The Tobacco in Schools Recovery Project was piloted with the students of The Elizabeth Wynn Wood Alternate School and delivered by a professional addictions team of partners composed of The Smokers Treatment Centre and Rideauwood Addiction and Family Services.

The students were offered an opportunity to participate in the recovery group process by submitting in writing their reasons for wanting to break free from tobacco. Of the 83 who expressed a sincere interest a total of 25 were accepted into the semester driven class.

The group met for an hour twice a week and was led by one female and one male professional tobacco addiction counselor. For the first 20 sessions:

• a new and effective tobacco recovery tool was presented,
• with concrete examples of how to apply it to their recovery plan.
• every student was given a tobacco recovery manual and workbook.

Once their tobacco recovery plans were in place we collectively set a group quit day followed by every Monday night thereafter for those who had trouble achieving that date or had relapsed and wished to set a new quit date immediately.

This train and transfer approach is characterized by the students developing both a deep understanding of the nature of their addiction and then arms them with the most effective recovery tools available to the addictionologist.

As the group proceeded and evolved the excitement grew, the confidence rose, and many students had to be placed on a waiting list to get into the tobacco recovery class. This is indeed a first.

High school students waiting to get into an addiction recovery group.

To read more on our Tobacco In Schools Recovery Project please click here for the report.