Archive for the ‘meth’ Category

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Welcome Back

December 29, 2012

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Edgar made it to the GED and passed! I brought the class cupcakes. Then Edgar went home on a weekend pass and decided to celebrate his achievement by going on a methamphetamine binge. He crawled back to me looking a bit unshaven, the young man with the perfect goatee whom I had photographed in cap and gown just a week earlier. I admit I was disappointed in Edgar. Wasn’t the diploma enough? I have to re-enroll him so I gave him his former intake sheets to check. When I reviewed them later I noticed he left his grade level at 9th grade, didn’t bother to check the box for GED.

Now that Edgar has his GED I have to design a different curriculum for his 40 hours, the mandatory required in our particular program. It’s difficult to help someone climb a ladder only to have to pick them up again at the bottom. How do you make that ladder appealing now? Edgar told me he wants to move to Alaska when he discharges parole, to work in the oil industry. So I told him, “You need to read the classics,” and handed him Jack London’s Call of the Wild. I also directed him to an online literary guide that outlines the book’s characters and setting, with discussion and questions.  I’m not finished helping Edgar but he’s got to help himself, break from the pack, the streets, crystal meth.

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Sprung and spun

March 17, 2010

My students are big on emoting. After working for about an hour on reading comprehension, Linda said, “I’m sprung.” “Is it the coffee?” I asked. Being “sprung” is not uncommon for addicts, especially crack and meth users. It’s a feeling of not being able to stay in your seat, a kind of restless mind-body syndrome, along with some anxiety. “Can I clean the classroom?” Linda asked. “Okay,” I tell her, “here are some antibacterial wipes, go ahead and clean some of the computer keyboards.”  Students have told me more than once that being in my school gave them the space they needed to stay in recovery. I wish I could get a little sprung (on coffee), it might help me clean my house.

Whoops, I was confusing being sprung with being spun. Being spun is that constant restlessness I see in addicts. Being sprung is a state of intense desire and obsession for someone. Coffee in general will not get you sprung. I think my student was saying she was very horny, so it’s a little strange that I had her clean my keyboards.

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Shading and perspective

February 23, 2010

I didn’t always teach adults who dropped out of high school.  There was a time when I taught K-12 and specialized in secondary school Art. I taught watercolor painting and beginning art history and aesthetics. But I was also required to teach subjects I had no training in, like science and physical education. I still have materials from when I taught Middle School, extra-curricular worksheets in basic art techniques like shading and perspective. Now, sometimes when my adult students are studying geometry on our classroom computers, I hand out a worksheet on shading the basic geometric shapes. One worksheet shows a cartoonish mad scientist in his laboratory. It instructs the students to pick one light source in the picture and, using a pencil, shade the lab. I passed out a few of these sheets at the rehab. “Why are you asking us to shade a meth lab?” my students asked. “It’s not a meth lab,” I said,  “the scientist could be inventing a cure for cancer.”  I quickly took back all the sheets. “I don’t want to get anyone in trouble here.”  Including myself.

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C-worthy

February 9, 2010

Several of my students will be out tomorrow getting their teeth pulled. These extractions will be done for free by university dental students.  Needless to say many of my students have destroyed their gums by smoking crack or meth. Recovery isn’t just about avoiding old habits, it’s about confronting and working on the devastation caused by old habits.

I had my first dental scaling last Sunday and was reminded of trepanning and other archaic medical practices. I asked the hygienist if the scraping was harmful to the teeth. “Oh no,” she said, “it’s like removing the barnacles from the bottom of a boat.”

So now my mouth is seaworthy.

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Dollars add up

January 26, 2010

My mom called today a little panicked. It seems someone had taken her ATM card number and drained her checking account. When I hear about such violations against my own family I think of my job and how I have to look past my students’ iniquities in order to help them.  My job requires blinders rather than non-judgement. The blinders are in place because when the adults I teach walk through my door they are students first, not criminals and drug addicts. I don’t treat drug addiction, I help improve math skills. I have a theory that math can help in recovery from drugs because math requires a drug addict to use a very specific part of the brain that is in counterpoint to the dopamine-releasing, pleasure-seeking area of the limbic system addicts have been accessing for most of their lives. More math, less meth. Make sense? When one of my students tells me they are bored, I say great, welcome to the real world where dollars add up because you earned them.

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