#APG HOUSTON HOW TO#

Unlike other adolescent rehabilitation models, in APGs parents are strongly encouraged to attend their own recovery meetings and help support their teen’s recovery by creating their own program of accountability. In this way, the APG environment offers a healthy balance of love and limits. Staff create safe, loving environments while demanding accountability and enforcing consequences. In this model, APG faculty and youth staff reward adolescents for sobriety, honesty, and integrity with fun, sober activities. Recovery has to be as much fun if not more than using drugs in order to get adolescents “hooked”.

#APG HOUSTON HOW TO#

The APG incorporates a variety of weekday and weekend social activities into the recovery process so that adolescents can learn how to have fun while remaining sober.

Alternative Peer Groups strive to develop healthy decision making through fun and challenging activities. They are encouraged to learn how to have as much sober fun as possible within healthy boundaries. While enrolled in an APG, the adolescent still gets to be a kid. Several key factors inherent in the APG model contribute to the recovering adolescent’s success. The ultimate goal is to remove the teen from a negatively pressured environment and offer them a new group of friends that exert positive peer pressure and provide support for the necessary changes they need to make in order to recover. The foundation of this model is the basic assumption that peer relationships, much like the ones that initiate and support drug and alcohol use, are necessary to facilitate recovery. The APG model integrates important peer connections with clinical practice through intervention, support, education, and parent involvement. Alternative Peer Groups were created to address the emotional, psychological, spiritual and social needs of teens struggling with substance abuse. This model was created in Houston, Texas about forty years ago. The Alternative Peer Group (APG) model encompasses the necessary ingredients for successful treatment of adolescents struggling with substance abuse or drug addictions. However, there has been much debate about the best way to treat adolescent substance abuse and dependency. Thus, swift treatment of adolescent alcohol and drug abuse is of the utmost importance. According to Joseph Califano of The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, teenagers who abuse substances are much more susceptible to developing chronic substance abuse problems later in life. Unfortunately, many of those teens quickly develop dependencies which may have lasting effects in their growing brains. Often times, teens fall victim to peer pressure and experiment with alcohol or drugs as a way to cope with their stress. These changes can affect adolescent’s emotional and subjective well being and often cause a tremendous amount of stress. We do not accept government funding.Ī Recovery Model for Teens and Young AdultsĪdolescence is an important developmental phase marked by a multitude of significant psychological, social, and physical changes. We are supported by churches, businesses, foundations, United Way-SA / Bexar County, members, and individuals from the greater San Antonio area. The odds for success increase when the family is involved in their kid’s recovery. They also get to learn from our counselors how to deal with issues that are specific or unique to their situation. They learn from other families by listening to what works and what doesn’t work. The family members go through a program just like their kids. One of our core competencies is our Family Group services.

We also work with students in middle schools, high schools, and alternative schools in the greater SA area to help promote prevention. In addition to recovery services for substance abuse and drug addiction, we provide prevention and life skills education. We are a 12 step, faith-based program that offers group meetings, individual and family counseling, and fun activities that focus on healthy relationships and building life skills. Our mission is to help teens, young adults, and their families overcome the effects of mind-changing chemicals while assisting the community through partnerships in education and prevention. Below is an article written about the very successful model used by PDAP. Our guest for Eye On Addiction Radio’s March 10th show is Trish Frye, Program Director for PDAP San Antonio.

Apg houston