Choices and Consequences

Alcohol and other drug use among teenagers is epidemic. Children as young as grade-school age are experimenting with mood-altering substances. One out of every four high school students drink to excess when they drink. Many teenagers are abusing alcohol and other drugs--and many will die prematurely if they don't get help. Choices Consequences tells you precisely how you can help. Written for parents, teachers, family doctors, mental health professionals, school guidance counselors, social workers, juvenile justice workers, clergy, and anyone else who cares about teenagers, it describes a step-by-step process called intervention that you can use to stop a teenager's harmful involvement with chemicals. If you're worried about kids and alcohol or other drugs, you can do something. And you can start today.

Dick Schaefer has worked with disturbed youth for the past thirty years, starting out as a counselor at Home on the Range for Boys in 1961. His work in the field of addiction began in 1966 as chaplain at the Heartview Foundation for Alcoholics in Mandan, North Dakota. Since that time, he has held positions as program director for youth at the South East Mental Health Center in Fargo, North Dakota, and director for the youth unit of the alcoholism and drug division at the North Dakota State Hospital. As the director of the Touch Love Center in Fargo since 1981, Mr. Schaefer directs a staff of outreach workers who develop programs for alcohol and other drug users and children living with alcoholics. He works with both schools and agencies within a sixty-mile radius of Fargo in setting up community network systems to confront youth who are using alcohol and other drugs. Dick Schaefer has served on numerous state committees and boards in North Dakota. Notable among them are the Governor's Juvenile Justice Committee, the Conference on Social Welfare, the Crossroads Crisis Center in Jamestown, the Hot Line Crisis Center in Fargo, and the YMCA Youth Committee. He served on the Committee for the Training and Certification of Addiction Counselors for the State of North Dakota and has worked on the Chemical Abuse Subcommittee of the Governor's Commission on Children and Adolescents At Risk. In addition, Mr. Schaefer is a part-time instructor at North Dakota State University and Moorhead State University. He has also taught at the Medical School at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in philosophy from St. Mary's College in Winona, Minnesota; a Bachelor of Divinity in theology and a Master of Arts in education from Catholic University, Washington, D.C. Dick Schaefer is a licensed teacher and addiction counselor, and he holds a Level II National certification from NAADAC. He is a speaker and consultant for the Johnson Institute and is the author of the book, Choices & Consequences: What To Do When a Teenager Uses Alcohol/Drugs and was a script consultant on a video by the same name produced by Johnson Institute. In addition, Mr. Schaefer has consulted on two other videos produced by Johnson Institute, one on relapse Another Chance to Change (1991) and one on violence prevention and intervention in the schools called Respect and Protect (1995).