“A lot of kids choose hip-hop because the people they idolize grew up the way they did,” Jones said. I can’t change the game but I can change who I am, and better believe imma do the best that I can. Now I ain’t numb and I got back my feeling. With Jones’ guidance and music, Simmons wrote and performed a hip-hop song titled “My Life,” about his descent into substance abuse and rehabilitation.

“He picked it up real fast,” said Deekon Jones, 26, a Nez Perce tribal member, audio engineer and recording artist who manages the innovative program integrating music and therapy.

When he returned to the Healing Lodge this year, he entered the Expressive Arts Program, in which residents, write, produce and perform music that reflects their life experience.

The difference this time, he believes, is that he made the decision to get help on his own. “I was at that point I just didn’t care anymore,” said Simmons, who had run-ins with the law. “The first time was court-ordered and I wasn’t motivated,” said Simmons, who at age 15 returned home to temptation and relapse.Īfter his second time at the Healing Lodge, Simmons relapsed after 60 days. Though 70 percent of residents are Native, Simmons is not. The facility was founded in 1988 by seven Northwest tribes confronted by an epidemic of teen drug and alcohol abuse. It was Simmons’s third trip to the Healing Lodge, a 45-bed facility that each year treats about 200 youths ages 13 to 17. He also won a trip home after spending 98 days clean, sober and motivated at the Healing Lodge, a youth chemical dependency treatment center in Spokane Valley. He recently was awarded second place in the Teen Substance Abuse Awareness through Music Contest, sponsored by the MusiCares and GRAMMY Foundation in collaboration with the National Institute on Drug Abuse. “The music program and the Grammy prize opened my eyes to better things I can do other than drugs,” said Simmons. Now he’s going to have to buy some shades for a January junket to Southern California. Things didn’t always look so bright for Kevin Simmons, a Clarkston 17-year-old once bound for a drug- and alcohol-fueled race to ruin. If there were any doubts about the power of music, they were cast aside by the Healing Lodge of the Seven Nations when one of its teenage residents won a clean bill of health and a trip to the Grammy Awards rehearsal.

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