Treatment Gap for Teen Addicts (Part 3 of 4)

RECOVERY PROGRAM TOO TOUGH FOR SOME

Treatment: A 17-year-old girl who had already suffered through heroin
withdrawal was ready for a new life. But old ways are hard to shake.

Marie, 17, said it was time. She was ready.

She had already gone through the heroin withdrawal that kept her awake for
days and made her muscles twitch and her body ache.

She was sick of living like a party girl, after more than five years of
smoking marijuana, drinking and shooting heroin.

And she wanted to be a mom to her 23-month-old daughter being raised by
Marie's mother, Ruth.

"This lifestyle gets old," she said, as she played with her tongue ring.
"You lose everything. Your family, your friends, your life."

So on a warm March morning, Marie, with thick black hair and tattoos on her
shoulders, was released from Juvenile Hall into the Rainbow Recovery Youth
Center.

The Santa Paula house, Ventura County's only residential drug treatment
program for teens, has six beds for girls. There are no county-funded beds
for boys in the county.

Marie was one of the lucky few to get into the Rainbow center. And she
hoped four months there would give her the solace and strength she needed
to quit.

Her mother, who lives in a comfortable two-story house in Thousand Oaks,
was not as confident. The inpatient program doesn't work for everyone.

And Ruth had already tried so much--checked Marie into rehab hospitals,
sent her to a reform school and worked extra hours to pay for programs.

But none of it had worked. Marie kept lying and stealing from her. And she
kept getting caught shoplifting and using drugs.

"It's hard because I've been doing this for five years," Ruth said as her
daughter began her latest cleanup effort. "But she's still my little girl,
so what am I going to do?"

On her first day at Rainbow, Marie bit her fingernails as the house rules
were explained. They sounded strict, but reasonable. No smoking. No
boyfriends. Only calls from parents or sponsors.

As the days passed, Marie quickly fell into the rhythm of the center--she
cleaned, exercised, studied, met with a counselor and attended dozens of
support groups.

The first big challenge came about three weeks into the program, when she
let a boy put his hand on her back during an outside meeting. The night
manager, Judy Ulrich, warned her about a possible write-up.

"I'm not a little girl," Marie snapped.

Despite Marie's behavior, Rainbow director Traci Lewis still let her have a
pass in early April so she could celebrate her daughter's second birthday.
Marie had looked forward to it all week. But when she got home, she
dismissed her daughter with a quick hug, then disappeared upstairs to hang
out with her girlfriends.

So when Marie's 2-year-old daughter started crying, it was Ruth who picked
her up and held her.

As the day neared its end, Marie made it clear she had no real interest in
going back to Rainbow. The rules were restrictive and unnecessary, she
complained. She simply didn't want to be there anymore, she told her mom.
And right then, Ruth knew it was over. Here we go again, she thought to
herself.

This time, Marie finally decided to return to Rainbow. But the following
weekend, she was back home on another pass. She told Ruth she was going to
hang out with a few girlfriends, but instead used heroin with an old
boyfriend, her mother said.

That night, Rainbow's counselors immediately spotted the relapse. Marie
admitted it. So a Rainbow staff member called her mom and her probation
officer. Rather than risk being sent back to Juvenile Hall, Marie ran away.
Today, more than a month later, Ruth says she doesn't know where her
daughter is. Marie calls every other day to check in, but refuses to come
home and says she won't get help.

When Ruth doesn't receive a call for a few days, she gets frantic. She
worries that the next call will be the police.

"Every time I think there is a glimmer of hope, she shoots it down," Ruth
said. "So I don't know what it's going to take."