The 5 Most Common Questions I Get as a Youth Drug Abuse Counselor

As someone who’s been on both sides — addicted and now sober — I’ve spent the last few years working with teens trying to escape the trap of drug use. These are the five questions I hear over and over. If you're reading this, whether for yourself or someone you love, I hope this helps you cut through the noise and start doing the work that actually changes lives.

1. Where do I start?

You start with Step One: admitting there’s a problem. And that takes rigorous honesty. Not the watered-down kind. The kind that hurts. The kind that forces you to stop lying to yourself.

Pull yourself out of the emotion. Pull yourself out of your ego. It’s not just the drugs. It’s your relationship with them. Same goes for food, porn, anger, even weed. You don’t have a drug problem — you have a coping problem.

From my book:
“Addiction doesn’t ask you to tell the truth. It asks you to tell a story — the kind that keeps you sick. Rigorous honesty is the first crack of light in the dark.”

From Alcoholics Anonymous (p. 58):
“Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program, usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves.”

2. I just want this to be over. I want it fixed.

Here’s the hard truth: it’s never over. Mental health is never done. You’re not a broken car in a shop. You’re a human being in recovery — and recovery is a daily commitment.

There’s no finish line. Just a better process. You don’t graduate from healing. You wake up, and you show up.

From my book:
“There’s no day off from self-worth. There’s no vacation from staying clean. You don’t get healed. You just learn to keep healing.”

From AA (p. 85):
“We are not cured of alcoholism. What we really have is a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition.”

3. I tried that and it didn’t work.

That’s the addict brain talking. We’re wired for instant gratification — drugs, sex, porn, likes, vape hits. When something doesn’t fix us fast, we say it doesn’t work.

But here’s the truth: nothing real is instant. You didn’t get addicted in one day, and you won’t get clean in one either. The goal isn’t instant peace. It’s slow transformation.

From my book:
“We want the shortcut. But the shortcut is what got us stuck. Real change is boring. It’s repeatable. It’s uncomfortable. But that’s where you build something that lasts.”

From AA (p. 83):
“We are painstaking about this phase of our development. We will be amazed before we are halfway through.”

4. I’m scared to go back to my old environment.

You should be. Because if nothing around you changes, your odds of changing drop fast. The environment is the invisible hand that shapes everything.

Your brain and body are healing. But your friends might still be using. Your house might still be toxic. Your town might still feel like a trap. That’s real. So now you have to make real decisions — cut people off, change your scene, even grieve the version of you that’s dying.

From my book:
“I had to bury the old me. Not because I hated him — but because he would’ve killed me.”

From AA (p. 101):
“We are careful never to show intolerance or hatred of drinking as an institution. Experience shows that this is not the way to get results. We do not preach; we just share our experience.”
(Translation: you’re not better than your old world — but you don’t belong there anymore.)

5. I’m scared. What do I do?

Of course you’re scared. Fear is natural when you’ve built your identity around something that’s now killing you.

But you can’t just remove drugs — you have to replace them. With physical movement. With structure. With goals. With routine. With community. Recovery isn’t about subtraction. It’s about substitution.

From my book:
“I didn’t just quit using. I started building. Structure, planning, fitness, faith, journaling — these weren’t habits. They were survival.”

From AA (p. 89):
“Practical experience shows that nothing will so much insure immunity from drinking as intensive work with other alcoholics.”
(Translation: get out of your head. Get into action. Help someone else.)

Final Thought

You don’t need all the answers. You just need to start asking better questions. You need honesty, movement, and daily work. This isn’t a quick fix — but it is possible.

I’ve lived it. I teach it. I believe in it. And if you want this, you can have it too — one step, one day, one brutally honest choice at a time.