Month: July 2012

Categories
Anniversary Blogs Education Service Treatment

Adriana Camarillo: Educational Director at Visions Day School

Adriana Camarillo joined the Visions team in 2006 as one of our educators. She worked at our residential facilities and eventually became part of the Outpatient/Day School team, working closely with Joseph Rogers and Fiona Ray. In 2011, she left to pursue other things, but she is back in full force and we are beyond grateful!

Adriana has recently earned her masters degree in Educational Counseling coupled with a Pupil Services credential, a testament to Adriana’s bold and thorough educational background. Dri, ever-dedicated to her students,  remains true to the age-old art of teaching. For example, she will deftly find the very thing that sullied a student’s relationship to math, and reignite their desire to learn one of their toughest subjects. It’s a great testament to her character that Adriana teaches to the student and not to the test. She is truly a remarkable teacher.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention this, though: Adriana is funny! Hilarious, really. She’s able to bring a mix of firm boundaries and humor to a room full of adolescents—they love her and respect her for this! We are honored she came back to us after a year away—Visions is truly blessed to have such an incredible teaching team!

The staff can’t agree more! Check out what they had to say:

“Adriana is a stable presence at the Day School. She remains calm in the midst of the daily press of business, always ready to help our students regardless of what else is happening. She is an amazing resource for students preparing for college, helping with SAT prep, application essays, and the bureaucratic maze of forms and requirements. “Dri” is absolutely reliable and someone the students can count on for help and support. Dri is a real team player, and the one you always want around to make you laugh when things get difficult.” – Joseph Rogers

“Adriana is an amazing person to work with. She is very passionate and understanding. She has a great personality that is infectious (and sometimes too happy for me!). I’m proud to work alongside her and most importantly, proud to call her my friend.” — Ryan Cox

“Adriana is a selfless, loyal and inspiring person. You can always count on her to brighten your day with a wide smile and a positive attitude. She approaches teaching and mentoring students with fortitude and conviction. Adriana understands her students, picking up on their subtle nuances and adapting her academic plans based on the individual. She listens with an open mind and an open heart while instilling hope for their future. Her students are lucky to have her and I am lucky to know her. She makes us all better people.” Fiona Ray

“Guess who’s back…back again?  Dri is back…tell a friend.  We could not be more excited to have Adriana back in our world! She has always been an example for our students, teaching with poise and balance, and never letting the toughest challenges scare her, in fact, she finds the best way to reach her kids and turns those challenges into triumphs.  Adriana brings just the right amount of humor and boundaries so the kids know that she is always looking out for their best interests.  We are excited to welcome her back with open arms!” – Amanda and Chris Shumow

Now let’s get to Adriana’s answers to those silly questions we always ask:

1: Who was your first influential teacher and why?

Throughout my life I have had a number of influential teachers. Some were amazing because they remembered my name year after year. Others were amazing because they were interesting and worked at keeping us entertained while they taught. I think the first teacher to influence me was Ms. MacDonald. She was a great teacher. She listened, she challenged me, and she believed in me. I still see her around sometimes and she remembers me. Things like that have always mattered to me.

2: What is the most challenging yet satisfying subject you teach? 

I think that the most challenging subject for me would be math. I have always loved math but that is rarely the case for other people. It’s most challenging because most students have a poor representation of math and therefore, they do not like it. I like getting students to understand the concepts and overcome their dislike for the subject.

3: If money were no object, where would you live? 

If money were no object, I would live in San Francisco but I would definitely have a few vacation homes in Hawaii, Chicago, L.A., and New York. And of course, I would love to travel the world to see all the beautiful places this world has to offer.

4: What’s your favorite season?

California doesn’t really have all four season but I love Fall. I love the way the weather feels. I love wearing hoodies and jeans. I love the color of the trees and the smell.

5: If you were a Muppet, who would you be?  

A Muppet? Ummm, I think I’d be Fozzie Bear mostly because I like to make people laugh. Usually my jokes aren’t followed by tomatoes but I enjoy smiling and I like the people around me to smile too.

6: What TV show has serious consequences if interrupted? 

I’m not a big tv person. But there are three shows that cannot be interrupted. Those are Sons of Anarchy, Dexter, and Smash. They are my favorite shows and I usually watch each episode twice. Once for viewing pleasure and the second time to make sure i got everything the first time.

7: What’s your Starbucks order?

I’m not a fan of complicated coffee orders. I like iced non-fat caramel machiatto.

8: What did you want to be when you grew up? 

 

I always wanted to be a nurse growing up and i actually began college in a nursing program but after taking a few courses, I realized that nursing wasn’t for me and I decided to pursue teaching instead. I still love the idea of being a nurse but I can’t handle the “gross” aspect involved in caring for other health and I hate blood.

9: Do you sing in the car when you’re driving along? And better yet, do you stop singing at a stoplight?

I sing every where! Car, shower, classroom, store… you name it and I have probably sang a song or two. I don’t have a particularly great voice but I just love singing. It makes me happy and people usually respond well to the stranger who is serenading them in the line at the grocery store. Needless to say, I don’t stop when I get to a stoplight, in fact, I usually use that time to sing louder and add in a few dance moves.

10: Why do you choose to work for Visions?

I began working for Visions with very little information of what I was getting myself into. I was with them for almost 5 years. I left briefly this last year to teach middle school and now I am back. I came back mainly because it is my home. My coworkers are like family and I have never felt so welcomed and appreciated in one place. Working here has combined my love of helping youth with an enjoyable environment that allows me to truly say “I love what I do.”

Categories
Addiction Heroin Opiates

OxyContin Use Down, Heroin Use On the Rise

When the manufacturers of OxyContin changed their formula in 2010 to lesson its potential for abuse, I don’t think they intended to drive addicts to use other drugs. Unfortunately, that’s what happened. As a result of OxyContin’s new formula being harder to snort or inject, addicts ultimately flocked to the streets. The unfortunate drug of choice: heroin—because it’s easier to obtain and cheaper than its pharmaceutical counterpart.

Dr. Theodore Cicero, professor of neuropharmacology in psychiatry at Washington University, and the principal investigator for a three-year research study of OxyContin use noticed a significant drop in OxyContin use after its formula change.  In fact, “Respondents indicating OxyContin as their primary drug of abuse dropped from 35.6 percent at the start of the study to 12.8 percent now.”   Further, the number of subjects who stated they’d used OxyContin to get high at least once in the last 30 days “fell from 47.4 percent to 30 percent.” Unfortunately, the Washington University team found that their respondents’ use of heroin grew from 5 percent to 15 percent—these numbers nearly tripled during that same 30-day period!

Addicts and drug abusers had clearly moved to the streets, the suburbs, and to heroin. They have essentially migrated toward a drug that is easier to inject or snort, much like the old formulation of OxyContin.  Dr. Cicero compared drug abuse to a “large balloon.” He explains it thusly,  “You press in one area, and the volume doesn’t decrease, it just simply moves to another spot.” This analogy fits well here as we look at the decline in OxyContin use and the increase in heroin use. As Dr. Cicero’s analogy deftly points out, the Oxy problem hasn’t really been solved; it has just been diverted.

While OxyContin is regulated and easily identifiable, heroin is not. In a weird way, you know what you’re getting with Oxy. But let’s be honest, anytime we put something in our arm or in our noses in an effort to alter our mind and body, we are playing the part of lab rat. Heroin is a problem: it’s unpredictable from one source to the next – sometimes it’s nearly pure, increasing one’s potential for an overdose.

The bottom line is the overall increase in opioid use: this is troublesome and growing into an epidemic. While we can treat addicts when they’re ready, how can we prevent addiction or abuse in the first place? Let’s start the conversation before it becomes a problem, taking preventative measures during the early years of our children’s lives: that perfect time when they’re just starting to dip their toes in the burgeoning years of curious adolescence.

Related articles
Categories
Addiction Adolescence Substance Abuse

Adolescent Substance Abuse Rises the Summer, According to Study

Adolescent substance abuse tends to rise in the summer months of June and July. Notably, this period correlates with a time where adolescents have more idle hours, less parental supervision, and looser schedules with less responsibility. Summertime, has always been that time of teen freedom. Unfortunately, it also is prime time for experimentation and adolescent substance abuse.

According to a report recently released by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), “approximately 11,000 adolescents use alcohol for the first time, 5,000 try their first cigarette, and 4,500 begin using marijuana” during the months of June and July. Yes, this is surely problematic, but it’s also a call for ardent preventative measures. Adolescent substance abuse isn’t a rite of passage; it’s an emblematic symbol of the frightening difficulties facing our teens. The substance abuse conversation needs to happen year round, not as a one-time discussion, but as an ongoing dialogue between parents and their burgeoning teens.

The media has a multitude of public service announcements (PSAs), which target adolescent substance abuse. In particular, this study suggests increasing the frequency of these PSAs during the summer months in hopes of increasing awareness. In areas where there is limited access to preventative measures, however, the study suggests communities create “attractive alternatives” to alcohol and substance abuse, inspiring curious adolescents to move in a safer direction. Some of these alternatives could include community events or youth activities that encourage sober fun. It’s definitely possible to combat adolescent substance abuse in a non-preachy and informative way. The biggest challenge might be grabbing the interest of teens, who tend to steer away from any adult-led suggestions of fun, engaging entertainment.

We have the facts: adolescent substance abuse is up in the summer.  What are we, as parents, educators, and mental-health professionals going to do about it? For starters, we’re going to do our darndest to create safe, open spaces for our kids to talk to us. We are going to leave our hearts and minds open to having a consistent, transparent dialogue with our adolescents. It’s not easy; frankly, it’s one of the toughest things to do, but this is prime time to be present for our kids. They need us more than ever during this period of their lives, even though they may tell you otherwise.

If you are a parent, friend, or relative of a teen struggling with adolescent substance abuse, there is help. Don’t hesitate to reach out if you need to–you are not alone.

Categories
Mental Health Recovery Spirituality

Attitude of Gratitude

 

Photo credit: limevelyn

Gratitude: what makes gratitude—this “quality of being thankful” according to the Oxford Dictionary–such an integral part of one’s recovering life? Or rather, what makes it such a necessary part of having a happy life in recovery?  I am struck by how prone the world is to grouchiness, especially on Mondays.  For many, a weekend of merrymaking (even sober) does not leave many of us filled with appreciation come Mondy morning.  If anything, Monday tends to be synonymous with dread. It need not be so.

When we step foot on the path of recovery, we don’t do it because we’re having fun. We typically step foot on this path because we’ve lost our backsides. We are tired; we are lonely; we are uncomfortable in our skins; we are isolated; we are angry. One thing we are not prone to is gratitude. In recovery, be it from substance abuse or mental illness, we have an opportunity to develop this gratitude.  We start simply, because once we complicate things, we are dealing with a twisted cat’s cradle of emotions.

Auguston Burroughs succinctly says in Dry, “Think of your head as an unsafe neighborhood; don’t go there alone.” Our heads really are a dangerous place at times, often acting as an environment full of judgment, fear, reactivity, defensiveness, competitiveness and so on.  We want to eliminate these thoughts so we don’t inadvertently turn our lives into wells of misery.

We do this simply:

  • Begin with a gratitude list: commit to writing down 3 things a day you are grateful for. Keep it simple: You can be grateful for anything, but write something down!
    • Share your list with another human being.
    • Be of service. Nothing works better for getting out of your head (that bad neighborhood!) than helping another human being.
    • Take commitments.
    • Volunteer.
    • Smile. As Mother Theresa says, “ Every time you smile at someone, it is an action of love, a gift to that person.”

We’re in recovery now and many of us break the odds every time we open our eyes in the morning. If that’s not reason for gratitude, I don’t know what is. To answer my own question, what makes gratitude is our willingness to acknowledge all that we have done and that we do instead of dwelling in all that we’ve lost. Yes, those things are real and valid, but the heart is one of the most resilient muscles in the body, and we will recover.

“When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” Wayne Dyer

Categories
Addiction Prevention Synthetic Drugs

Synthetic Drugs: Elusive and Troubling

 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

One thing’s for sure: teens are curious. And we’d be remiss in forgetting their quintessential stubbornness and hints of recklessness, which, of course, feeds their curiosity. Now with the surge of synthetic drugs on the market, coupled with the fact that most parents don’t know much about them, the curiosity factor is heightened. Sure, parents can wax poetic about the drugs of their time: marijuana, methamphetamines, psychedelics, cocaine, and pills. But when it comes to synthetic drugs like K2 or Spice or the mythos of Bath Salts, parents and teachers alike are as baffled as the authorities.

We’ve been writing about synthetic drugs over the past two years, understanding the heat has been on to place bans on these drugs across the country. The difficulty has been the FDA is up against fluctuating drug formulas and irregular chemical components in the drugs themselves, making regulation difficult and elusive. Finally, on July 9, 2012, President Obama signed legislation banning synthetic drugs. The law bans any known chemicals used to make K2, Spice, and bath salts. The trick will be for the FDA to stay one or two steps ahead of the synthetic chemists, because as one formula is banned, a new one is cooking in someone’s garage.

However, it’s not just the FDA that to needs to stay a step ahead of synthetic drugs; it’s parents as well. Synthetic drugs are easily concealed and available everywhere from online sources to the local convenient store. The reality is, some of these chemicals are so new, they’re off the radar entirely and which increases user vulnerability. What may seem like a fun party idea to an adolescent,  synthetic drug use can easily ricochet into a psychotic episode and a visit to the ER. This is serious. Recently, the National Institute on Drug Abuse released information which indicated one in nine high-school kids had used synthetic drugs.  Talk to your kids, and stay informed–not only regarding their lives, but the social minefields they have to navigate on a regular basis.

Related articles
Categories
Mental Health Parenting Recovery

Study: Physical Punishment Affects Mental Health

Recently, the Journal of Pediatrics published a report investigating the correlation between childhood physical punishment and adult mental health.  While it’s widely accepted that severe forms of physical punishment have a detrimental effect on one’s mental health, there remain to be few studies “examining the relationship between physical punishment and a wide range of mental disorders in a nationally represented sample.” This study specifically examined the effects of “harsh physical punishment” in subjects who had not endured severe forms of punishment (i.e., physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, physical neglect, emotional neglect, exposure to intimate partner violence) and marks the beginning of more research into this issue.

In the mental health communities, we are painfully familiar with the negative impact of the aforementioned episodes of severe physical punishment and with the fact that physical punishment of any kind continues to be a controversial subject among parents. There always has been a firm line drawn between those who spank and those who don’t. It’s not uncommon to see a raised eyebrow coming from one camp or the other when a child misbehaves, begging the age-old question of whether or not to spank. There’s a lot of judgment on both sides of this issue. The more important question is: Do spanking or harsh physical punishments have a long-term, negative affect on a child’s mental health? And is there a mental-health fallout weaving its way into one’s adulthood?

The study positively concluded that “harsh physical punishment” is connected to mental health issues later in life, even if there is no evidence of persistent abuse or neglect present. Common afflictions include mood disorders, anxiety disorders, substance abuse and/or dependence, and personality disorders.

Frankly, I would love to see a consensus of parents finding better, more loving ways in which to communicate with their children. Spanking might feel productive in the moment, but the emotional mark it leaves is deeper than that fading red mark.  There is power in love and compassion, far more than fighting one’s way through life. As an adult who was abused as a child, I can tell you from first-hand experience: my life was negatively impacted, and it did taint my adult life–but not so much so that I will carry the legacy of abuse into my own family. It’s not worth it.

Categories
Adolescence Holidays Recovery

Sober Fun for Adolescents in Recovery

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

What’s this? The 4th of July lands on a Wednesday? This might mean less opportunity for teen substance abuse or experimentation, or it might mean a murky Thursday morning. I’m hoping for the former. This got me thinking. At our outpatient treatment facility, one of the groups we hold for our adolescents in recovery includes “sober fun” as a way to get our teens to embrace the idea of having fun in recovery. We all know one of the scariest things about getting sober as an adolescent is the fear of being alienated socially by friends.  Most of the time, the activities that used to be exciting and fun are unsafe in sobriety—drinking and using can’t be used as a social buffer anymore. Recovery is a lifestyle change: both inside and outside of the body.

Why not make the 4th of July chock full of sober fun? It’s a great way to get pre-teens and teens out of their adolescent comfort zone and into a setting of silliness. The options are truly limitless. Sometimes sober fun happens organically, with impromptu dance parties, or  bouts of charades. Not to mention, there are always the organized activities that are far more fun sober than loaded, like bowling, mini golf, or paint ball. The idea is to get comfortable in our skin so we can let loose without chemical aid. Life is fun. It is full of wonderful surprises, why not experience them in a way you can remember later?

Over the years, I’ve had far more fun sober than I ever had using. Being in recovery empowers us to be present. We become engaged with our lives and in our friendships, which ultimately means we can enjoy our experiences tenfold. One of the best gifts of being a young adult in recovery is this: learning to live in the solution before we get stuck undoing decades of bad habits.

Have a wonderful, safe, and colorful Fourth of July. More than anything, have limitless fun and laugh like you mean it.

Exit mobile version