When one of his friends died after overdosing on the same prescription drugs he was abusing, Sam didn’t see the death as a reason to re-evaluate his own life.
He just kept getting high.
“Me and my friends went out, we got wrecked the day of the funeral,” the 19-year-old from Rockland County said.
It’s a familiar refrain at the Dynamite Youth Center, a residential drug treatment community in upstate Fallsburg, N.Y.
The teens and young adults living there tell of living through multiple overdoses, getting arrested, stealing from their families and going homeless.
Many of them have made the leap from prescription drugs to heroin. And even though Dynamite serves the entire state, nearly a third of the roughly 70 male and female residents living there come from Staten Island, with most of the Islanders addicted to prescription drugs.
They’ve come to the upstate treatment center — some by court mandate, others by choice or because of parental pressure — in the hopes that living in a structured, disciplined community will work where other programs have not.
Dynamite’s residents, who are called “members,” are expected to take part in the day-to-day maintenance of the center.
They have to make their own beds, do their own laundry and clean their dorms. They’re not allowed to curse, or talk about “the streets.” They help staff members prepare meals and keep up the grounds, and they’ve had a hand in building all of the additions to the 100-acre facility over the years.
The grounds, once the home of the Murray Hill Hotel, include a school house, male and female dorms, a gymnasium building, two man-made lakes and a ball field.
Members go to school, compete in sports and play video games together, but they have no cell phones and no access to Internet sites like Facebook. For the first month, they don’t have any contact with their families, except for letters, and they earn additional privileges, like parental visits and trips off-campus, based on their behavior.
They typically stay in Fallsburg about a year, followed by a year of outpatient treatment through the program’s Brooklyn office and another year of after-care.
Dynamite, which was founded in 1970 and purchased its Fallsburg property in 1973, is supported by the New York State Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services through grants and state and local assistance funds, parent contributions, and fundraising efforts.
The program and its rules come as a culture shock to newcomers.
Written by John M Annese for SI Live.