A Stranger In The House, Part 2b

HARD ROAD TO RECOVERY

Addicts Need Structure In Life

Alcohol was easy for Bill to find when he was 14. His friends would sneak
it out of their parents' liquor cabinets, he said. It became his first drug
of choice when a group of teen-agers invited him to a keg party.

"I thought, 'That sounds cool.' I was always curious about what drinking
was like," Bill said recently at his parents' home in Edmond. "I was just
drinking socially and got drunk because everyone else was."

His parents sensed his behavioral problems but never knew substance abuse
was an issue until last year, his mother Gwen said.

"The time it became most obvious was when I picked up the telephone and
heard a drug deal go down," she said. "As soon as I heard, then it all fit."

One of Bill's school friends at Edmond Memorial had asked if he wanted to
purchase cocaine. He was immediately confronted by his parents. The blood
tests they ordered found him positive for cocaine, marijuana and valium.
Within 10 days, Bill was in rehabilitative treatment for six months at
Hazel Street Recovery Center in Texarkana.

"You have to be a parent and stand up," Gwen said. "It's the hardest thing
you'll ever do -- to take your child when he's backed into the closet and
tell him, 'You have five minutes. Get in the car. You're leaving for
Texas.'" But it's also the greatest love, she said.

Bill had been undergoing counseling for depression. In fact, he had been
treated by several counselors over the years as well as a psychiatrist.
Gwen said none of them mentioned a substance abuse problem.

"I don't think he ever felt like he fit anywhere. He always felt somewhat
different," Bill's mother said. His shyness kept him from relating with others.

And drug abuse plays a major factor in teen-age depression. One in eight
adolescents may have clinical depression, according to the Oklahoma State
Department of Health.

Statistics released by the American Academy of Child & Adolescent
Psychiatry indicate that suicide is the third leading cause of death for
15- to 24-year-olds and the sixth leading cause of death for 5- to
15-year-olds.

"This can happen to anyone," Gwen said of her son's addiction. "Parents
cannot risk thinking because they are good parents they don't have to deal
with this."

People don't feel ashamed when they discover a loved one has cancer. So
Hazel Street owner Mike Boss asks why the opposite should occur when the
disease is drug addiction?

"We've had everyone from politicians to street laborers come over here.
Preachers and priests -- you name it. This affects every type of family in
the world," Boss said.

Bill's history of substance abuse includes alcohol, marijuana,
methamphetamines, LSD (acid), hallucinogenic mushrooms, pain killers and
muscle relaxers.

He was accompanying a friend on a church mission trip for youth to South
Dakota when other kids offered him marijuana. Though the marijuana did not
produce the hallucinogenic effects he expected, he liked it.

"I smoked marijuana and was drinking for about a year and a half. And my
junior year, New Years Eve, I experimented with cocaine for the first
time," he said.

About 11 percent of adolescents in state-contracted drug treatment
facilities report meth as one of their three drugs of choice, according to
the Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services data for this
fiscal year. Marijuana and alcohol remain the top choices among adolescents.

In Need Of Structure

Three counselors at Hazel Street provide assistance for the 20 teen-age
boys. Boys are asked to maintain in-house treatment for a minimum of 90
days. Some youth enter the facility for extended care after being released
elsewhere from a traditional 30-day program.

The treatment philosophy is based on a 12-step program. It encompasses
several interventions with families and the adolescent. The young men can
expect a structured environment involving house chores, prayer and
meditation, schooling and group and treatment sessions.

Positive peer pressure works as a form of intervention for the boys. Those
who have undergone treatment for extended periods act as a stabilizing
force for the newly admitted boys by holding them accountable for their
actions. The patient government assigns each child individual
responsibilities that increases as behavior modification evolves.

"I really hated it at first and I was against it because I'm a smoker, too.
I was just completely miserable because I had been coping with life for so
long on drugs, that once you take the drugs away, you have nothing to cope
with. I was scared and angry," Bill said.

Once he started accepting what the facility had to offer, he began to heal.
The 18-year-old received his high school diploma at Hazel Street.

When he entered rehab, Bill weighed 160 pounds. Today, his 6-foot, 2-inch
frame carries 200 pounds. He works in a Dallas bank and visits his parents
in Edmond each month. He is looking forward to college next semester at
Texas Tech University and expects to major in pre-law and philosophy. The
university provides free tuition, room and board for students such as Bill
who can document they have been sober for at least one year. He lives in a
home with other recovering addicts and has regular counseling sessions.

He said he's glad to be alive.

Making Excuses

"If you have a child who has an alcoholic addiction tendency -- you are not
going to stop them," Gwen said. "But what you can do is keep your eyes open
for the symptoms."

Make the addicted child suffer the consequences, she said, so they
recognize they need help. Otherwise, too early an intervention interferes
with recovery.

A parent enables their child's addiction by making excuses for their
unexplained absences at school. Enabling involves establishing limits for a
child and later not holding them accountable, Boss explained.

"It would be about making excuses to the police. Some enabling behavior is
fighting with a spouse or a parent about disagreeing what the limits should
be," he said.

The loss of self-respect becomes obvious in a teen-age drug addict. They
become emotionally and spiritually bankrupt, Boss said. They might hit
"rock bottom" -- prostitution, incarceration or death. The "bottom" might
be evident in a child's loss of health and educational skills and damaged
relationships.

Self-Centered Motivation

Once a teen-ager becomes an addict, it becomes more problematic for a
family to help their child, Boss said.

"Once a person truly becomes addictive, (drugs or alcohol) becomes their
primary relationship," he added. All aspects of life filter through the
primary relationship of substance abuse.

"And that doesn't happen in one day. That evolves over a period of time. A
lot of times, I tell parents, 'If we made a list of everything that's
happened over the last one to three years, certainly if those things
happened in one week, you would know what to do. But what happens is that
it's a progression and it happens over a period of time until one day you
wake up and go, 'My God -- how have we got strung out this far?'"

Most teen-agers at Hazel Street arrive from families who have attempted to
provide that structure in combination with schools and sometimes the legal
system. Children need structure, Boss said. But their addiction to
chemicals has caused them to become resistant.

"Their motivation is very self-centered and self-serving about 'How can I
get the chemical?'" he continued. "And all other structures really don't
matter to them."

However, it's important for structure to be reintroduced to them so they
can develop the self-motivation needed to change their behavior.

"They begin to get clean of the chemicals and get back to some of the
behaviors their parents had taught them originally."

Reasons For Relapse

Teen-agers have crisis even with normal adolescent development, said Linda
Green, a substance abuse services specialist at the Oklahoma Department of
Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services. Teen-agers are in a heightened
emotional state, she said.

"They're developing all of their cognitive problem-solving skills -- their
ability to think abstractly. And when you put drugs and alcohol on top of
that, it suffocates that normal adolescent development."

Reasons for relapse once an addict has been through treatment include
mental and physical cravings, depression and guilt associated with the
moral degradation and dishonesty that becomes part of an addict's life,
according to Narconon International.

Haunting manifestations can prevail for years after the addict has sobered
up and is likely to trigger a relapse if symptoms are left untreated.

Chronic use of amphetamines can leave addicts ill at ease with themselves
and others, but sobriety gradually relieves despair, said Dr. Harold
Thiessen, private practice family physician and director of the Oklahoma
Health Professionals Recovery Program. The Edmond resident serves on the
substance abuse committee of the Oklahoma State Medical Association.

"But I do know with alcohol, that your brain does not recover completely
for up to five years," he said.

The chances of an addict making it on their own without intervention
depends on the age of onset, Boss said. If someone's chemical use started
at age 20, then developmentally, they would have acquired some maturation
skills. But most of the kids at Hazel Street started drug use as early as
age 12.

Children such as Bill who start drinking alcohol before age 15 are four
times more likely to become alcoholics than those who wait until age 21.

"They make a decision to sober up at 18 and they have been using for three
years. Emotionally and developmentally they're about 13 or 14," he said.
They act that age, making it more difficult for them to become sober.

Bill credits Hazel Street for saving his life. The counselors are
recovering alcoholics and drug addicts and would not be fooled by his
initial pretense of going along with the program.

"That was just a shock," Bill said. "I had been living by my own rules for
so long."