Graduating from High School for Teens in Recovery

AUTHENTIC HIGHER EDUCATION –

June 16, 2023 – This was a moment they, at one point, believed would never happen, because they lived in fear that their young loved ones would end up dead of an overdose or flunking out of school.

Each graduate stood up and talked for a couple of minutes, thanking those around them for supporting them through their recovery and high school careers. Two of them thanked their moms for saving their lives.

This year’s graduates of P.E.A.S.E (Peers Enjoying A Sober Education) Academy in Minneapolis, like the others who came before them going back to the school’s founding in 1989, have struggled with substance use disorder throughout different points of their childhood, and their dreams of becoming high school graduates often seemed impossible.

MinnPost interviewed three of the graduates on the condition that only their first names be used over their concern that it might affect their career pursuits.

“I had this mindset throughout my childhood and teenage years that I wasn’t going to make it to 18,” one of the graduates, Izzy, told MinnPost. “It was what I had accepted; it was planned out.”