Adolescent Chemical Dependency Units

     Page Twenty
     From 1987 until about 1995 I was staff hairdresser to three Adolescent Chemical Dependency Units. I started at the first one because one of my hair clients worked as a Tech (read: baby-sitter) on the unit and she was corralled into cutting the kids' hair simply because somebody had to do it. That unit was at a local hospital and the kids were there for twenty-eight days of detox, evaluation and treatment. Some of those kids showed up in the first place with outrageous hair which would need to be cleaned up. Others simply needed regular cuts, as four weeks can be a long time to need a trim. My client didn't really enjoy the job so she asked me if I might be interested. I was and thus I began going there every Saturday Morning.
    About a year later, that same hospital opened up an adolescent "halfway house" right on the campus. This halfway house, "The River," would be a place for the kids to live on average four months, so their new found sobriety could stabilize prior to going back home. There was a teacher, cook, classrooms, dorm rooms, dining room, living area and so forth. The administrator invited me to join that staff as well, so this would be my second unit. I went to the River every Wednesday afternoon.
     Shortly thereafter, a private adolescent halfway house, ten miles east of here and already about five years old, heard about me and asked me to join their staff. With them, "Dimensions," I worked on call, but their kids stayed on average four-six months. So technically, I worked in one unit and two halfway houses. I just say I worked in three ACDU's, it's simpler.
     Some of the kids from the ACDU went to the River but most went home. So the River which normally had a few dozen kids, got a lot of their kids from other hospitals and other states. Dimensions was also a magnet for various treatment centers. They too had a few dozen beds. At the time, this concept was new and insurance companies were more than happy to pay for all this hospitalization. By the mid-90's though, the insurance companies were saying "NO!!!" to paying for teenaged drug treatment. So most ACDU's and accompanying adolescent halfway houses around the country were shuttering up. The ACDU and the River would eventually close, in fact the entire hospital closed. Dimensions is still open but it's substantially harder to get in than it used to be. The kids have to go down much farther than 20 years ago. But I digress. My jobs ended at the hospital, obviously, when it closed and I would eventually tell Dimensions to take me off their roster because it got to the point where they only called me once a year anyhow.
     I enjoyed those jobs tremendously. I liked the kids very much and valued spending time with them.Some of those patients I cut for five months, at a rate of one cut a month. That's enough time to get to know and like somebody. I also appreciated the feeling that I "worked somewhere." I hadn't had any co-workers since becoming a free-lance hairdresser in '86. And with those jobs, especially the River, I felt like I worked with other people. Very often, we'd schedule cuts around dinner so I could eat with everybody. (Eventually I'll write about the River's cook. The hospital intentionally built a kitchen on the unit and hired a cook. Big brass rightly recognized that they needed to feed hungry teenagers who hadn't eaten properly in years. Hospital food wouldn't do and brass knew it. That food was remarkable. Holy Moses! it was good.)
     I sometimes think about some of those kids. I can still see them in my mind's eye. The odds were against them but statistically some of them had to have turned out okay. I'll write more about my experiences on these jobs in the future.