Campus to launch recovery program
By Janna Nguyen
College campuses are generally excellent at providing preventive education and treatment for student addictions. What they don鈥檛 provide is a space for recovery.
At CU-Boulder, that鈥檚 about to change.
This fall, the campus is looking to introduce a Recovery Campus Program, which will offer immediate assistance to recovering addicts.鈥漈he goal is to provide a bridge into society for people who are recovering from addiction and give them an opportunity to readapt,鈥 said Dr. Donald Misch, director of Wardenburg Health Center, which will operate the new program.
The program will offer college students a strong support system to encourage recovery, including different resources of help, from Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous meetings to seminars on relapse prevention. They will also host meetings to help students develop time management and study skills to reinforce academic success, focus and productivity.
Misch said that colleges are not generally considered environments that are conducive to recovery.鈥漈he American college campus, in general, is awash with alcohol and drugs. So it鈥檚 one thing to get treatment,鈥 Misch said. 鈥淚t鈥檚 another thing to reintegrate into the real world. And the university is the real world. . . After all, kids who are recovering from substance abuse are going to have to deal with other kids who are continuing to abuse substances. How are you going to manage that in your life?鈥
The program stresses the importance of associating recovering addicts with a new, positive environment. 鈥淒ata shows that a key variable in the recovery process is changing friends to non-substance abusers,鈥 Misch said. 鈥淭his program will provide a valuable sense of community that shares values of sobriety.鈥
The Recovery Campus Program at CU-Boulder was inspired by the Collegiate Recovery Community at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas. 鈥淭exas Tech is the leader in providing help for college students who need recovery support,鈥 Misch said.
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