Part 1 of the series, What Parents Need to Know: “Hope Academy Parents Share Their Experiences”

“Her personality started to change. She had been a fun loving, smiling, logical thinking teenager. She turned into a moody, easy to anger, sometimes no making sense teenager.”

“Towards the latter part of her freshman year, she was hanging around different people, and her grades suffered.”

“In late middle school we began to be concerned due to reports from others of suspected self-harm behavior or cutting, sneaking around and behavior related concerns. Later in 9th grade our dog found (drug) paraphernalia under her bed.”

“She did three months in rehab out of state. She came home and three months later she relapsed.

“We were still very lost not knowing if we were dealing with an addiction problem or a mental illness. It would take another eight months and 30 days of treatment at a treatment center to learn that we were dealing with an addiction problem.”

“We did little things to try to manage it, like telling her she couldn’t go to school at 7am with her druggie friends knowing they would be using before school… but nothing worked long term, maybe just for that moment. I called just about every drug treatment center in the United States trying to find the right one and educating myself along the way.”