The Teen Challenge For Women Experience

For 60 years, Teen Challenge, the parent of Southeast Florida Women’s Rehab, substance abuse addiction treatment has provided a proven long-term and permanent recovery from addictions. We are part of the largest and longest continuously operated group of addiction treatment centers in the world, with over 200 centers in the U.S. and 1,300 centers worldwide.

Our Teen Challenge for women rehab is an affordable addiction and alcohol recovery program for women, age 18 and older.  This year-long residential program provides peer-to-peer, group, and individual counseling, parenting classes, spiritual inspiration, relapse prevention, anger management, drug and alcohol education, recreational opportunities, and vocational rehabilitation. 

We are single-gender and a safe, clean, healthy environment, providing addiction recovery and recovery. Our caring staff is well-trained, most having come through a similar addiction recovery program themselves. Each individual in our care is treated with compassion and respect.  Those seeking help must follow our proven plan and be ready to commit to a full year of recovery and life skills training. 

We create life change, for, without life change, addicts and alcoholics will go right back to their addiction after a few days, weeks, or months.  Anyone can go through detox and get off alcohol or drugs for a short while, especially in a highly monitored environment. Our goal is to provide long-term recovery and lifetime avoidance of addictive substances, once the individual leaves our Teen Challenge for women program, even when hard knocks hit.

Struggling With Addiction

Calling addiction a “disease” is short-sighted and only deals with the symptoms of a deeper problem.  While it is obvious that drugs and alcohol do affect the brain and actions once they are introduced, those brain changes make it much harder for the addict to get off the substance. The addiction is actually precipitated by deeper personal issues.  Addicts typically start “using” out of a personal need to cover up internal issues, such as a need for love, success, forgiveness, belonging, acceptance, a spiritual void, or a lack of life purpose.  The addict fills such voids in their life with drugs or alcohol, which provide a temporary cover-up to the mental anguish.  However, the substances will take hold and build a dependency, taking away the addict’s ability to stop on their own. The dependency becomes too powerful.  Attempts to get off the substance can lead to painful and sometimes life-threatening withdrawal symptoms. 

Once invited in, these substances can and often do entirely take over the individual and their mindset, mentally or physically preventing them from stopping on their own. The cost of maintaining a habit can sometimes cause the addict to turn to theft (even from their own family) or selling drugs, and that can lead to jail sentences. Usually, the substances are needed in higher and higher quantities or more frequently to achieve the same effect, until the addict overdoses or otherwise destroys their own body.

Without a totally new mindset and life focus to fill the void, the addict will return to their addiction, again and again, ravaging their relationships, trustworthiness, career, finances, and physical and mental health. The addiction will utterly destroy them.

Unwrapping the Layers of Addiction

The addict has to take several steps, and these steps cannot be rushed.  Once you understand them, you will see why it takes up to a year to accomplish.  Typical high-cost, short-term rehabs are quite convincing that they can solve additions in a much shorter period of time. They are a joke in the media — we often hear of celebrities attending one after another and never solving their addiction.  That is because their life issues have not been dealt with. 

Have you wondered why the rehab industry generally keeps their term short? First, it is more palatable to the addict or their family for the problem to be “fixed” quicker.  Secondly, most insurance programs will only participate in the first 90 days.  So, the expensive rehabs make the most money by having a revolving door.  On the contrary, we are nonprofit, to keep costs low, and we don’t take insurance. We focus our efforts on permanent recovery, no matter how long it takes, not on profits, insurance, and repeat customers.  We keep the cost for the individual or their family to a minimum, seeking most of our operational funding from donations from the community.  That support gives us enough time to work with each addict to totally transform their lives, for good.  And that is why our Teen Challenge for women rehab program is so successful.

Why These Steps Can Take A Full Year

The first step is to detox and purge the substances and their immediate control over the addicted individual, which alone can take weeks or even months in a highly monitored and daily tested environment.  Withdrawal can be an anguishing, difficult, and sometimes dangerous experience.  After that period, real change cannot happen from a few days or weeks of counseling — it happens day in and day out, over many months, as the individual lives in an environment where their lies, negative motivations, and improper actions are constantly challenged.  It happens as they make mistakes, are called out for those mistakes by the staff or other peers in the program, helping them to gradually learn to think and act differently.  As in building any healthy habit, repetition is the key to long-term success, so it becomes natural and automatic.

We work on an underlying person, rebuilding them up from the inside out.  The addict learns to “own” their mistakes and works to solve them.  Peers in the program are a critical force in showing them the way (another reason why the long-term aspect is so powerful is that individuals who have been in the program longer naturally mentor and lift up the newer intakes). 

Deliverance = Reliance on a Higher Power

The addict has failed again and again, on many levels.  They know they cannot change on their own, due to their own feelings of inadequacy, guilt, and repeated past failures.  So from the very start, a reliance on a “higher power” is emphasized.  We believe in the life-changing effect that a personal relationship with Jesus Christ can have on an addict’s life.  They cannot change their own hearts — they need to cry out to their Maker and put the hard work on His shoulders.  Christ and the Holy Spirit become their constant companion, bringing them peace, fulfillment, purpose, kindness, truthfulness, and a desire to do good.  

At first, the addict feels unforgivable; like a huge failure for all of the hurt and damage, they have done. But once they realize that Jesus Christ will accept them as they are, and forgive them unconditionally, a whole new window opens up to them.  They again feel worthy of moving on — worthy of being forgiven —  because the Creator of the Universe has forgiven them and has taken a huge burden off their shoulders.  A deep desire wells up within them to also seek the forgiveness of others, and that is a critical step forward.  Through Christ, they gain the strength and a burning desire to seek the forgiveness of others in their life that they have harmed.  Surprisingly to them, others who see the change in their demeanor and attitudes are more than happy to forgive them, and that’s a huge relief.

Reintroducing Truth To the Addict’s Life

If there is one thing that is common to all addicts it is that they have become the best of liars — to friends, employers, family, and even to themselves.  Moreover, they are blame-shifters, never taking responsibility for their own actions. Introducing Christ into their life also means introducing truth, where truth had become lost to them. Former addicts can see through the lies of new intakes, so they are a very effective tool of the program to hold the newer peers accountable.  Truth and transparency become a pivotal focus from this point forward, often taught with tough love, but always approached with acceptance, understanding, and care.  Eventually, the addict realizes that the only way to live is to put away their constant lies and approach life from the truth, with the help of Christ.

Change Doesn’t Really Sink in Unless it is Lived

While temporarily clean from drugs, straight with God, and after curbing their lying to themselves and others, they still need a new path forward and a plan or they could fall right back into their old ways.  The program, therefore, shifts toward introducing new elements into their life, including humility, compassion, vocation, and a strong work ethic.  There is still a partial void in the former addict’s life having to do with their future. So, several months of hard work need to happen.  Confidence, poise, and a healthy vocation must be built.   The addict is assigned work while gradually moving outside of the protected, drug-free environment in our facility. Such service work to the community teaches the residents humility and yet it is fulfilling to them to produce something each day, no matter how menial.  The work is initially done in groups, with each member of the group watching out for the others, all the while testing their own resolve to stay clean and to hold each other accountable.  Menial work gradually shifts to a focus on finding a fulfilling vocation that the former addict can successfully move into after graduating if they had none previously.  We help them get launched in that new vocation.  

How Does Our Teen Challenge for Women Charge So Little?

Teen Challenge adult rehab programs are supported by the community and recoup only a small part of their cost from the tuition that is charged.  We have 50 years of evidence that this model works, so the community gets behind us.  We are very successful at transforming individuals who were once enslaved by addiction into vibrant, productive, and peaceful individuals who care for others.  The community is therefore very grateful!  

In an Teen Challenge Outcomes Study by The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)

• 92% of graduates reported good to excellent health a year later.
• 86% reported they were drug-free a year later.
• 72% of the graduates continued their education upon completion of the program. 
• 75% of the graduates were employed a year later, with 73% being fully self-supported by earning their own salary. 

Compare these numbers with statistics of most other short-term rehabs, which are typically in the single digits!