TRUTH OR D.A.R.E.

Meredith Maran says America is long overdue for a rethinking of how it deals
with teens who use drugs

We all remember the old commercial: "This is your brain." Crack. Hiss. "This
is your brain on drugs. Any questions?"

Trouble is, it's answers that are lacking, not questions. In fact, parents
have plenty of questions when it comes to dealing with adolescent drug
abuse. Questions like "How do I tell if my child is an addict?"--which, it
turns out, may be entirely the wrong question.

"I don't use the term 'drug-addicted teens,'" says Meredith Maran, who'll
discuss her book Dirty: A Search for Answers Inside America's Teenage Drug
Epidemic Oct. 8 at Capitola Book Cafe. "Teenagers should never be labeled as
addicts. We throw these terms around in conversation and it doesn't make
that much difference, but in treatment it makes a huge difference. Addiction
treatment involves believing that the person who's an addict can never again
use any chemical substance without falling again into a pit of addiction. If
a 40-year-old wants to say 'I'm an addict' and saying that is a big step
toward their own peace of mind and their own ability to function, that's
fine. But to call a teenager an addict is a pretty serious indictment."

Dirty follows three real-life teens, Mike, Tristan and Zalika (not their
real names, naturally). They're drastically different kids from drastically
different families, but with one thing in common: drugs. Mike has been
busted for doing speed. Tristan's drug of choice is pot. Zalika, the
youngest, has been a crack-dealing prostitute since the age of 12.

The three kids are in different treatment programs, each one designed to
rehabilitate. The problem is, the kids aren't completely convinced that they
need rehabilitation. And neither is Maran.

"I think kids should be judged by a different standard, and the research
supports that. If you meet a 40-year-old who's smoking pot every day and
having two drinks every night, the odds are when he's 50 he'll still be
doing that. If you meet a teenager who's smoking pot every day, and drinking
every weekend, the odds are when he's 30 he won't be doing it. People don't
really factor that in."

That's not to say that the substance-abuse problems teenagers face aren't
serious. One of the kids in the book, Mike, is physically addicted to
methamphetamines.

"It's a very addictive chemical substance, and you can't pretend that it's
not an issue," Maran says. "But at the same time, I could have a car
accident and get addicted to Vicodin or codeine, and then get off it."

Dirty also chronicles Maran's struggles with her own son, Jesse, and his
teenage drug problems. Jesse is now chemical-free and working as a minister
and counselor to drug-abusing teens.

"He said he felt he had been through a long dark tunnel, and that when he
got out the other side, his responsibility was to go back in to the tunnel
and pull some more people out with him," Maran says. "He's really amazing."

Ideally, Maran would also like to see more programs that combine academics
with counseling.

"Why should a kid have to get arrested and get in trouble with drugs and get
kicked out of their parents' house before they get to be in a classroom with
10 kids instead of 40?" she says. "I've never met a kid who couldn't benefit
from that."

The prevalence of drugs and the peer pressure to experiment with them is a
very visible problem, but Maran says there's another side to it--one that
can be just as harmful to adolescent development.

"One mother called me and said she was trying to put her kid into
residential treatment because she found out that her daughter smoked pot
once a month or so on weekends," Maran says. "Parents are freaking out
because they find out their teenager is using drugs without understanding
how that drug use fits into the teenager's life and whether it's having a
negative effect on their kid or not."

In Maran's opinion, the best thing a parent can do is keep believing in
their kid. "It's really hard to do. It was hard for me at times with Jesse.
I think parents really need a lot of help, and in this society the way it's
set up we don't have the whole village anymore," she says. "One of the main
things I recommend is to have other adults in a kid's life that a teenager
can talk to and trust."

For Mike, Tristan and Zalika, that adult has been Maran. She's still in
contact with them. "Tristan is doing really well," she says, "and the other
two are still pretty much doing what they were doing."

It's hard, she says, but at the same time good things have come out of the
experience. "Mike's mom and I have become really close friends," Maran says.
"She actually has become a big part of the whole book promotion. She came to
the first reading, and she's going to come to all the readings. She said
it's actually become her healing to talk about this, which is really brave
of her. I couldn't have done it myself."