A Stranger In The House, Part 7

LOOKING FOR THE RIGHT ANSWERS

Minister Reminds Us 'We Are All Broken'

Everyone is "broken" to some degree, so addicts need not feel more ashamed
of their lives than anyone else, a pastor said.

Finding fault is easy, but offering a solution to heal substance abuse is
the challenge for society, said Craig Groeschel, senior minister at Life
Church in Edmond. The greatest responsibility to succeed begins in the
home, he added. A major obstacle to healing from any addiction is that
addicts guard and hide their weaknesses, he said. However, he's encouraged
that the younger generation is more open about vulnerability.

"It's in the openness, the light, that healing takes place," Groeschel said.

The idea that there is no power greater than oneself is what feeds an
addict's craving, said Bill, a recovering teen-age drug addict who asked
that his real name not be used. "I still have some friends that I see who
are atheist. I guess they think I've been brainwashed or whatever.

But for me to stay sober today, I don't have the choice of being an atheist
- -- being an intellectual about God anymore," Bill said. "I have to have
faith or I will drink and drug and die." Parents, educators, counselors,
government, law enforcement and religious leaders say the illicit drug
culture cannot be mended without a team effort.

Behavior can shift radically when a young teen-ager drinks alcohol and
swallows other drugs. Bill said he suddenly decided to be an atheist and
alienated himself from sober friends after he became hooked on alcohol at
age 14. His new friends shared his philosophy. Three years later, when his
mother heard a drug deal over the phone between her son and a friend, she
took action.

And today, the former Edmond Memorial student is sober after six months of
rehabilitative treatment at Hazel Street Recovery Center in Texarkana.

"Sometimes, it takes becoming so broken that we realize we can't fix
ourselves," Groeschel said. "We've tried everything else, then we look to
God and realize he still does love us and can make a change."

'Speak Out And Speak Up'

A Dutch proverb suggests that if everyone sweeps their front porch -- the
city, the community will be completely clean, Governor Frank Keating said.

"I'm hoping that we as a people will recognize the extraordinary danger
that we're in as a result of this plague. And the schools, the churches and
social services agencies will speak out and speak up," he told The Sun. "As
Governor, my bully pulpit approach has not been from a faith prospective
saying it is immoral, it is irreligious to use drugs," Keating said. "Nor
has it been from a public health perspective saying this is destructive for
your health and mind."

That task is left for religious leaders and health officials, he said. So
he tackles the problem from an economic development standpoint.

"There is no way that a society can have the high per-capita income if
significant numbers of its people are stoned," he said.

Three years ago, the State Chamber of Commerce sponsored a study about why
Oklahoma falls behind competitor states in per-capita income. The study
conducted by the University of Oklahoma and Oklahoma State University also
included social indicators.

"We had too much divorce," Keating said. "We had too many out-of-wedlock
births. We had too much crime, violence and drug abuse."

Substance abuse causes or exacerbates 70 percent of child abuse or neglect,
according to the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at
Columbia University.

Preaching Drug Recovery

Virtually every church in the state requires a lengthy period of
preparation for marriage before services will be performed, Keating said.
But the governor is discouraged the state's faith community isn't more
proactive.

"I'm discouraged that a faith community like ours, that goes to church
twice a month or more, isn't more involved in these issues," Keating said.
"As I said to a group of pastors, 'What are you doing behind your
pulpits? How can we have this level of drug abuse and violence and
alcoholism and out-of-wedlock births and divorce, when you have an
opportunity with a captive audience, with 70 percent of people in the
state, twice a week or more -- to say something uplifting to them on these
subjects?"

A youth ministry's biggest role today should be counseling parents to guide
their children "rather than a place parents drop their kids off saying, 'I
hope you can fix them,'" Groeschel said.

He includes substance abuse in his sermons at Life Church in Edmond. And
his staff counsels both adults and children about recovery.

"I think that's the mistake churches as a whole have made in the last
couple of decades," Groeschel said. "In ministering to children, we've
tried to do it -- church to kids rather than church to parents to kids."

Groeschel said a group of teen-agers gather every weekend to drink beer in
the parking lot outside his office complex located at the northwest corner
of Sante Fe and Edmond Road.

'I Have This God Consciousness Now'

Bill was 16 years old when a friend offered him marijuana at a church
mission trip. The mission trip was unrelated to Life Church. Though the
marijuana did not produce the hallucinogenic effects Bill expected, he
liked it. He continued drinking, smoking marijuana and, during his junior
year at Memorial, he experimented with cocaine for the first time. Bill's
parents knew he had been drinking on a church youth group outing but they
considered it a "one-shot deal." At first, Bill was scared to try cocaine,
but his friends finally persuaded him. They rolled up a dollar bill and
snorted a line of the white powder.

His use of cocaine cost him $60 that night.

"I thought it was going to be like how I saw heroin depicted in movies,
where you're just laid back and passed out and everything," he said. "And I
had been a real depressed person. I was very shy. But whenever I did
cocaine the first time, it was the opposite of what I expected. It was high
energy. I was just rushing and I could talk to anybody.
I felt like I was happy in a euphoric situation. I just felt like I was
invincible. That's why I fell in love with that drug, and that's what
really got me in rehab."

It became his drug of choice.

"I am grateful to be alive and love every minute of it," he said.

But his sobriety remains a daily struggle since graduating from Hazel Street.

"I have this God consciousness now that I've gotten out of rehab," he said.
"The (12 -step) program I work on talks about God or a higher power to help
me stay sober. ... They helped me to open my eyes instead of being such a
closed-minded person."

Early Intervention Is A Solution

Keating has called for reducing substance abuse by 50 percent within the
next decade.

So Jerry Regier, secretary of Health and Human Services focuses on
coordinating a sense of cohesion within state government.

"That's one of the toughest things to do within government," Regier told
The Sun. "Everybody kind of has their own streams. It's not that they don't
want to work together. It's just that policy and their structures and
legislative funding streams -- all those kind of things tend to dictate
against it. ... But I think there's positive things happening."

He said the Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services in
promoting a healthier team effort within the system.

Last year, Regier and Ben Brown visited the Betty Ford Center in California
to exam means of developing a similar drug/alcohol treatment facility in
the Oklahoma within the next three to five years.

"Right now if you look for a place to have kids in treatment in Oklahoma,
it's very slim pickin's," he said.

"Early intervention is a solution," said Linda Green, a substance abuse
services specialist at Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services.

With an addiction, a number of drug-related instances occur before the
child is directed toward treatment. She recalls a 13-year-old girl who
lived the life of a 40-year-old. She was a prostitute living on the streets.

"I asked her, 'How many times were you arrested before someone talked to
you about going to treatment?'" The girl replied it had been at least a
dozen times.

New criminal law reforms focus on punishment and in-house treatment for
first-time drug offenders prior to incarceration, Keating said.

"We can pass all the laws either requiring incarceration or requiring
treatment, which we have done over the years." But there is only so much
the law can do, he added.

Do Not Neglect Children

Studies indicate that most parents spend no more than five minutes speaking
with their children each day, Keating said. "How many parents have
breakfast with their children?
Not too many. How many parents have lunch? None, virtually. How many
parents have dinner? How many parents are having a meal watching television
instead of talking to their kids?" Keating said.

"Teen-agers are under a lot more peer pressure than previous generations,"
Regier said.

And he agrees that parents don't spend as much time with their children as
in the past.

"I say that as a fact as well as an indictment," he said.

Much of substance abuse problem evident in adolescence is because parents
have allowed teen-agers to create their own culture, he added.

"We almost approach it as if when they hit 11 years old, we've lost them
until they're 19," he said. "Parents have said to him they can't do
anything about their child's behavior because 'he's a teenager.'"

"What do we mean we can't do anything about that?" Regier said. "And it's
this attitude that kids just kind of go into this extreme peer-pressure
period. And it's like they go into this black hole and we hope they come
out on the other side."

Children thrive on leadership, structure and guidance from adults.

"But adults are afraid of kids. They're afraid to discipline them, give
them guidance. They're afraid to get through that resistance," he said.

Regier said prevention means more than the schools telling children to "say
no to drugs." More headway would be made if there were parent seminars
teaching parents how to relate and communicate values to their children.

"I can't sit there as a holier-than-thou parent," he said. "It happens to
all of us, but it's what we do when it happens in taking leadership with
our kids that makes a difference."

A Youth Culture

Seventy-five years ago, America was mostly an agrarian society, he said.
Children were expected to work by the time they were 16. They didn't have a
set of car keys or the influence of the media, Regier said. Today, media
has created a youth culture that includes television, movies and "hanging
out at the mall." There is less family discussion at the dinner table.

When vacationing, today's parents are more apt to leave their teen-ager to
stay at home or with a friend, Regier said. So peers and media replace the
parental role model.

His family faced the same issues, he said. Regier and his wife have two
adult sons and daughters.

Their youngest daughter is 21 years old. When his 28-year-old daughter was
16, alcohol presented a tremendous pressure for the cheerleader. Regier
believes she had a proclivity for alcohol but addiction was avoided by
early intercession from a nurturing family. Regier recalls her spending the
weekend with a group of friends when the family lived in a suburb of
Washington, D.C. A concerned parent contacted Regier saying their daughters
were with a group of friends who were indulging in an alcohol-related party
at a house where the parents were out of town. When Regier came to pick up
his daughter, the police had arrived amid beer cans strewn about the house.

He drove his daughter home. "We sat down as a family at talked about our
values," he said.

Communicate

Ultimately, teen-age addicts must choose sobriety for themselves, said
Kaymie, a 16-year-old former honor student now in drug treatment recovery
at House of Life in Arcadia. She encourages parents to spend more quality
time with their children.

"Sit down and talk to them more," she said. "Try to figure out what's going
on in their lives, if there's anything wrong with them -- what they can do
to help them, because trust me, it's out there. And the kids that you think
are most likely not to (abuse drugs), are doing it."