It’s a common notion that the earlier in life we discover alcohol or drugs, the bigger the problems we face with them later on.

But the latest research shows that taking a first drink during puberty is the real problem; it’s more harmful then than starting even earlier, say at age 8 or 9.

In other words, it’s puberty itself (roughly ages 10 to 17 for girls, and 11 to18 for boys) that presents the risk, thanks to the still developing adolescent brain.

The brain reward system undergoes major functional changes during puberty. Reward sensitivity peaks, making pubescent teens more vulnerable than they’ll ever be again to rewards and reward-seeking, particularly to drugs.

Therefore, puberty is when alcohol, cannabis, etc. will induce the most destructive, persistent and long-lasting effects on the brain. It’s when the risks of addiction or even neuropsychiatric disorders like schizophrenia are the greatest.

The research puts parents on notice and suggests prevention efforts that increase awareness of the risks and vulnerabilities associated with drinking and drugs during puberty.  Read the full article here.

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Conversely, failure has a lot to do with negative self-talk.

This applies to virtually everything in life, including recovery. The surrender-to-win attitude that comes from turning the results over to a higher power leaves us free to visualize success, to act “as if.” It’s hard to convince most of our students of this, though. They may talk big and appear confident, but their history of failing betrays the negative tapes running in their heads. We can’t overcome negative self-talk with bravado, but we can recognize it for what it is and change the tape.

A helpful item on the subject by Mike Bundrant discusses negative self-talk in a way we can all relate to. Read it here.

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According to a recent Wall Street Journal article, mainstream medical practitioners are now prescribing meditation in the treatment of  heart disease, obesity, chronic pain, depression, Alzheimer’s disease and more.

The benefits of meditation have long been touted by alternative medicine practitioners, but now a growing number of traditional doctors, sticklers for clinical trial testing, are getting the proof they need to recommend it. According to clinical trial studies, those who meditate have fewer heart attacks and strokes, and exhibit improved mental and cognitive functioning including improvements in attention and memory.

Although we don’t completely understand how meditation works on the body, we do know it stimulates the body’s relaxation response, improves blood supply, slows down heart rate and breathing and increases digestive activity. It also produces beneficial changes at the molecular level and improves the functional performance of specific circuits in the brain associated with Altzheimer’s disease. Read the complete article here.

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We’ve long known that many teens who settle into the FFS routine are much healthier for it. It includes an early and consistent bedtime, considered critical for restorative sleep, and plenty of outdoor activities. Studies have also linked screen time (TV and computers) before bedtime with attention problems. Television is a non-issue at FFS, and computer use is restricted.

Whether or not you can blame the dramatic increases in ADHD diagnoses on the TV and digital age, the truth is that most children and teens today get a lot less sunshine and sleep than their parents and grandparents did as children. If spending more time outdoors and sleeping longer contributes to a properly functioning nervous system, consider it another important benefit of the FFS experience. Read the complete article here.

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The study is significant when you consider the vast population at risk—more  than 2.5 million college freshmen—and  the current epidemic of drinking on campus. Each year alcohol is responsible for some 1,800 student deaths, 690,000 student assaults, 97,000 student sexual assaults, 599,000 student injuries, 150,000 student health problems and suicide attempts, not to mention 25 percent of all academic problems.

College is fraught with landmines for all students: Suddenly they alone are responsible for getting to class, managing their time and money, dealing with stress, navigating relationships and solving any number of day-to-day problems. Add to that the ready availability of alcohol and it’s no wonder a third of all freshmen never make it through.

Drinking on campus is a major concern of universities and legislatures, and it’s something FFS has been aware of since our first group of graduates headed for college. It’s why our Bridge program exists. Failure isn’t inevitable when teenagers know what to expect and are prepared for it, and that’s what The Bridge is all about.

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Yoga Meditation

The 12 Steps of Recovery as practiced at The Family Foundation School emphasize the importance of spirituality: of connecting with a Higher Power, with the God of our understanding.

We know that those who succeed in recovery are those who can replace their addictive substances or behaviors with a working faith. Our goal is to help students develop that kind of faith by helping them explore their spiritual side and discover a Higher Power that is uniquely their own.

For years students here did this during  morning chapel services conducted by clergy. But we know there are other ways to engage with one’s spiritual self and get in touch with a Higher Power. So we recently replaced mandatory morning chapel with a period of daily spiritual exploration for all students, giving them a choice of chapel service, quiet meditation, guided meditation, or service activity.

CHAPEL SERVICE – The  most traditional way of expanding one’s spirituality is through formal worship with others. Many students are most comfortable in this setting following a familiar ritual. Throughout the week chapel services are conducted by Catholic, Jewish and Protestant clergy.  In addition to the new changes we have been able to add a Muslim study group.

QUIET MEDITATION – All spiritual traditions use meditative practices to shift one’s awareness from outer-directed activities (observing, analyzing, discriminating, deciding, accomplishing) to a more peaceful, silent state. The ultimate goal of quiet meditation is to grow spiritually by experiencing the presence of the divine.

GUIDED MEDITATION – The purpose of guided meditation might be to promote healing, self-improvement, or to develop positive traits like compassion or forgiveness. All religious traditions utilize guided meditation to help their followers connect with a Higher Power. New options in this track for students include mindfulness meditation, yoga meditation, an 11th styep meditation and embodied active imagination.

SERVICE – All religious and spiritual traditions agree that service with no thought of reward and no attachment to results is the culmination of spiritual life. Service can awaken us and help us awaken others to salvation. It is inherently joyful and gives us the opportunity to use our daily tasks and activities for spiritual practice and growth. Service can be performed for our community or the world, or we can offer it to God as a way of expressing and fulfilling divine will.

We believe that the spiritual development of our students is every bit as important as their mental pursuits and physical activities, and that the constant interplay of body, mind and spirit means we can’t affect one without affecting the other.

Read some student responses to the new changes…

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Traditionally, these houses have been co-ed, a mixture of boys and girls, which has fostered healthy social interaction and development between the sexes. But there have been downsides: Regular and frequent communication between the sexes has created distractions that have caused many students to lose their focus. And those students who need to explore sensitive and personal issues with their FFS family are often inhibited by the presence of the opposite sex.

So in February, after much deliberation, we took a big step: We established single-sex houses across campus and reassigned all students to families by gender.

So while our classrooms, extracurricular activities, and certain peer support groups remain co-ed, and while students will continue to get together for the school’s social and recreational activities, much of their day-to-day activities will take place in single-sex houses.

With this new, best-of-both-worlds arrangement, we are already seeing students more focused on their schoolwork. They are more involved with their 12-Step program and more open in group counseling sessions. We expect they will also become more attuned to their personal goals, including their emotional growth, character development and self-esteem, and that they’ll get serious about college and career planning sooner.  Most important, by eliminating gender-related conflicts within their campus families, students should be more intent on resolving conflicts with their families at home.

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By Sid Parham, PhD, Chair of the Leadership Team at FFS

This week’s cover story in New York Magazine proclaims that “High School Is a Sadistic Institution.”   It is a survey of recent social and psychological research into the life of adolescents.  It is a very good summary and I recommend the entire article.  Here I’d like to focus on one study that included rats and humans. This team of researches (Casey , Lee, Pattwell and others) discovered that ”adolescents—both mice and humans—were far less capable of dialing back their fear response than children or adults.”

These experimenters shocked mice after playing a neutral tone and they subjected the humans to an unpleasant noise paired with a neutral color.  Very quickly both mice and people learned that the stimulus was the precursor to unpleasantness.  Each showed measureable physical reaction.   Over the next few days the experimenters decoupled the stimulus and the painful response.  Very quickly both children and adults unlearned the physical response.  Adolescents retained the fear response after more trials than it took to reteach either children or adults.  In fact, they retested the mice after they reached adulthood (30 days) and discovered that the fear response was identical to the period immediately after they taught that response.

While I would not want to make too much over one experiment, this does suggest that fears developed in high school are harder to overcome and last well in to adulthood than do fears learned at other times in our lives.  Many of the students we work with suffer from anxiety disorders and often we cannot see the cause of their anxiety, because to adult eyes it seems too small for the effect it has created.

I am current directing The Glass Menagerie here at the school and anyone who knows the play can see that Tennessee Williams has intuited this mechanism.   Laura’s anxiety in high school is full blown agoraphobia in her early adulthood.  I suspect I am not the only who has an occasionally recurring nightmare set in high school.

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