the street corner sale of PCP. Centered in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood, the Ambrose crews sold $31,500 worth of PCP every week (O’Connor, 2001). A nearly two-year investigation called Operation Blue Water, spearheaded by the FBI and Chicago police, targeted the gang’s PCP distribution. Authorities were able to shut down a Gary trucking business housing a functioning PCP lab that manufactured the drug. At a news conference, Thomas J. Kneir, the special agent in charge of the FBI in Chicago, said the arrests dismantled
the gang’s drug organization and supply connections. PCP distribution had been the traditional stronghold of outlaw motorcycle gangs, prior to the street gang takeover (O’Connor, 2001).
“I Want a Kobe” Another epicenter of PCP manufacturing and distribution was found in South Los Angeles. In March 2007, authorities discovered a clandestine laboratory in Landers, California. Defendants were in the midst of an ongoing PCP “cook” that would have likely yielded hundreds of gallons of PCP with an estimated street value of over $1 million. On November 8, 2010, Kim Vernell Walker, a leader of the Santana Block Crips, was sentenced to life in federal prison for being one of the kingpins of the PCP-distribution ring. Walker had numerous prior convictions for felonies related to drug trafficking, including PCP. Another offender, Alphonso Eugene Foster, a leader of the Grape Street Crips was convicted of leading a wideranging conspiracy to manufacture and distribute large quantities of PCP. On February 5, 2011, Foster was sentenced to life without parole in federal prison. As part of the conspiracy, Foster, Walker, and others produced hundreds of gallons of PCP at various locations in South Los Angeles and San Bernardino County, including a residence in Landers. The group made large profits distributing the PCP throughout South Los Angeles and to cities on the East Coast. In order to obtain the precursor chemicals needed to manufacture the highly flammable and hazardous PCP, Foster and Walker opened a graffiti removal business in San Bernardino as a front for ordering the otherwise illegal precursor chemicals. Foster and Walker manufactured and possessed hundreds of gallons of PCP over the course of the conspiracy (“California gang,” 2011). Los Angeles Police Department Narcotics Detective Frank Lyga, a member of California’s only complete clandestine lab team not run by the DEA, investigated PCP for more than sixteen years and has served as an expert witness throughout the country. While
angel dust sounds powdery, PCP is used almost entirely as a liquid, and ordered on the street by code. “It’s sold using basketball names for the amount wanted,” Lyga stated. Code for twenty-four ounces of the drug would be a reference to Kobe Bryant, number twenty-four for the Lakers. “They’ll call up and say ‘I want a Kobe’ or ‘I want a Shaq,’” Lyga continued (Wride, 2013). “There’s a saying on the street, ‘Two puffs I’m good, three puffs I’m whacked,’ which is when people do crazy stuff like pull out their own teeth,” Lyga said (Wride, 2013).
Dissociative Drug PCP is a dissociative drug, meaning that it distorts perceptions of sight and sound and produces feelings of detachment (dissociation) from the environment and self. First introduced as a street drug in the 1960s, PCP quickly gained a reputation as a drug that could cause bad reactions and was not worth the risk. However, some abusers continue to use PCP due to the feelings of strength, power, and invulnerability as well as a numbing effect on the mind that PCP can induce. Among the adverse psychological effects reported are the following: www.counselormagazine.com 15
Cultural Trends a dissolved, oily yellow tincture of PCP either soaked in crushed mint leaves and sold in dime bags or cigarettes (“dippers”) dipped into the substance, ready to be smoked.
LA Impact
• Symptoms that mimic schizophrenia, such as delusions, hallucinations, paranoia, disordered thinking, and a sensation of distance from one’s environment
can make one ill) or “clickems,” the epidemic peaked in 1993–1994. Use by adolescents became so problematic that one gang, the Latin Kings, asked the State Department of Public Health to intervene.
• People who have abused PCP for long periods of time have reported memory loss, difficulties with speech and thinking, depression, and weight loss. These symptoms can persist up to one year after stopping PCP abuse.
Concurrently in 1994, reports to the National Institute on Drug Abuse’s Community Epidemiology Work Group from Philadelphia and Washington, DC indicated that the increased use of PCP was associated with the growing use of marijuana cigarettes and marijuanalaced cigars, increasingly laced with PCP. At the same time, Los Angeles reported PCP-sprayed tobacco, parsley or marijuana, and Chicago reported the use of sherm sticks, cigarettes dipped in PCP, and happy sticks, homerolled marijuana or tobacco cigarettes sprayed with PCP. In New York City, PCP is sprinkled on mint or parsley leaves and sold by the bag, while dealers allowed individuals to dip a cigarette into a small container of embalming fluid for $20 per dip (Elwood, 1998).
• Addiction. PCP is addictive—its repeated abuse can lead to craving and compulsive PCP-seeking behavior, despite severe adverse consequences (NIDA, 2009). Will N. Elwood’s research brief, “Fry: A Study of Adolescents’ Use of Embalming Fluid with Marijuana and Tobacco” provides an insight into the drug’s popularity on the streets: The use of marijuana dipped in PCPlaced embalming fluid was reported in the early 1970s in and around Trenton, New Jersey. More recently, use of the substance was reported in Hartford and the surrounding state of Connecticut. Known there as “illy” (from Philly Blunts cigars, or from the knowledge that the combination 16 Counselor · April 2015
The drug is also known as “water” or “wet.” Users, often young and fearless, speak of getting “wetted up,” a state of amped up psychosis and belligerence that often ends in a psychiatric ward. Wet is different than angel dust, the earlier powdered version of PCP. Wet is
The Los Angeles Interagency Metropolitan Police Apprehension Crime Task Force (LA Impact) is a compilation of numerous federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies in Los Angeles County. The primary focus of LA Impact is to investigate major crimes, with an emphasis on dismantling mid- to majorlevel drug trafficking organizations. LA Impact has specialized proficiency in major drug trafficking organizations, money laundering, covert operation information development, clandestine laboratory investigations, transportation and parcel interdiction, and gang enforcement (Jackman, 2011). A 2014 investigation conducted by LA Impact, the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas Task Force (HIDTA), and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) led to at least twenty arrests after a drug bust uncovered one hundred gallons of PCP. One gallon of PCP contains nearly 77,000 doses of the drug. In 2012, a gallon of PCP sold for about $12,000 in Los Angeles (Fitz-Gerald, 2014). Federal prosecutors charged forty defendants linked to PCP cookhouses, distribution networks, and South Los Angeles gangs. Anthony Dwight Bracken, an accused angel dust cooker based in San Bernardino with strong ties to South Los Angeles, was believed to be the head of the drug operation. The defendants could face life sentences in federal prison without parole because of the vast quantity of chemicals seized in the case. The investigation linked the drug with the Grape Street Crips and revealed that PCP was sent from Los Angeles to cities around the country, including cities in Texas, Maryland, North Carolina, Oklahoma, and New York. Officials stated there’s a 99 percent chance that any PCP bought in the US originated in Southern California (Fitz-Gerald, 2014).
Cultural Trends In a statement, US Attorney Andre Birotte Jr. said, “Today’s operation breaks the grip that these drug makers and dealers have held on the neighborhoods of Watts and South Los Angeles by targeting the highest levels of PCP traffickers and those responsible for manufacture and distribution of this deadly drug” (FitzGerald, 2014).
would use a drug so unpredictable and wrought in violence, this provides another example of the insanity of addiction and the absence of rational thought. Big Lurch, Ronald Singleton, and so many others never heeded this warning, choosing instead to abuse PCP and become pawns in its deadly game. c
Big Lurch
Maxim W. Furek, MA, CADC, ICADC, is director of Garden Walk Recovery and a researcher of new drug trends. His book, The Death Proclamation of Generation X: A Self-Fulfilling Prophesy of Goth, Grunge and Heroin, is being used in classrooms at Penn State University and College Misericordia. His rich background includes aspects of psychology, mental health, addictions and music journalism. His forthcoming book, Celebrity Blood Voyeurism, is a work in progress. He can be reached at jungle@epix.net.
Along with molly, purple drank, and chronic, PCP has found favor within certain aspects of the black community, often promoted by rappers who celebrate the drug’s dangerous appeal. On April 10, 2002, twenty-five-year-old Antron Singleton, better known as American rapper Big Lurch, murdered roommate Tynisha Ysais in Los Angeles, California. Singleton, who was under the influence of PCP, then cannibalized parts of her body. A detective’s report said Ysais, age twenty-one, was killed in her apartment. Further examination revealed tooth marks on her face and lungs. The detective stated that her lungs appeared to have been chewed and torn from her chest. A three-inch blade had broken off in her shoulder blade. A medical examination performed soon after Singleton’s capture found human flesh in his stomach that was not his own (Creekmur, 2002). Some have argued that the effects of PCP have been sensationalized and overstated, and that other drugs can have similar properties. Still, there remains ample evidence that PCP use can bring about horrifying consequences. Addressing this topic writer Cecil Adams concluded, Is PCP inherently dangerous? Given the continuing litany of horror stories after forty years of street use, it seems clear this stuff is in a different league from LSD and other drugs with which it’s often compared. The argument can be made that it unleashes violent outbursts mainly in people who were unstable to start with (2005). PCP users refer to their high as being totally out of control. Although it is impossible to understand why anyone
References Adams, C. (2005). Does PCP turn people into cannibals? Retrieved from http://www.straightdope.com/columns/ read/2589/does-pcp-turn-people-into-cannibals Alvarez, V. A. (2014). Cops not to blame for death of drug-addled NYC man, Ronald Singleton: Union. Huffington Post. Retrieved from http:// www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/31/nyccops-not-to-blame-dru_n_5743820.html Bult, L., Paddock, B., & Tracy, T. (2014). Death of man high on PCP and being restrained by cops ruled a homicide. New York Daily News. Retrieved from http://www.nydailynews.com/ new-york/nyc-crime/death-man-high-pcprestrained-cops-ruled-homicide-article-1.1922055
news/020511_life_pcp_distribution#sthash. FKwfSEBn.Gc7FgP0H.dpbs CBS New York. (2014). Bill Bratton: Response appropriate in police custody death of Ronald Singleton. Retrieved from http://newyork.cbslocal. com/2014/09/01/bill-bratton-response-appropriatein-police-custody-death-of-ronald-singleton/ Creekmur, C. (2002). Big Lurch faces trial for torture and murder. Retrieved from http:// www.rapnews.net/0-202-257866-00.html Elwood, W. N. (1998). Fry: A study of adolescents’ use of embalming fluid with marijuana and tobacco. Retrieved from http://tunlaw.org/fry.htm Fitz-Gerald, S. (2014). Alleged southland PCP makers, dealers charged in federal indictment. Retrieved from http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/ Local-State-and-Federal-Authorities-Team-Up-toTakedown-SoCal-PCP-Dealers-245261421.html Jackman, T. J. (2011). City of Santa Monica city council report. Retrieved from http:// www.smgov.net/departments/council/ agendas/2011/20110412/s2011041203-B.htm Marcellino, M. (2014). Death of man restrained by NYPD ruled homicide. Retrieved from http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/30/justice/ new-york-police-death/index.html National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). (2009). DrugFacts: Hallucinogens – LSD, peyote, psilocybin, and PCP. Retrieved from http:// www.drugabuse.gov/publications/drugfacts/ hallucinogens-lsd-peyote-psilocybin-pcp O’Connor, M. (2001). PCP pipeline dismantled, FBI declares. Chicago Tribune. Retrieved from http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2001-12-19/ news/0112190080_1_pcp-distribution-street-gang-fbi Wride, N. (2013). Return to dust: Bane of the ‘70s, PCP now a supporting player in the saga of Aaron Hernandez. Retrieved from http://www. elementsbehavioralhealth.com/behavioral-health-news/ aaron-hernandez-pcp-making-comeback/
“California gang leader sentenced to life in prison for distributing PCP.” (2011). Retrieved from http://www.streetgangs.com/
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