FAMILY BARELY SURVIVES BATTLE WITH DRUGS

Her addiction started at 14 years old and she readily admits she is lucky
to even be alive today.

"I did a lot of things that probably should have got me killed," Adriane
said, as she looked back on three and a half years of a personal hell
addicted to drugs and alcohol.

Adriane and her mom Sue were at last week's drug awareness evening at Bow
Valley High School, and if there is one segment of the evening parents are
unlikely to forget, it is the story shared by this courageous mother and
her daughter.

"When I was younger, I felt abnormal, different, alone," Adriane said,
sharing feelings that many adolescents struggle with. She said the first
time she tried drugs was in her garage while babysitting her little brother.

"I was an addict from the beginning," she admitted. "I loved it. I felt
like I had found the answer, the key to happiness."

She told the parents in attendance that her struggles weren't about her
schoolwork, or her job, or even her parents.

"It was about me, and how I felt," she said. "I was feeling low, hating
myself, not knowing what to do. My addiction was the only thing I knew that
made me feel OK. The scariest thing I ever had to face was myself when I
was sober."

She said no matter what her parents did, they couldn't help her.

Sue said she saw her daughter deteriorate right before her eyes.

"Her academics crashed, she dropped her extra-curricular activities,
couldn't hold a job, changed her friends totally," Sue said. "She became
defiant and couldn't make the distinction between the truth and lies. Her
only motivation was to party."

She said it was hard to watch.

"I watched my beautiful daughter's life slipping away."

But with it came other struggles, including their whole family being torn
apart.

"Even her little brother was sad, because he felt like he was being made a
stool-pigeon, always being asked what his sister had done while we were out."

She said it strained her relationship with her husband, and she even got
caught up in her daughter's lies, covering for her when she missed school,
or work, or friends.

"I felt like a fraud sometimes when others would comment on what a sweet,
pleasant girl she was."

She said she tried guilt, threats, crying, but nothing helped. The family
tried counsellors, therapists, but she outsmarted them all. "The nightmare
continued."

Sue said she stopped sleeping due to her stress and worries over Adriane,
and she started to blame herself and think she was a bad mother due to her
inability to help her daughter.

Then, when she was 17 years old, they admitted Adriane to the Alberta
Adolescent Recovery Centre (AARC).

"The treatment was a struggle for her and for us, but she learned healthy
ways to live, and we did too," Sue said. "The program is for the entire
family."

Adriane graduated from the program a year later, and now she is finishing
grade 12, working part-time and giving back to kids at AARC.

"She is a miracle child to me," Sue said.

As for Adriane, she calls the AARC program the "best thing I have ever done
for myself."

She said she is thankful she had parents who got fed up with her, but never
gave up on her.

She said she is thankful that she got off the drug and alcohol path which
she said "inevitably leads to death."

"I'm not saying I feel good about myself everyday now," she said. "I don't
think any teen does."

"I have my good days and bad days and I just try to live a spiritual life."

That spiritual life proved to be an inspiration to everyone in attendance
last week at BVHS.