The lack of treatment options for young male addicts — and our success in treating them — inspired San Cristobal to concentrate on providing a vital service in saving the lives of these young men: getting them sober and motivating them to respect themselves enough to participate in their own treatment.
San Cristobal originally functioned as a transitional learning center focused on helping young adult men develop the life skills necessary to live successfully as independent adults, As the years passed, it became evident that the young men coming to San Cristobal were showing up with increasingly complex issues requiring higher levels of both therapeutic and chemical dependency support as well as more specialized intervention techniques. It also soon became obvious that this group was not being effectively served by traditional addiction treatment centers and that lives were being lost as a result.
Because of this, and our own success treating young male addicts with co-occurring disorders, we decided it was time to specialize even more and concentrate on providing a vital service in saving the lives of these young men: getting them sober and motivating them to respect themselves enough to participate in their own treatment. We hired highly-qualified staff with experience in the addiction field working specifically with young adult men, instituted a high staff-to-client ratio counseling program and refined our treatment methods to focus on this niche. Since then, we have proved successful at treating even the most resistant clients and have continued to expand the activities and techniques we use to treat the young men who come to San Cristobal.