TEEN SAYS MANY PARENTS 'BLIND' TO SIGNS OF DRUGS

CHESTERTON -- Joshua Brown smooths out his sandwich wrapper and dumps
french fries onto the crinkled paper.

He is a 16-year-old with short, gelled black hair and deep brown eyes. His
blue plaid Aeropostale shirt hangs unbuttoned over a white T-shirt.

As Joshua drags his fries through ketchup, he begins the laundry list of
drugs he has used: LSD, Ecstasy, marijuana "laced with things," hashish,
cocaine, PCP, prescription drugs, over-the-counter mixes that gave "weird
highs."

Joshua leans back and shakes his head. You just can't tell if a kid is
using drugs, he said -- especially if you don't want to look.

Parents have a habit of not wanting to look at the drug problem, Joshua said.

"They are really blind to it," he said. "A lot of kids do it, but their
parents don't believe it."

"It's not hard to get away with stuff," he said, home for the weekend from
a treatment program in Indianapolis, a privilege recently restored.

Joshua moved in many groups -- with the computer kids, the wrestling kids,
kids from his Boy Scout troop, kids from church, football kids. There was
not one group shielded from drugs, he said.

Joshua can drive down any street in his middle-class Duneland Cove
subdivision and point to the houses of kids who drink or use drugs. He can
drive down most any street in Chesterton and do the same.

"That's reality," he said. "It's a lot of kids, kids you wouldn't think."

But look at Joshua. Who would have thought that this clean-cut altar boy on
his way to achieving his Boy Scout Eagle ranking would fall into drugs?

This is the same boy who wrote a winning essay about the evils of drugs for
his fifth-grade D.A.R.E. program.

"I got a free hat for that," Joshua said. He smiled at the irony. "I sold
it for money."

He smoked his first joint the very next school year.

"I thought it would be cool," he said.

Most parents don't realize how accessible drugs are in the community,
Joshua said. Students can get their hands on any number of drugs.

"It's not hard at all. You can get whatever you want," Joshua said.

Heroin is just a 45-minute trip away. Joshua said he never tried heroin,
but he is certain he would have eventually, without intervention. Heroin is
cheap, he said. Very cheap. For about the price of the value meal Joshua
ate Saturday afternoon, he could get fixed up.

April marks one year since parents Julie and Joseph "Gus" Brown brought
Joshua to Pathway Family Center in Indianapolis. Leaving their son to the
care of others was almost the most difficult thing they had to do.

The most difficult was actually admitting their son had a drug problem,
Julie Brown said. After all, they were one of the "good families."

"We were involved in every aspect of their lives. We did everything with
them. We were not ignoring them and it happened," Julie Brown said.

Julie and Gus were not ignoring their children -- Joshua is the middle
child of three boys -- but they tried very hard to ignore reality.

They found marijuana.

"It's not mine, it's a friend's."

They found wrappers from over-the-counter medications.

"I have a cold."

The warning signs blared but they wanted desperately to believe the lies.

"You're terrified. You are scared and then you get to the point to confront
and you're looking for them to give you a reason not to be terrified," Gus
Brown said.

The Browns yelled, they grounded, they enlisted the help of counselors and
they enlisted the help of school officials and police. Nothing seemed to work.

Joshua was expelled from school at the end of his freshman year, and police
had visited the Browns' house six different times. Neighbors whispered as
they peered through curtains at police cars parked in front of the Browns'
house.

The Browns had somehow become "one of those" families.

Gus and Julie Brown currently work in a 12-step program in conjunction with
Joshua's treatment program. They want to change their home environment so
Joshua has a greater chance of success when he returns home for good, which
they hope will be this summer.

They admit to co-dependent parenting tendencies. They tried to shield their
children from life's pains. They fixed the messes their children left
behind. They hired lawyers who effectively got Joshua's charges reduced.
They worked with school officials to soften school troubles.

"I always knew they would take care of things," Joshua said.

Parenting in the Brown household is different these days. Last week, their
12-year-old forgot his in-line skates while on the way to a school skating
party. The Browns did not drive back home to retrieve the forgotten skates,
as they would have just a year ago.

The family talks more about their feelings now instead of just talking
about things. They allow their children to feel the consequences of their
actions, and hold their children accountable for their actions. The Browns
set boundaries and take a tough love stance.

This parenting style is not easy, Gus Brown admits.

"The very thing that's natural to you as a parent is the very thing that
could be harming your child," he said.

Though the want to break away from clean and sober still nags at him,
Joshua is different too. His last report card carried a 3.714 grade point
average, compared to the .00 grade point average of his report card before
going into treatment.

Joshua looks forward to returning home to finish high school in Chesterton.
He says he wants to be a lawyer when he grows up. He wants to help others.

Joshua hopes he can work with kids at the elementary and middle school
level when he returns to Chesterton, to serve as a positive role model.
Maybe these kids will listen to a high school kid about the dangers of
drugs better than they listen to parents and teachers.

And maybe, if Joshua can stay clean, he can serve as a glint of hope for
others. He wants others to know that a drug addiction does not have to be a
terminal disease.

"There's help and there's hope. You just have to be open to it," Joshua said.