“Addiction is a disease. It’s carried out genetically. Maybe a mom or a grandmother is an alcoholic and then that carries on to the kids. If someone has diabetes you wouldn’t yell at or blame them just like you wouldn’t yell at or blame someone who has an addiction,” Scott Brand, director of outreach at Inspirations for Youth and Families, said.

Inspirations for Youth and Families is a rehab facility that helps teens struggling with addiction become sober. They deal with many different kinds of addiction and abuse, like anything from alcohol to harsher drugs like oxytocin.

Inspirations for Youth and Families is different from other rehab facilities in the way patients go through treatment. There are different programs of treatment such as spiritual, musical, and recreational. Also, the therapists on site get to personally know the kids and build a relationship with them, increasing the chances of success.

One great success story of Inspirations for youth and families was Julian Vega.

“There was a gentleman who had overdosed on heroin twice in 72 hours,” Brand said. “He had been to three rehabs already. The problem was he kept going back to his friends back home, which led to the two overdoses which could have killed him. He was lucky. So he came over here and went through our program and then after the program he went into another program available if you’re 18 called ‘sober life.’ It’s a program so they don’t have to go home right away and they can stay away from parties and get a job. He had a roommate who was from New York who had the same addiction. They developed a really strong bond. And now we’re at day 115. He ended up getting not one but two jobs in Fort Lauderdale. He’s home now and he’s still clean of heroin.”

Addicts have to adjust to a new lifestyle in order to stay sober when they get out of rehab, according to Brand. For Vega, that transition was difficult but very welcoming.

“He didn’t have a car and wanted to get a job. One of the tenants said, ‘I have a bike for you. Would you like my bike? You could use it to get to work.’ And he looked at her like she was an alien and she said, ‘What’s the matter, you don’t want the bike?’ and he said ‘No, I’d love the bike, but where I’m from when someone gives you something they want something in return,’” Brand said.

Not all addiction stories have a happy ending like Vega. For others, the hold the substance has on the addict is too strong and the addict cannot stop using.

However, not all addictions have to be hardcore drugs. As common as it now seems, cigarettes can have a powerful hold over its addicts, like Paula Sobotko, 2013 graduate.

“I worked and there was this girl at work who smoked,” Sobotko said. “When she always offered me some, I’d say no, but one day I was just really stressed out and I was like, ‘you know what, give me one.’ Then from that I started from borrowing cigarettes, to buying a pack week, to buying a pack a day.”

As the addiction got worse, Sobotko realized that smoking cigarettes was holding her back in her life such as getting jobs, working out, or even finding a boyfriend. She took measures into her own hands and tried to quit smoking. All of her attempts, however, were in vain as she still smokes to this day. The repercussions of her addiction still follow her around today, too.

“I get judged everywhere I go. When I go to Moe’s Liquor Store to buy cigarettes [the cashier] gives me the dirtiest looks I’ve ever gotten. I don’t go there anymore because I can’t handle him looking at me that way,” Sobotko said. “It’s like people already judge you before they know you.”

Sobotko admitted that she used to judge smokers before she got addicted. Now seeing the other side of the situation, she hopes that teens today will make the effort not to get addicted to cigarettes or any drugs. She and Brand believe that awareness should start at a young age to get kids educated but educators should take different approaches to ensure the message was taken seriously.

“I felt like in school it was just repetitive, everyone knows about all the deadly chemicals cigarettes have and everybody knew smoking was bad,” Sobotko said. “When it came down to it, it was a really easy choice to get addicted”