High School Drop Out Rates and Substance Abuse Related

By Angela Braddock 

Stonehill College News Blog Journalist 

High school dropout rates are climbing in the United States and studies show it may relate to adolescent substance abuse. As the dropout crisis increases in the country, it is more evident that it relates to abuse of substances such as marijuana, alcohol, and hard drugs such as narcotics, opioids and benzodiazepines. 

Jonathan Sullivan of Holbrook, Massachusetts is a recovered addict and high school dropout.  

Substance abuse put a hold on Sullivan’s life, and future. It took him a long time to figure out how to get himself on the right track again. His drug addiction hindered his collegiate future as well as his professional future. 

Sullivan was age 9 when he first tried marijuana. He started abusing pills when he was only 13 years old. Multiple stressors in his childhood lead to substance abuse such as moving, and lack of money, and having to sell pills to afford every day expenses. Following pills, Sullivan began trying every drug he could find. The drug he found himself doing most often was heroin.  

“I had a $300 to $400 a day habit” Sullivan says. Explaining a day in his life as an addict, he describes the cycle of selling what he had, and using the money to get high. This was a daily routine for Sullivan to afford his addiction.  

“Heroin was my favorite and is my biggest vice in the world” Sullivan says. He says that everyone who was unimportant became someone he could manipulate to help feed his addiction.  

"You were a money sign, or a drug dealer there was no in between” says Sullivan. He began seeing himself as a bad person. He explained that being high made him forget how awful of a person he was, and at the same time, being high put him in a position to become a bad person. 

At age 17, Sullivan dropped out of high school at the beginning of senior year. He was not the only one to drop out in his graduating class. 

“I was so hooked on drugs that I couldn’t finish the year, and I went into treatment” says Sullivan. He then went to Massasoit for high school credits and graduated with a high school diploma soon after. Sullivan explains that lack of motivation did not contribute to a lack of employment. He described it as having a good work ethic, but in treatment working was not attainable.  

He has recently been employed with minimum wage jobs because he never resumed a degree program in Business and Marketing at Massasoit College. 

“I had no motivation for college with the bad habits I had already formed” says Sullivan.  

 The Institute for Behavior and Health Inc, based in Rockville, Maryland conducted a study named America’s Dropout Crisis: The Unrecognized Connection to Adolescent Substance Abuse. The study analyzes the relationship between dropout rates and substances in kids, and why it may happen.  

The study shows in 2011 over 20% of males and over 15% of females in their senior class engaged in binge drinking in the past two weeks, and over 30% had smoked marijuana in during the past year. It is also shown that 24.9% of high school seniors have tried a drug other than marijuana in their lives. Relating these statistics to dropout rates, 7,000 students drop out every day, and 25% of students who are in school right now will eventually drop out. 

Candice Matthews is the older sister of Jonathan Sullivan and was heavily involved in Sullivan's substance abuse in their childhood. Matthews was very invested in helping Sullivan in his sobriety and getting back into a high school program for him to graduate.  

“Drugs changed him completely.  When he was a kid, he was kind and passionate. In his teen years he became more of a stranger than a brother. He only talked to me when he needed something” says Matthews.  

Upon Sullivan’s dropping out, Matthews spent countless hours researching programs for him to get a diploma. Although Sullivan remained in inpatient detox treatment at the time, Matthews was determined to help him rebuild his academic record.  

“I called him in detox nearly every day to check on him. I talked to him as often as I could” says Matthews. In the time Sullivan was in treatment, tension built quickly in their home. Matthews became anxious quite often given her brothers current state, as well as anticipation for his future.  

Matthews described Sullivan's addiction and recovery as a weight on their entire family’s shoulders. Their home was filled with worry and stress for years.  

“No one was ever happy. We were all kind of quiet and tried to avoid talking about it” says Matthews. The main concern in the family was how Sullivan would build a career without a high school diploma. 

“Dropping out of high school was necessary for Jonathan to get the help he desperately needed, but it came with the high price of not having a path for the future academically. No one could make him go back to school either. I looked up programs, but he had to make the decision for himself” Matthews says.  

Although not living under the same roof anymore, Matthews continues to check on Sullivan even post recovery. Sullivan currently has a high school diploma and has plans to apply to an undergraduate degree program at a local university.  

Grant Kennedy is a former Narcotics Anonymous counselor and has been in the field for 15 years. Kennedy has spent the last 10 years working primarily with adolescent substance abuse in Framingham, Massachusetts.  

“Many of the teenagers I used to work with were brought up in broken homes, many of whom were in foster care” Kennedy said. The most common drug abuse Kennedy saw in adolescents were benzodiazepines and amphetamines such Xanax and Adderall. The students would use them to try to focus or ease severe anxiety disorders. The use of the drug were products of the toxic or struggling home lives.  

“Most of these kids dropped out of high school, whether it be for treatment, or the inability to meet academic requirements and failure to stay focused. There are understandable reasons for each student, but that doesn’t make them acceptable” says Kennedy. Substance abuse can be used in the attempt to suppress trauma in young adults and hundreds of students drop out with drug addictions every day.  

“The kids dropping out from addiction has negative effects as well as positive. The negative effects are they have free time to go out and acquire drugs to use and sell, rather than being in school. The positive effects include the fact that especially in a facility they are not around people they know or have been involved in drugs with” says Kennedy. 

In some cases, adolescents have been involved in criminal activity, and have been forced to drop out by means of expulsion or conviction. Kennedy has helped countless young addicts in foster care or separated homes with their GED’s and certificate programs upon their dropping out.  

Dropout rates and adolescent substance abuse effects all parties involved, and connections relate to broken homes.