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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 15, 1988)
Troubled Youth Teen-ager conquering dependencies By Ryan Johnson Teen-age drinking. Is it a problem here? Ponder these 1987figures from the Lincoln Council on Alcohol and Drugs. Eighty-six percent of the Lincoln students in grades 10 through 12 reported drinking in the last 12 months. Seventy percent said they had something to drink in the last month. Thirty percent said they first used alcohol in elementary school; 54 percent in junior high. Fifty-eight percent reported all or most of their friends drink. Only 15 percent of the teen-agers who need help actually get professional guidance, say drug counselors. This is the story of Mary (not her real name), one of those who sought help. Mary is 18 now, mature beyond her years She speaks quickly but thoughtfully, connecting her sentences with “ands" and “you knows.” Her sandal-clad feet are crossed, Indian style, on the hascmenl couch A Coke and her ever-present ashtray rest on an end table beside the couch. Smoking is her only remaining vice, she says. The basement rc>. cation room is her domain. Thai’s w here she goes to get away, to think And today, she reflects on the problem that nearly tore her family apart. “I don’t even remember * hen I took my first drink, because it had always been OK in our house to drink.” A sip of Dad’s beer . a drink of wine w ith the family on holidays . .. nothing wrong there No hint that ihosc innocent sips might iead to a drinking problem, or to pot . or »o inhalants, or to acid. No hint that such an escalation would almost destroy the attractive teen-ager and her family. But both Mary and her parents agree that those innocent“tastes”may have been where it all started. “It w as my way of thinking,” says the mother, “that it was better that kids get a little taste of it than for them to think it was a forbidden something, you know?" Mary's mother glances across at the father. They are good people. Solid. Hardworking. The mother works as a receptionist and secretary, the father at a grain elevator. Both are in their 40s. It’s a pleasant, middle-class home. The mother talks more, smiling and gesturing frequently. The father’s comments are few but insightful, punctuated with an occasional tap of his pencil on his pop can. Good people. Well-meaning parents. Just like Beaver cleaver s ioiks, Mary always thought. And certainly Mary as a youngster never lacked for attention. In fact, she probably got too much. The older children had been raised with an iron hand; Mary was spoiled. She was spoiled by her parents and by her older brothers and sister. They would pick up her toys for her, pamper her. And, to avoid staying home to baby-sit, they would take her to parties with them. They’d catch her now and then, sneaking a drink given to her by other party-goers. They’d take the alcohol away from her. But their friends laughed. They thought it was cute to see her drink. But no one thought Mary had a drinking problem ... not until the family moved to Lincoln when she was in 9th grade. The other kids were grown by then and had moved out. Mary found herself in a strange place without friends, without siblings. She hated Lincoln. She missed her hometown. She missed her life there. And she thought her parents were totally against her for making her move. In grade school she had been involved with 4-H and Girl Scouts “and all that good stuff.” She had been active in basketball, volleyball, track and band during junior high. Mary dropped ail those when she arrived in Lincoln. And her grades fell. She always had been an honor student at her old school. She even made the honor roll her first semester in Lincoln. But then she started getting twos and threes and, at times, fours. And she started drinking more. She soon developed a close relationship with about eight other teen-agers — state wards, mostly from troubled families. It was a diverse group, including a punker and a varsity wrestler. Yet they had one thing in common. “They just hate life,” says Mary • “They hate parents. They hate jobs. They hate responsibility.” What they didn t hate was excitement: drinking, drugs, going to nars. Mary saw her parents as boring, controlling; she resented them for it. So she hung out with her friends, put them before her family. And she became somewhat of a surrogate mother for the group, basically taking care of them. She worked, so she had the money. She supplied her friends with money and cigarettes and rides in her car. They were close, intending eventually to buy a house and live together the rest of their lives. But for now they drank — beer if it was the only thing available, but mostly wine coolers and Southern Comfort. The majority of Mary’s paycheck went down their throats. Mary tells of one night when she drank two fifths of whiskey. She blacked out for 12 hours. That scared her, but it didn’t stop her. The more she drank, the more she liked Then she got into drugs. Mary says she and her friends smoked pot a lot. She did rush, a bottled room freshener that she sniffed for a high. Rush was something she could do constantly, at school, at home. Her fnends tripped on acid a lot. The thought scared Mary, because of horror stories she’d heard, but eventually she tried it. But it wasn’t a happy life. She hated herself, Mary recalls, so it was hard to like other people. She thought the only way she could have friends was to buy them, with alcohol and drugs and favors. And getting high made her feel better ... for a while. . Work and school became secondary. She called in sick or convinced her mother to call in for her. Sometimes she was faking, she says, but sometimes she really was sick, from lack of sleep, from not eating well. t And she was a loner, Mary says, even with her friends. She couldn t tell them how she was feeling. She kept her emotions bottled up, until she took them out on her “boring parents.” ,, “We couldn’t say anything to her without her just flying off the handle, says Mary’s mother. And Mom became her punchingbag. “My arm was black and blue almost continuously. Even as a youngster, Mary aian i commumcaic vciy wen. nun spoke to her parents only in fits of rage. Otherwise, she stayed in her room or didn’t come home at all. Once she broke a portable television. Another time, a vacuum. Another time, she threw a jar of pizza sauce all over the carpet and the wall. She doesn’t even remember why. Her parents were boring, she says, and trying to take away her fun. She lied to them constantly about drinking and skipping school. “I don’t think 1 told the truth about anything,” she says. Mary was clever about hiding her drinking and using. If she was going to be home at midnight, she stopped drinking at 10. Her parents never suspected. They never saw her under the influence. And it was better just to leave her alone when she was having her fits. She became more and more uncontrollable. The situation came to a head this spring. By 3 a.m. one Thursday she still had not come home. Her father drove to a nearby all-night restaurant, where he knew he would find her. She was there but refused to come home, threatening to move out. The next day, April 1, she did. , ..... “We couldn’t keep her from moving out, says her mother. I called the police but there was no way we could keep her from moving out.” Mary ’s parents were conv inced they had lost their daughter. It was a trying time, filled with sleepless nights. Mary moved into a downtown apartment with two oi her friends. She paid her part of the rent from the money she earned at a part-time job. Occasion ally, her parents would fill up the car and buy her cigarettes. But the money never stretched fax enough. Mary started writing bad checks. Her parents covered them. She eventually ran up a $600 bill to her parents. Meanwhile, Mary laid plans for getting kicked out of school. She cut classes for days at a time. When she did go, shc*slept. In desperation, her mother called the school counselor. He recommended an evaluation at Lincoln General’s Youth Treatment Center. Mary s parents had never heard of the center. And they still didn’t believe Mary had an alcohol or drug problem. Mary's problem was behavioral, they told each other. It took some soul-searching, but Mary’s mother fin?’1' made the appoint ment. But the more she thought about it, the more convinced she became that Mary didn’t need such an evaluation. She almost cancelled. No, she decided, this would be a starting point. They had to get Mary out of bed for the appointment. She had been partying the night before. And she lied to the evaluator. Her drinking, Mary insisted, was limited to one or two beers, maybe once a month. The evaluator wasn’t fooled. “She told us things about Mary that we didn’t know,’’says Mary’s father. On April 18, she was admitted to the center’s outpatient program, geared to those still in the experimental stages of drug and alcohol abuse. Those determined as “addictive” are treated through the inpatient program. Mary would live outside the hospital and attend daily four-hour counseling sessions after school. Mary’s parents were stunned. They were scared. They felt helpless. Their other children had turned out OK. Where had they gone wrong? Had they been too easy? Was it loo late? But they also felt relieved. Perhaps she would change. Mary didn’t change immediately. She did stop drinking and using. But her attitude didn’t change. She was convinced her parents had sent her to treatment in an effort to move her back home. She denied responsibility. Once counselors threatened to remove her from the > program. But gradually, step by step, Mary started seeing herself in anew light. The tough, sometimes vicious peer counseling was having an effect. The equally demanding “role-playing” exercises helped her see herself in a more objec tive way, and hint at more acceptable behavior patterns. She was forced to take a closer look at herself, Mary says, and what she was doing. And, in a way, it was a relief to be in treatment, Mary acknowl edges, away from “the sick world I did live in.” She was never forced to admit that she was an alcoholic, but eventually she did. She started going to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings . . . just accompanying a friend at first, then on her own. It’s habit for her now, Mary says, and probably will be for the rest of her life. After four weeks of the six-week program, her parents approached Mary’s counselor about convincing her to move back home. The counselor didn’t do it quite the way her father had wanted, but it worked. “He goes to her and says ‘Your folks want me to tell you to move back home ... I ain’t gonna do it... It’s not up to them to tell you that. It’s not up to me to tell you that. I’m not gonna bug you about living at home.”’ Mary’s father throws his hands up in the air and laughs his wonderful quick, high-pitched laugh. “It really upset me, made me mad when he went about it that way. But it worked out.” He wasn’t going to be a messenger, says the father, but he let Mary know she was wanted at home. About this same lime, Mary discovered a bit more about her “friends.” One of her roommates almost beat her up when Mary yelled at him one morning for shutting off her alarm. She moved back home that night. Mary says coming home marked the turning point. She started going to school more. She didn’t call in sick at work. And she started caring about her family again. “I always loved my parents,” Mary says. “I iust didn’t like ‘cm. I needed them, but f wouldn’t admit I needed them .. . when I moved home, I could sit and talk to them.” She became proud of herself forgoing through treatment. She was starting to make her life better. After the six weeks, Mary and her parents went to “family care.” Each evening for two weeks her parents joined in the treatment: watching films, listening to lectures and interacting with other members of the group. It was then the family really came to terms. As a final exercise, each family is required to do what is called “a sculpture." Others from the group are picked to portray key figures in the family’s situation. The players are frozen into positions that show separation, anger, rejection ... all the emotions and attitudes that have plagued the troubled family. It is a long and tiring process. At the end, the actors are asked to describe how they feel physically. Most acknowledge they arc exhausted, weary of holding angry poses, tired of being separated from the others. These physical descriptions bear an uncanny relationship to how family members have been feeling emotionally. And, as if by magic, many or all of the barriers are broken. Mary and her parents talked and hugged and cried. Mary told her parents she loved them and needed their support. She told them she was sorry for the way she had acted, sorry for hitting her mom. Her parents reconfirmed their love for her and acknowledged their own faults. It was a touching moment But not as moving as some, they say. “We knew we had the love, and we had the love to begin with,” says the father. And that love and closeness kept them going during treatment. Now, almost seven months later, Mary is still sober. She works a full-time and a part-time job. She goes regularly to aftercare meetings at the Youth Treatment Center and to AA meetings. Her mother and father still go to “parent-support” meetings at the center, not because they’re worried about Mary, but to brag about how well she’s doing and to count their blessings. Many families had worse problems, says Mary’s mother, and hearing about them makes her appreciate Mary more. ( Mom and Dad are more strict now. Mary has an 11 p.m. curfew on weekdays, 12:30 on weekends. The family has a behavioral contract that stipulates family rules and outlines "consequences" for violating the codes. But some of those rules, they all acknowledge, have been conveniently “forgotten." Tne family credits the treatment-center program with getting Mary sober and back into the family The experience pointed out her self-defeating behaviors, they say, and showed her how to do things differently. Mary says she is honest with people now, telling them what is bothering her. She still thinks about her old friends, even misses them, but she knows she can never be & pvt of their circle again. “Today, the most important thing in my life is staying sober. And my family is right under that. But if I wasn’t sober, I wouldn't have my family. Because if I’m not sober, they can’t live with me." Mary considers herself luckier than most. She never lost a job because of her drinking. She didn’t lose the people she loves. “I’m almost convinced I'd almost be dead today,” she says, “if 1 hadn’t gotten sober. * Mary and her parents are confident that she will remain sober the rest ol 1 her life. But it won’t be easy, acknowledge the experts, and it’s not often done. Lu Dailey, project supervisor at the treatment center, esti mated that only one in three who go through treatment remain completely sober. Mary says she knows the dangers. And knows what she must do to avoid coming out wrong statistically. "Alcoholism is a progressive disease." she says. "And even if 1 don’t drink, 1 still have the disease." Mary says it’s essential for her to attend A A meetings and the center’s aftercare sessions. "Even if I’m not drinking," she says, “1 can gel back into self-defeating shit just as easy."