“Close your eyes,” I told my teenage recovery group.  “Imagine yourself twenty years from now.”  I gave them time to conjure up images.  “You bump into somebody from this group, and they ask, ‘So, what do you do?’”

I let the question hang in the air.

“What’s your answer?”

As they opened their eyes, I saw a few glints of hope, but mostly just doubt and anxiety.  Some of them had already lost the ability to dream, and that’s tragic.  In all of them, however, I recognized a familiar fear—the horror of failure—twisted up with self-loathing for not measuring up to society’s standard of success.

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