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By
Jess Wisloski
Published in New York Daily News
April 19, 2007
Delcia Knowles, a 17-year-old who has spent nearly three years inside drug rehab centers, is an expert when it comes to residential programs.
Having stayed at five centers in the past 32 months, her current residence, an all-girl rehab facility called Odyssey House in the Bronx, is the first that seems to have worked.
"This is the best program I've been in," said Delcia, who is from Brooklyn. "All the programs I was in, it was females and males. It took my focus off a little bit.
"Being around females, I can talk more about things," she said. "I'm not ashamed to talk."
Over the past year, 16 young women have shared more than just dorm rooms at the Hunts Point rehab center.
For the state Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services, inpatient care solely for teenage girls was an experiment spurred by rising drug use among them.
For the girls, it was a chance for a fresh start.
At a March 28 ribbon cutting at the new $2.7 million facility at 1264 Lafayette Ave., Kristina Sellers, 22, gulped back sobs talking about the crack habit that led to her dropping out of college.
"I didn't recognize myself," said the Staten Islander. "This program helped me get back on track."
For Delcia, her eight-month streak is a break from her routine of relapse.
"I'm surprised I actually stayed here this long," she said. "And that I changed as much as I did."
Among them, the girls create a bond forged from common experience. Like many others, Delcia was sexually assaulted as a child. But she never brought it up in other programs, and didn't weigh the role it played in her drug use.
In 2004, a national survey showed that some 1.5 million girls between the ages of 12 and 17 had begun drinking alcohol, compared with 1.28 million boys. More girls - 165,000 - had picked up smoking than boys, and 98,000 more girls had begun using marijuana.
Low self-esteem, wanting to date older boys and sexual or physical abuse are main reasons girls abuse drugs, according to experts.
For girls like Shy-Ann Monroe, 18, who grew up in the Bronx, it was a way to cope. The courts made her face her drug problem. A runaway and dropout, she served a month at Rikers Island for failing court-ordered drug tests. Then she was offered Odyssey House.
At first, she was kicked out twice for fighting. Now, with a GED, she is studying early childhood education.
"The way I am now is opposite to the way I was," she said, crediting Odyssey for teaching her anger management. "Home is always better, but this is better than incarceration or the streets any day."
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