College Suspension-Deferral Treatment Program
I was a part of one of these teams. For the first year, I thought what we were doing was the absolute cooling thing ever: giving a student a chance to still remain a student while getting additional support around their budding substance abuse disorder. What happened once the rose colored glasses started to come off is that I realized were actually teaching the students how to game the system. Very few were getting better, if anything, the majority were getting sneakier. What do we know about addiction? It breeds when there are secrets. As a team, we were unintentionally encouraging the secrecy.
What student would actively advocate to be removed from their social network? To stop the self-medicating tactics? Or to be suspended from college so they couldn’t continue to work towards their degree? Ask any student and they wouldn’t volunteer for any of this. What I learned over time though is that because we weren’t removing from their current situation (i.e. their current housing situation with their current housemates, from their sporting teams or green organizations, from their high-stress majors, etc.), and because we were only adding on to their already busy schedule (i.e. random drug testing, attending psychoed courses around substance abuse, requiring group therapy, Drug Court on Fridays, etc.) we were only making their college experience more unattainable without coping with substances. Although we thought we were collecting helping, we were playing God while giving them fire to get burned.
Towards the end of my second year, I actually found myself starting to advocate to suspend the students. Not because I actually wanted them to be suspended, but what I’d learned over time is that by stringing along their student status it only delayed the inevitable: their substance abuse would increase, and they would get far worse before they got better. During the entire time I worked on this treatment team, I couldn’t name one single student who got better; who I’d consider a “success.” What I recall is compliance, white-knuckling it, and then being given the bird (metaphorically) when they made it through the program to graduate and then get fucked up (excuse my language, but it’s true). The straw that broke the camels back for me was witnessing two students in quick succession being suspended due to relapsing while in the program [read: “relapse” lightly considering they were never really given the space to truly be able to lean into sobriety while in this program]. Those students turning to the team in acknowledgement that they did genuinely need help, and us being told (from the top-down) that we couldn’t help them. They were no longer a student, so they’d need to figure out for themselves finding a treatment program. Also, they would be welcomed back to this university, re-entering into school on a conditional readmission while they were a part of this program (again) after a signed sheet of paper from a Medical Director confirming they had at least three months of sobriety.
Gross. Why would a student ever want to return to this school? How rejecting.
I care about human beings. I care about the students, not because they were at this particular school and I have loyalty. If anything, I had the opposite of that. I had morality and care for the young adults in front of me. Whether they were at this school didn’t matter to me. And I knew there were some really unethical treatment programs that existed out in the world. You have to be careful enrolling in a program just to enroll.
If you are a parent reading this and your child got in trouble on-campus and is now being enrolled in a Suspension Deferral Treatment Program, be wary. Consider your alternative options. Your child is likely to get better leaving school to get help, and then returning (or going elsewhere!) when they’re in a position to lean into their recovery.
For questions or comments contact Joanna.
