At an innovative high school, students get support battling their addictions while they learn

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JUDY WOODRUFF: And now to our America Addicted
series.


Drug use has been down among teenagers, but mortality is rising.
And that is leading many to seek out new options for their
children.


The “NewsHour”‘s Pamela Kirkland went to look at how one
so-called recovery school in Indianapolis is giving new hope to
students battling addiction.


It’s part of our weekly Making the Grade look at education.


FRANCIE WILCOX, Student, Hope Academy: I went
from using downers, mixing alcohol and Xanax.


NICK SHIRKEY, Student, Hope Academy: Oxys.
Percs.


FRANCIE WILCOX: Then I would use uppers like
cocaine.


NICK SHIRKEY: Some meth and some heroin.


FRANCIE WILCOX: I would just use anything I
could possibly use.


NICK SHIRKEY: Life just went on that downhill
spiral, and I let it take me there.


PAMELA KIRKLAND: Francie Wilcox and Nick Shirkey
are two of about 30 students who attend Hope Academy in
Indianapolis. All of them have struggled with substance abuse.


WOMAN: Thank you for taking part in today’s
circle and your willingness to support the community.


PAMELA KIRKLAND: Twice a week, their day starts
here, in a circle modeled after the teachings of Alcoholics
Anonymous. Students lay out their goals.


STUDENT: What can life be like when I’m clean?


PAMELA KIRKLAND: Their regrets


STUDENT: Felt bad for all the things that I have
done to people.


PAMELA KIRKLAND: And their sobriety dates.


STUDENT: My clean date is July 17.


PAMELA KIRKLAND: Hope Academy is one of nearly
40 recovery schools in the U.S.


When it comes to kicking a drug habit, experts say simply being
young is a major hurdle. Only half of U.S. treatment centers even
accept teenagers. That’s why recovery schools like these are
becoming increasingly popular.


RACHELLE GARDNER, Chief Operating Officer, Hope
Academy: I get a call probably once a week from somebody saying,
hey, I saw your school, we really want to start a school, how did
you start that, can you help us?


PAMELA KIRKLAND: In 2006, Rachelle Gardner
started Hope Academy to help students who have fallen behind
because of addiction.


RACHELLE GARDNER: Our young are pretty normal
kids. They got the same issues. They just so happen to have this
disease along with it. And we look at it as a disease, instead of
just a behavioral problem.


PAMELA KIRKLAND: Hope is a public charter
school, meaning it’s tuition-free, and must take any student who
qualifies.


The school is attached to an inpatient treatment facility, and
traditional subjects like math, English, and history are offered
in small classroom settings, alongside a constant emphasis on
recovery.


WOMAN: Think about how drugs really did start
affecting your life.


PAMELA KIRKLAND: Students are randomly
drug-tested, and attend 12-step meetings. They also meet one a
week with Brad Trolson.


BRAD TROLSON, Recovery Coach, Hope Academy:
It’s an easy thing to forget that we have control.


PAMELA KIRKLAND: He’s the school’s recovery
coach and also in recovery himself. We first met Trolson in June
while he was meeting with 17 year-old Francie, who had just
relapsed days before at a weekend party.


FRANCIE WILCOX: You just start to get into
recovery, and you like literally just sit there and think, like,
who am I? What do I even like? If I am not getting high or I’m
not with people that I hang out and get high with, like, you just
don’t know what to with yourself.


BRAD TROLSON: Our society, our culture is really
— it teaches our kids that drug use and alcohol use is really a
deeply ingrained part of being a kid. And a lot of our students
have fallen prey to that idea, and to such an extent that they
really don’t know what the teenage is if it doesn’t include drugs
and alcohol.


PAMELA KIRKLAND: Francie says she’s struggled
with self-harm and an eating disorder for years. She began
drinking in sixth grade because she wanted to feel grown up.


FRANCIE WILCOX: It didn’t progress super fast.
It just kind of — I would drink on the weekend, but, eventually,
it did start to go into smoking, and pills, and other kind of
things.


PAMELA KIRKLAND: Before coming to Hope, Francie
entered three separate residential treatment programs.


FRANCIE WILCOX: Addiction literally starts to
control your entire life.


MARY ANNE WILCOX, Francie Mother: It was at
the point where we would say, I think we’re going to have to get
used to the idea that we might be burying our daughter.


PAMELA KIRKLAND: Francie’s mom, Mary Anne
Wilcox, says she and her husband felt scared and helpless. From
their home in Savannah, Georgia, they made a difficult decision.


MARY ANN WILCOX: My husband suggested maybe we
look into this school in Indianapolis, and we could live here for
a couple of years, until she gets through high school, and then
go back to Georgia, because there was nothing anywhere in the
southeastern corner really for us to do to get her services.


PAMELA KIRKLAND: That’s all too common, says
Andy Finch of Vanderbilt University. He’s one of the nation’s
leading experts on recovery schools.


ANDY FINCH, Vanderbilt University: Many places
just don’t have many adolescent options available, and a lot of
times, the options that exist might be too costly for a family to
afford.


PAMELA KIRKLAND: Finch recently authored a
report on the effectiveness of recovery schools vs. traditional
high schools for teenagers who have struggled with drug
addiction.


He found that nearly 60 percent of students in recovery high
schools reported not having relapsed in the sixth months that
followed treatment. That compares to just 30 percent of students
in regular high schools.


ANDY FINCH: Teenagers who are struggling with
addiction are having to face a lot of peer pressure. They
struggle sometimes if they’re trying to stop using to find
friends who aren’t using, to find adults that know how to handle
that and what to do with it.


And, often, the place where they’re either finding drugs or
finding friends who are using drugs is in their school.


PAMELA KIRKLAND: Finch also says that many
adults in treatment admit to first using drugs while in high
school, meaning this age is crucial to combating lifelong
addiction.


NICK SHIRKEY: High school is hard in general,
but it’s even harder when you have like this extra weight or
extra pressure on your shoulders.


PAMELA KIRKLAND: Nick Shirkey spent much of his
early childhood in the foster care system, where he says he was
abused and neglected. His drug use started at age 12.


NICK SHIRKEY: At birth, I weighed 1 pound, 6
ounces. I was born addicted to methamphetamines. Parents were
real bad addicts. They didn’t care. They just wanted their next
high.


PAMELA KIRKLAND: Nick tried a treatment
facility, but relapsed earlier this year. This is his second
attempt at Hope Academy.


BRAD TROLSON: Most of our students, they’re not
just substance users. They come with a lot of trauma. They come
with a lot of mental and emotional issues that, once they get
clean and sober, now those things really start to surface.


PAMELA KIRKLAND: In many ways, 18-year-old Ian
Lewis represents Hope Academy at its best. He started using drugs
in middle school, moving from marijuana and alcohol to
prescription opiates and cocaine.


After two years, Ian graduated in June as co-valedictorian. He is
now a freshman studying biology at Indiana-Purdue University in
Indianapolis.


IAN LEWIS, Graduate, Hope Academy: If you
would’ve asked me two years ago, I probably would’ve told you I
didn’t think I was going to college.


But I turned it around after I got into this recovery process.


PAMELA KIRKLAND: But Ian says Hope Academy can
only do so much.


IAN LEWIS: It’s not going to save you if you
don’t want to be saved. Some of these kids out here, they don’t
want to stop using. And that’s when Hope isn’t really effective,
because they aren’t using it.


FRANCIE WILCOX: Sometimes, you just forget. You
think, well, maybe I can drink, or maybe I can smoke, or maybe,
if I go to this party, I can use like a little bit of coke, if
it’s, like, recreationally.


PAMELA KIRKLAND: When we visited Francie again
in August, she had relapsed for the second time in three months.


FRANCIE WILCOX: It just reminds you that I don’t
drink and use like other people do. Like, I have no limits. I
have no boundaries. I just — whatever I can do, I do, and that’s
just not a right way of thinking.


PAMELA KIRKLAND: But a relapse doesn’t mean the
end at Hope.


RACHELLE GARDNER: We can’t be a no-tolerance
school. We have to be accepting, because relapse is part of the
disease, regardless of how old you are.


PAMELA KIRKLAND: Francie has been assigned more
focused recovery classes, where students complete their course
work one-on-one with their teachers.


Her mom, Mary Anne Wilcox, says she remains hopeful, but she
admits these last few months haven’t been easy.


MARY ANNE WILCOX: I mean, it feels devastating.
You know, it’s just — you want so much for the whole thing to be
over. But it’s just — it reminds you that it’s not. It’s forever.
And it’s something that we will be dealing with forever and she
will be dealing with forever.


PAMELA KIRKLAND: As for Francie, she says,
despite her setbacks, she can’t imagine life without this school.


Do you worry what might happen if Hope doesn’t work for you?


FRANCIE WILCOX: Yes. I worry a lot. If I had to
be in a regular high school, I don’t think I would even be alive.


PAMELA KIRKLAND: There’s been little research
into the long-term outcomes for those who attend recovery
schools, but, for the students here, they still have hope.


From Indianapolis, I’m Pamela Kirkland for the PBS NewsHour.


JUDY WOODRUFF: It’s powerful.


Tune in tomorrow night: Could pain be treated without addictive
drugs? Our America Addicted series continues with the latest
scientific discoveries on pain and how best to treat it.


And online, our newest PBS NewsHour/Marist new poll finds a
majority of Americans feel the president has not done enough to
combat the opioid crisis.


You can find our analysis and the full results at
PBS.org/NewsHour.


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battling their addictions while they learn appeared first on PBS
NewsHour.