Since Capstone is not a 12-step program but instead a family therapy / Christ-centered based program, I feel like I need to explain the reasons for our approach and I do so with the utmost respect for all 12-step programs and all people working the steps. We try diligently to set up our graduates with Celebrate Recovery in their aftercare. Celebrate Recovery was begun out of the need to have a Recovery group based on the teachings of Jesus and one that was not ambiguous about who God is and His power in the recovery process. The program follows eight recovery principles based on the beatitudes taught by Jesus during the Sermon on the Mount. (www.celebraterecovery.com)

The majority of treatment centers are going to be 12-step programs and while this approach has helped more people number wise than any other approach, it is not very successful percentage wise, especially with adolescents and young adults. There are some things you should know before you make a decision on a treatment program for your son. I was trained in the 12-step approach by two men whose lives were saved by the 12-steps, both of whom I love dearly, Joe O’Toole and Bob Brantley. While I believe in the principles because they come from the Bible, I do not believe that 12-step programs work as good as our approach for adolescents when it comes to getting off of drugs and especially when it comes to helping boys become the men God intended them to be. If Capstone helped every boy quit using alcohol / drugs completely and that’s all we did we would consider ourselves to have not achieved our primary goal of heart change. While sobriety is a goal, it is not the primary goal because just like using drugs is a symptom, sobriety is also a symptom. If a boy’s heart is walking in the dark, abusing drugs will come along as a symptom. If a boy’s heart is walking in the light, sobriety will be one of the “symptoms”.

Back to the 12-steps; the premises of “admitting powerlessness” and “hitting bottom” and “they need to want help to get help” do not happen with the vast majority of adolescent males (which ranges up until the mid twenties). Adolescent males almost never hit bottom nor admit weakness because they have too much testosterone and perceived invincibility. If you went to every adolescent male treatment facility in the country and polled residents to see who wanted help on the day of their admission you would find that most did not. This is true for Capstone as well, most boys who admit to Capstone do not want help nor want to be in treatment (neither would I have at their ages), however, so far, the vast majority of graduates from Capstone have been glad they were at here (and the vast majority who admit do graduate).

We are in our fifth year in operation and thus far, less than ten percent of our graduates have gone back into treatment. We really feel like the “success rate” is better than that because even those boys who went back to treatment went back very different boys than when they came to Capstone. Because the core of that success is a paradigm shift of the boys’ hearts toward good, we are pleased (but not satisfied). We believe that God will continue to make the seeds grow that He used us to plant.

The 12-steps have very good people in them and this is in no way a criticism of them, it’s just a statement about the differences between their approach and ours with adolescents. The premise of the 12-steps is commonly called the disease model or the medical model. I remember Joe O’Toole, one of the men that trained me, (Joe if you are reading this I love you and can’t wait to see you) saying, “Yep, you got it. The night you were conceived you got it in your genes and there’s nothing you can do about it.” Well, as much as I love Joe and as much as that belief helped him, it just simply wasn’t true. There is a genetic predisposition to drug addiction, but there is not a genetic predetermination. There are people in the 12-Steps who distinguish between genetic predisposition and genetic predetermination. My genes gave me fair skin and freckles, my wife dark skin, and my friend Butch black skin. We all have the capacity to sunburn, just at different paces. I may be more vulnerable to skin cancer due to my genes but I don’t have to get it. Writers in the field of substance abuse state that adolescents use drugs for different reasons. The secret to winning the battle is discovering the reasons and formulating strategies for solutions.

The research says that the brain doesn’t finish development until the late twenties. Your son can still attain all of his life’s dreams and not have to live everyday of his life waking up and figuring out how to not use drugs that day. However, he has damaged his brain “addictionally” (if that were a word) in the sense that he cannot control use; he must be abstinent in order to not start the avalanche of a relapse.

The research on adolescent substance abuse, and remember that we believe adolescence goes up to the mid twenties, started really coming out in the early nineties. Columbia University and the University of Miami with Dr. Howard Liddle, have done extensive research in this area and have identified Family Therapy as being vital in the treatment of adolescents.

If you are interested on resources related to adolescent and young adult substance abuse please contact Capstone’s clinical director, Dr. Bonnie Phillips.

Back to Top