Would you ask an adult in recovery to hang around with his or her drinking buddies every day? Certainly not, yet we ask teens to go back to school after treatment and avoid all their friends who use drugs or alcohol. Recovery Schools are one solution, and are the focus of a national conference next month.

“Yes, there are students who return to their former academic settings and are successful,” writes Monique Bourgeois in a guest post on the excellent Reclaiming Futures Every Day blog. “However, the return-to-use rate is very high for adolescents and young adults.” For some youth in recovery, their previous schools are their “bars,” she notes.

Bourgeois is executive director of the Association of Recovery Schools, which is holding its annual conference July 21-23 on the campus of Northeastern University in Boston, Mass.

Collegiate recovery communities and recovery high schools allow students in recovery to attend schools in safe environment with embedded recovery support, says Bourgeois.

There are currently between 15 and 18 such programs at the college level, and 30 to 35 recovery high schools, in the United States. Here’s hoping those numbers continue to grow.