THREE HELENA TEENS TALK CANDIDLY ABOUT THEIR BATTLES WITH DRUGS AND ALCOHOL

Kevin takes his baseball cap off in the doorway. He cups the brim
with both hands. He's quiet, but give him some time and he'll catch
you off guard with a sly comment you'd, at first, be too polite to
laugh at. These days, he's serious about school, cares about his
grades and studies hard for tests. He's polite, clean cut, a real
regular kid. But a year ago, at 15, Kevin had only been out of drug
and alcohol treatment less than a month and faced possibly the
toughest challenge of his life: living without drugs.

"I'd wake up and ask myself, 'am I going to kill myself -- or do
drugs?' I'd lie there and have this hour-long debate in my head every morning."

He made it through those long, dark months without drugs. And with
each day he could resist the urge to use, his confidence grew. He
attends an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting every day and two on
Tuesdays. There, he has learned that although he's often the youngest
person in the meeting, he's not alone in his struggle.

He's at once both aged beyond his years, and just setting out in life.

By his estimation, Kevin is one of only about 20 high school students
in Helena who have come to terms with drug and alcohol abuse and are
recovering from addiction. Every day, they face not only the
emotional roller coaster that is adolescence, but also the savage
temptation that is addiction. Maggie is an outgoing 16-year-old, who
is one of Kevin's best friends. So is Jason, who's also 16. Theirs
was a friendship founded on alcohol and drugs. Together, they would
party, drink and get high.

Maggie's edges are a little rough. At times, she's a little loud,
maybe too outspoken, but she can make nearly anyone laugh. She's
straightforward and sincere, wearing a confidence not many girls her
age can pull off. Her rowdy-fun personality could easily absorb
everything in the room, except she gracefully shares the spotlight.

But Kevin and Jason tell of a wholly different girl.

When she used alcohol and other drugs she would become angry,
abrasive and violent. She frequently made threats and talked tough --
none of which were idle. She'd fight anyone, male or female.

"Maggie was scary when I first met her," Kevin said. "If you said
anything, she'd kick your ass."

The two boys share a knowing laugh, but Maggie is quiet.

"I'd scare people off," she said, simply stating what was once the
most glaring part of her personality.

Despite alcohol and drugs, she managed to forge a deep friendship
with Kevin and Jason -- one that eventually helped turn her life around.

Drug use changes the wiring in the brain, said Ron Clevenger, a
clinical specialist at St. Peter's Hospital, and delays a young
person's development -- emotionally, socially, physically, mentally
and spiritually.

"It changes the way they perceive their world; it truly is wasted
youth," he continued. "When they come out of this haze, they hardly
even remember anything -- they're totally different kids.

"I've seen kids who have smoked pot since they were 12 and they're 18
-- and they still look like they're 12," Clevenger added.

In many instances, Kevin, Maggie and Jason have had to go back and
re-learn what they missed when they were abusing drugs and alcohol.

"Learning to deal with my emotions without drinking was the hardest
thing I ever had to do," Maggie said.

Those days, Kevin, Maggie and Jason used most every day and would
spend their weekends in a blurry haze of alcohol and other drugs.

Sometimes they went to parties. Sometimes they used alone. Each went
from one opportunity to the next, constantly looking for a better
buzz or a higher high.

They did pot, meth, and any combination of prescription drugs and
street drugs they could get their hands on.

"It got to the point where we'd do anything to get high," Kevin said.

Not one of them figured they'd live past graduation, but they made a
pact that they'd die high.

In the dark, at 100-miles-an-hour with the headlights off, they raced
blindly into addiction.

There is no definitive answer to why children use alcohol and other
drugs. Scott Boyles, a Helena licensed addiction counselor, said each
child is different and each child uses substances for a different
reason. For many, it's a desire to fit in; for others, it's an act of
defiance. Some youngsters use alcohol and other drugs to numb their
emotions or to lessen their inhibitions.

"There may not be a clear external trigger," Boyles said. "Maybe they
say 'I just don't feel right inside and there's this unexplained
void,' or it's just because it feels good -- to feel different, to
change how you feel."

Kevin, Maggie and Jason didn't give a clear reason for their use, and
all three agreed they would drink or use drugs for any reason they could find.

"You skip school at least once a day to smoke pot," Kevin remembers.

"Before school, after school and at lunch if you were lucky," Jason adds.

Indeed, it wasn't unusual for the threesome to attend school stoned
or drunk, or to use on school grounds. In fact, school was where they
would 'hook up,' and if they weren't buying drugs at school they were
organizing a deal later in the day.

With 20 students in a class, sometimes more, Kevin, Maggie and
Jason's teachers likely didn't recognize the transformation the
youngsters had undergone at the hands of addiction. If they had, all
they could have done is send them to the principal's office on a
discipline referral. And that happened often enough, without much
consequence, Maggie said.

"The teacher would have been lucky to get 10 minutes when she didn't
have to deal with me," she said.

"Yeah, and she'd have to deal with me for that 10," Kevin adds.

They were so disruptive, Maggie said she's regretful now when she
looks back on how hard she was on her teachers, and how her behavior
interfered with her classmates' learning.

Helena High School teacher Ruth Luke said she knows there are
students who come to class drunk or high, but admitted there isn't
much a teacher can do.

"I've noticed after lunch some kids come in with big glassy eyes,"
she said. "There's not much you can do. You can never directly accuse someone."

If a student becomes a discipline problem, Luke said she sends them
to the principal's office on a referral, and if she's concerned
beyond that, she'll send a note to the principal or a guidance counselor.

"They're also teenagers -- they're sometimes crabby and cranky," Luke
added. "I think teachers try to be aware of their students, but it's
sometimes hard to tell."

Luke and her fellow teachers aren't alone; even Boyles said it's
difficult to determine if a teenager's behavior is related to
substance abuse or to adolescence.

"Take adolescent behaviors and magnify them by 10," he said of teens
living with addiction.

In the beginning, Kevin, Maggie and Jason funded their habit by lying
to their parents, asking for money for activities, then using the
money for drugs or alcohol.

"If you say you're going to a movie or to a football game, they give
you $20, and that's enough for an eighth," Jason said.

At first, Maggie tried to keep her drinking and drug use a secret
from her mother. But over time, her mother began to piece it all
together. She tried discipline at first, Maggie said, but finally
gave up trying to control her daughter.

"She had her rathers," Maggie said. "Like, 'if you're going to drink,
I'd rather you stay over,' or 'if you're going to drink, I'd rather
you didn't drive.' "

Kevin took a different approach to hiding his progressing habit from
his parents -- he moved. When secret-keeping became difficult with
his father, he moved to his mother's. When she started to suspect a
problem, he moved in with his grandfather.

When Kevin's grandfather found his stash, he moved back in with his
mother. He told her he would quit, and honestly tried, but he was
soon using again.

Jason, too, maintained a pattern of lying, hiding and sneaking with
his parents. When they caught him with marijuana, he promised he'd
stop, but couldn't.

Addiction crosses all social boundaries. Kevin, Maggie and Jason's
parents are professionals who are active in the community. Two of the
families have experienced divorce, one includes a re-marriage, and
for at least one family, addiction is common. No one variable leads
to increased risk of addiction, Boyles cautioned.

Kevin, Maggie and Jason's parents' reactions are not unusual.
According to Boyles, parents often fall into a pattern of denial,
hoping substance abuse will pass like any other stage of child development.

"It's a process for a kid to understand the severity of the problem,"
he said. "And it's a process, in a lot of ways, for parents too.
They're typically in denial. They have their own denial systems -- we
all do -- so it's very natural not to see these things."

Making matters worse, Boyles said many parents have an attitude that
drinking and drug use is a social rite of passage for young people.
As a result, they don't take a stand against drug and alcohol abuse.

Initially, one-eighth of an ounce of pot would be enough to last
three days. But as their use snowballed, Kevin and Jason turned to
dealing to keep the flow of drugs coming. Gradually, they found
themselves in a place where they never needed money, and they always
had a steady supply of drugs.

"And there's always people asking for it because they know you've got
it," Kevin added.

They started by just selling part of what they bought at a higher
price, but it wasn't long before the boys figured out that the
easiest way for a high school dealer to make a buck was by selling to
younger kids.

Middle school students, who were new to drugs, wouldn't notice if
they got less for their money, or if their marijuana was cut with
oregano or parsley. The boys made sure the most important people in
the deal -- regular customers -- would get a little more for their money.

"So the word would get out, y'know, then you get a reputation and
you're still making money because you're ripping people off," Kevin said.

"During the time it was great," he continued, his tone a little
quieter, more contemplative. "But now, I feel so bad for contributing
to these kids ruining their lives."

It might be hard to imagine a drunk fifth-grader, but a study done by
the National Center for Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia
University indicated that more and more children start using alcohol
before age 13. Roughly 36 percent of students who use alcohol began
before eighth grade -- and that's up by a third since 1975.

Montana Department of Health and Human Services studies produced the
same percentage and further indicate that, of the teenagers who use
alcohol and other drugs, 71 percent began before age 16.

Maggie began drinking alcohol when she was about nine. Back then, she
and her friends would sneak beer and hard liquor from their parents.
By the time she was 12 she was a regular pot user and relied on a
friend's older brother to supply them with a frequent fix.

Maggie continued to abuse alcohol and marijuana and tried
methamphetamines for the first time at age 14.

"The first time I tried it I fell in love with it," she remembers.
"And I always promised myself I'd never do it, too."

That love was reckless, unreciprocating. Eventually, alcohol and
drugs left her hopeless at 15.

"When I thought I was a lost cause, that's when I knew -- that's when
you know you're in trouble," she said.

Maggie's early introduction likely played a role in her chemical
abuse later. According to Judy Griffith, the Helena School District's
chemical dependency awareness program coordinator, children who use
alcohol and drugs before age 15 are far more likely to develop an
addiction than those who wait till after they're 19 or 20.

Children's brains are still rapidly developing, Griffith continued,
and even a one-time exposure could change brain chemistry, making a
child more vulnerable to addiction later in life.

n n n

Kevin finally bottomed out after a long binge that left him seriously
sick. He told his mother he needed help and called the treatment
center himself. When he left, Maggie decided it was time to take stock herself.

"I respected (his decision), but I was kind of scared too, because he
was the one I called when I got too screwed up to move," she said.

She decided she'd quit using meth and "cut back to just smoking pot"
while Kevin was gone. For four weeks, she managed to keep it
together. But by the time Kevin was on his way home, she was rolling
into a massive binge.

Two days later, Maggie was coming down hard off her binge. She was
messed up, but Kevin took her to an AA meeting anyway. That night
proved a turning point in their lives.

"That room towered over me," Maggie remembers. "It felt like I was
below everybody -- like everybody there had control over their lives."

Midway through the meeting, she lost it, excused herself and broke
down in the hallway.

"I was bawling my eyes out, and I told Kevin I had no idea where my
life was going."

She quit using alcohol and drugs that night and found the hope
alcohol and drugs had stolen. Next meeting, Kevin and Maggie brought Jason.

Together, the trio tackles sobriety. It's never easy, but every day
is better than the day before.

An IR Special Report

About this series

Over the next few months, the IR will take a close, hard look at the
use of alcohol and other drugs by youth in our community.

A local drug and alcohol counselor put it best when he drew an
analogy between teen alcohol and drug use and household clutter. Like
clutter in our homes, he said, over time, our community has become
accustomed to this serious problem. And like clutter, it often takes
an eye-opening event to recognize it's a problem. It may take an
alcohol- or drug-related tragedy to open our eyes.

We hope this series will shed light on the issue while at the same
time, reveal hope for a positive future. In today's stories we hope
to present the issue from analytical and a human perspectives. In
future projects, readers can expect in-depth stories on the role of
schools in preventing substance abuse, how law enforcement is
responding, treatment options and resources for parents.

In today's and upcoming stories, young people will share their
stories of addiction and recovery. We've decided to take our lead
from Alcoholics Anonymous and not reveal their identities. The names
have been changed but their experiences are real.

A profile of one of the alcohol studies

The Office of Public Instruction's Youth Risk Behavior Survey was administered:

-- statewide through the Office of Public Instruction

-- established by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

-- odd numbered years

-- to students in grades 7-12

-- self-reported data

-- margin of error: plus or minus 3 percent

-- high school data is weighted, middle school data is averaged based
on actual responses

-- questions "risky" behaviors in six areas that contribute to
mortality of teenagers including tobacco use, alcohol and other
drugs, sexual behavior, inactivity, weight and body image, as well as
weapons and safety.

Available on the Web at www.opi.state.mt.us.