Well, you must realize that the result of a residential placement for months very quick transform the behavior of a person in such way that they become what is known as institutionalized. They will only be succesful in a locked environment where they are told what to do. It will be very hard for them to adjust to a normal life without some form of relapse at some time.
It really doesn't matter what program we are talking about. Everybody being picked from the street without even a glance on their qualifications can come in and create a program where you lock the clients up and make them function well inside the walls. Among experts this is called "reduced settings". It is actually a method built on the theory of the Operant conditioning chamber. It is about controlling the stimuli the clients is exposed for. The clients cannot fail the program when you remove the negative stimulis like boys, dealers and alcohol - normal things you find in every high school in the world.
Now your daughter is close to leave the program. Suddenly she will go from none temptations to all temptations. Will she succeed? It depends. All humans mature. For woman they start thinking about establishing family around age 18. For boys we are talking age 25. A program will work if you can warehouse them as long as possible. Please realize that it is not the therapy that works in a program. It is the time spent in the Operant conditioning chamber, which is the basis of the program. The clients so to say cure themselves if they are kept until they mature.
The law turns her loose at age 18. Some parents transport children to other states or even to other countries, so they can be kept in programs longer. It was properly the reason, that the staff person recommended a lawyer.
I have to tell you a story about a father down the street. He had a daughter like you. I remember her years back. A lovely girl with a beautiful black hair. She went missing. It turned out that the father tought of her as too western, so he sent her out of the country. I saw her a month ago. None can see her hair now because she covers it all the time and the condition of her release was that she should get married down there and bring him to my country for a better future. The husband controls her all the time. Not even a job is she allowed to have. However she is lucky. She told the lady down at the grosery that one of her friends blew herself up injuring some soldiers on the recommadation of the teachers. Odd school but I am not criticizing other cultures so I will leave it with that, but her father is a very happy man today. He kept his daughter away from temptations as result of placing his daughter in a residential setting.
Enough about stories from other families. How can you prepare your daughter to a world with free choices? I would recommend that you release her before time and go on a vacation, but not just any vacation. She needs to relieve herself from the burden of all the drama, she has picked up during the program. She is like an inmate just released from the prison. If you just take her home she will fail as she will be suffering from symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder which come when you transport a person from an intense environment like a program, prison or a war to the normal life.
You should take her far away with a laptop and internet and ask her to write down her story and publish it in a blog under some invented name. You can read it and discuss it with her when she has written it, but it must be her story with her word because every single bit of fustration she write about will remove some of the burden she carries with her.
Only when she has removed some of her anger over her placement the risk of her getting back at you by getting high will be reduced. A problem in programs is the mandatory 12-step treatment. It is like taking a person with swine-flu into a nursing home for the purpose of giving the residents resistance against the flu. Most will experience a flu-attack and then they will be in the clear, but some will die. Some of the other clients have exposed your daughter to some drug she longs for without having ever tried it just because they have told her how it feels. Some have told of their problems and she has as the caring person you knew her to be years back taken their problems on as her own.
So you need to give her this chance of lighten this burden. If you find a smart laywer who can extend custody in a part of the world you can have her transported to, it will only postpone the need for this transition phase and you will several thousand dollars in the meantime. Don't waste your money on that.
A final thing, she might think that getting back at you by becoming high will punish you, but in fact she will be punishing herself. The 12 step program all programs use to some extend inflict shame on relapses. Some people will over time not be able to live with this shame. They commit suicide. So I urge you take release her and work with her away to a working vacation so she can en-enter the world with both a rebuilt relationship to you and lightened from the burden of her placement.
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George Dalton - adviser and provider of global inter-cultural exchange
