Sober choices through higher powers Sober choices through higher powers (June 14, 2002)

CHAC aims to give addicted kids a "New Outlook" CHAC aims to give addicted kids a "New Outlook" (June 14, 2002)

By Bill D'Agostino and Candice Shih

At first, Portia Lancaster thought New Outlooks would be "an easy way out of high school." Back before she entered the program, she would routinely skip classes to smoke weed and drink. But eventually she grew to like the support she got from counselors and other teenagers in the day rehab program, designed to help keep students in Mountain View and Los Altos off drugs and alcohol. In her time at the program Lancaster, 16, became one of its sobriety success stories. She was named student of the month five times, stayed clean for more than nine months and graduated from the program in January. On May 4, however, Lancaster slipped. Hanging out with her boyfriend and his father, she smoked pot. But slip-ups are a part of life, according to the program's counselors. New Outlooks' goal is not only to try to keep kids clean, but to give them tools to prevent one mistake from taking over their lives, according to Director Tanya Kiernan. Lancaster said her blunder was not a return to old patterns. She hopes to graduate from high school next year, and eventually go to college. She is even thinking about become a narcotics officer. "I would know a lot. I'd be able to spot people," she said New Outlooks' patients are between 14 and 17 years old, hailing from local high schools. Few of them have bottomed out; most, like Lancaster, just realized their lives have become unmanageable because of their drug use. The only requirement to be in the program is a desire to be clean and sober, Kiernan said. The program takes up to 12 students out of regular school; there are currently four enrolled. New Outlooks leaders hold morning and afternoon counseling sessions with the students, with a study break in between to do homework from adult education courses. In their time at New Outlooks, students learn to "integrate mind, body and spirit ... to turn their stress over to a higher power, which is not necessarily God by the way," Kiernan said. The higher power could be a religious belief, an art, a sport, the group or "anything greater than themselves." On Fridays, New Outlooks goes on field trips, to teach the kids that they can have a good time without using. "When they come, being high is associated with fun," said Assistant Director Janine Pohorski. Sobriety can be tough, though. The hardest thing to give up, other than the drugs themselves, is often the lifestyle: the friends they hung out with and the activities in which they participated. New Outlooks also teaches their kids to never again use what they were addicted to and to include "addict" to the labels they call themselves, Kiernan noted. "Once you're an addict, you're always an addict."