Avenues To Recovery

http://www.themetoperaonthebigscreen.com

2011-04-05T11:13:00.000-07:00

http://www.themetoperaonthebigscreen.com

Lou's Story

2011-03-29T09:14:00.000-07:00

For every Charlie Sheen, there is a Louis Gossett Jr. Except that Gossett's got what Sheen doesn't: an Oscar, an Emmy and a profound respect for people in recovery, including himself.

I recently had a chance to hear Gossett tell his story at a Hazelden event in Naples, Fla. For an actor who has been honored with his profession's highest achievements, he barely talked about his life as an actor.

Instead, he shared his behind-the-scenes struggles with alcohol and other drugs that weren't part of a Hollywood script. His were real-life consequences: divorce, estrangement from his sons, and a plunge into mental anguish, hastened when, after winning an Academy Award for his supporting role in "An Officer and a Gentleman," offers for more and bigger movie roles didn't come. "My heart began to break, and I fell for the self-abuse to ease the pain," he said.

Gossett had every reason to stop, but he couldn't.

"Doing it for other people didn't work. Doing it my way, on my terms, didn't work. I couldn't run anymore or hide. ... Finally, that's when I realized that the man inside of me — me — had to give in, stop trying so hard, surrender, have a commitment, willingness to change, clean up my own house inside and get rid of my defects of character," Gossett told the audience. "Suddenly, I faced a very pleasant dilemma ... learning to live in sobriety."

Gossett is unabashed by how he stays clean and sober: a program of steps that lets him "make progress without perfection," a higher power he calls God, and helping others. "I have to give it away to keep it." All those things, he says, help him "practice the art of recovery."

What a contrast to Sheen's headline-grabbing rants and raves that go beyond making himself look either very foolish or very ill. Sheen has viciously trashed this "art of recovery" espoused by the likes of hundreds of thousands of people like Gossett.

Sheen even disparages sobriety, calling it "boring."
Gossett, 74, is hardly bored. Telling his story of addiction and redemption is only part of his life's work. In 2006, he started the Eracism Foundation. "I dedicate this last quadrant of my life to an all-out conscientious offensive against racism," Gossett said. Like addiction, racism robs people of their dignity and erodes their respect.

I wanted to ask Gossett whether he and Sheen ever have met and whether he or others in that bright yet faraway galaxy of stars have tried to help the troubled actor, whose denial now goes far beyond his own well-being. But that's personal and none of my business.

I appreciate that Gossett shared his insides with members of an audience he never had met, including many who know his truth, that treatment works, recovery is real and there's nothing boring about sobriety, except that we don't tend to wave machetes from public rooftops and trash hotel rooms anymore.

I have to admit, though, that I was bummed out shortly after he finished. That's because for every Charlie Sheen, there are plenty of celebrities who don't do what he's doing or crash cars or walk off the set or go broke or die, because they're not drinking or drugging anymore, but until they tell their stories publicly — perhaps all at once — Sheen's sold-out "My Violent Torpedo of Truth/Defeat is Not an Option" is the only show in town.

For sure, this tour of self-aggrandized destruction will get plenty of attention, even though it won't win an award for its producer, director and lead actor.

And is his message really what we want our kids and people struggling with mental illness or addiction to hear?

William Moyers is the vice president of foundation relations for the Hazelden Foundation and the author of "Broken," his best-selling memoirs, and "A New Day, A New Life." Please send your questions to William Moyers at wmoyers@hazelden.org. To find out more about William Moyers and read his past columns, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

Email to Dan Griffin last Friday March 25th 2011

2011-03-28T08:51:00.001-07:00

by Avenues to Recovery Inc. on Sunday, March 27, 2011 at 11:06pm

Dan it was really wonderful to meet you yesterday. Your book was a
breakthrough for me as I have spent the last 30 years figuring out how
to be a man and how to help other men embrace their masculinity. I
have had some success and the work is incredible and rewarding. Many
years ago I was similarly impressed by Robert Bly's book " Iron John"
and that was a seminal work for me. So here we are in the here and now
and I wanted to share with you.

While I was listening to you yesterday I sent my 41 year old son who
lives in England a text and asked him to make me a list of words that
described masculinity. He is used to my stuff and so dutifully and so
he answered with the following:

Real
True
Firm
Brutal
Humble
Honest
Frank
Genuine
Humorous
Patient
Caring
Nurturing
Sensitive
Empathetic
Committed
Consistent
Present
Masculine
Ugly
Brave

What is amazing about this is that he was a victim of my alcoholism
and was lost to me for 38 years as his mother and I had problems and
she basically disappeared. The impact of that was that was the trauma
that fueled my addictions. I looked for him over the years but it was
not until I was well enough in sobriety that I was ready to get on
with this and to accept it for what it was. The shame used to paralyze
and this was a story that I was unable to tell or to feel. So your
presentation yesterday was so telling on so many levels and it really
resonated. Two years ago we were able to reunite and we as two men
have been able to accept each other honestly, openly and willingly. It
has been a miracle and is one of those things where I say to myself
that I am glad that I did not leave the rooms until the miracle
happened. It has happened and "coincidently" I received an email from
Paul yesterday which read:

"So here's a mad thing. Around 2 years ago today I got an email from a
man I'd not seen in person for 38 years. A man I'd given up on ever
seeing again. My Dad, David Brown. Now, I know there is much pain and
suffering in the world today but the thing this experience has taught
me is to believe in hope. You cannot now tell me miracles don't
happen, they do and I need to thank the angels that worked to enable
this reunion"'

In thinking about the masculinity aspect of this it amazes me that
Paul has been able to work through a lot of the stuff that he must
have been left with. He has worked hard and by the grace of God he
seems not to have adopted the family male stance on addiction. He can
take it or leave it and is resilient. He was also impressed by the
Iron John book and he actually gave me his copy as we both now realize
that our reading the book was about trying to answer questions about
loss and abandonment.

Dan thanks for appearing in my life and being the next teacher that I
needed . I would love to talk to you some more as I think we can help
each other. Lets talk sometime and I can add some more meat to the
skeleton of the story that I have been able to share with you here.

Wow Dan.....thanks! Hope you dont mind my sharing but it seemed to be
so right to share especially in light of the fact that I was unable to
share any of this from 1971 - 1984 at which point I began selectively
to heal.

I understand from Crystal that she bought your syllabus which I am
really excited to look at and she and I are are going to collaborate
on way to see how we can work with you professionally in the Drug
Court in Kansas City, Kansas where my company acts as the treatment
provider.

The attached pic is self explanatory.....that was on day 1 of our
reunion in June of 2009!

David Brown, AAPS, BRI 1
Cell: 913-486-8119

I recommend "A Man's Way Through the 12 Steps".

2011-03-28T08:43:00.000-07:00

Review
"With candor and compassion, Dan Griffin expands the power and significance of the Twelve Steps by providing a deeper understanding of what they mean to men in recovery." --Stephanie S. Covington, Ph.D., author of A Woman's Way Through the Twelve Steps

"Recovery is more than sobriety. This book is a beacon to guide men through the unique dynamics of the male experience of recovery from active addiction to early sobriety to a lifetime of recovery. This is a practical look at the power of addiction and the promise and possibility of recovery based on the experiences of men who have been through the journey. Read this book if you are a man who wants to experience the promise and possibility of healthy recovery." --William Cope Moyers author of Broken

"An excellent resource and a valuable addition to men's work in recovery." --Karen Casey, bestselling author of Each Day a New Beginning

"A wonderful guide for men that reveals how to transform pain, confusion and mixed messages into a deeper and richer sobriety through the Twelve Steps. Dan Griffin does an excellent job of laying out the special issues and dilemmas faced by men in recovery, helping them form better relationships and sort out what it means to be men of substance." --Craig Nakken, MSW author of The Addictive Personality: Understanding the Addictive Process and Compulsive Behavior

"Dan Griffin's inspiring book is a real `gut check' for all men in recovery and those still suffering. This book is a `must-read' for those of us in recovery who seek to reach our full potential through the Twelve Steps." --US Congressman, Jim Ramstad
Product Description
In A Man's Way through the Twelve Steps, author Dan Griffin uses interviews with men in various stages of recovery, excerpts from relevant Twelve Step literature, and his own experience to offer the first holistic approach to sobriety for men. Readers work through each of the Twelve Steps, learn to capitulate negative masculine scripts that have shaped who they are and how they approach recovery, and strengthen the positive and affirming aspects of manhood. This groundbreaking book offers the tools needed for men to work through key issues with which they commonly struggle, including:

difficulty admitting powerlessness
finding connection with a Higher Power
letting go of repressed anger and resentment
contending with sexual issues, whatever they may be
overcoming barriers to intimacy and meaningful relationships
Men's capacity for emotional and relational experiences is far greater than commonly depicted not only in mainstream society but also in various parts of the Twelve Step culture. A Man's Way through the Twelve Steps offers practical advice and inspiration for men to define their own sense of masculinity and thus heighten their potential for a lifetime of sobriety.

News from the Front....comment please

2011-02-24T10:47:00.000-08:00

The latest news from the prescription drug front is that Governor Rick Scott of Florida is looking to kill a planned statewide computer database system designed to track pain clinic abuses and "doctor shopping".
While this is surely an expensive undertaking, the lax attitude the State of Florida has on prescription drug pain clinics and pill mills is abhorrent and detrimental to our society.
Here are some facts:
IN 2007 THERE WERE ONLY FOUR PAIN CLINICS IN BROWARD COUNTY, FL. FROM AUGUST 2008 TO NOV 2009 THE NUMBER SWELLED FROM 47 TO 115, AND TO DATE THERE ARE OVER 150.
THE STATE OF FLORIDA HAS OVER 900 CLINICS STATE WIDE
THERE ARE MORE PAIN CLINICS IN BROWARD COUNTY THAN MCDONALDS.
ACCORDING TO FEDERAL DATA COMPILED BY BROWARD SHERIFFS OFFICE, BROWARD COUNTY, FL HAS BECOME THE PAIN KILLER CAPITAL OF THE UNITED STATES, FEEDING A BRAZEN BLACK MARKET SPRAWLING THROUGH THE SOUTH AND NEW ENGLAND WITH LITTLE OR NO REGULATIONS HOLDING ACCOUNTABLE PAIN MANAGMENT CLINICS IN FLORIDA, DRUG ADDICTS AND DRUG DEALERS CROSS THE STATE LINE WITH IMPUNITY.
There are over 40,000 deaths from drug overdoses in the United States each year, and computer databases like the one proposed can prevent some of these deaths.
It is so easy for someone to go from doctor to doctor, a lot of times with the same prescription, and gain any amount of drugs they please with great ease. People come from other states to Florida just to bring back hefty supplies to sell on the street.
We've seen a shift in the types of drugs people talk about. More and more young people are becoming addicted today to pills like Oxycontin, Xanax and others. One mistake, and it's over.

Dating in Early Recovery

2011-02-05T13:45:00.000-08:00

"Active alcoholics don't have relationships, they take hostages" - Unknown

If we could go back in history and examine hieroglyphics from an ancient recovery meeting (if there were such a thing,) I suspect there would be some version of “thou shalt wait to date” on at least one of them. This has long been very sound advice for people who are in early sobriety, and for good reason. But telling a person in early recovery to avoid dating for the first year is like telling a person not to date in the workplace – sure, it’s not a good idea, but when people are around each other on a regular basis, there's bound to be some hook-ups.

The problem is that these unions rarely work out and more often than not they leave one injured party. For 'normal' people, this might be something that they can chalk up to experience and move on, but for the alcoholic or addict it can be deadly. You might think these words are a little extreme, but the fact is, we are not wired like normal people and when a broken relationship leaves us hurt and feeling used our tendency is to reach for our drug of choice, and for some of us to use again is to die.

But, a person telling us that it’s a bad idea doesn’t seem to faze us - we think that just because we aren’t using anymore, we’re ready to enter into all kinds of unions, from raunchy rendezvous to domestic bliss. We want to feel loved again, spiritually and physically, to have that wild fling or comforting caress. I know how strong the pull can be, but I also know how badly things can turn out and unfortunately, most of us learn the hard way. After looking and feeling like the walking dead for so long, we tend to jump in with both feet if someone is even remotely attracted to us. And then, suddenly we have a new purpose in life! This works wonders while things are going well with the relationship, but what happens when the new center of our universe does the unthinkable and breaks up with us? The odds are good that we’ll lose our focus, that the bottom will fall out of our perfect new world. Suddenly we’re watching Fatal Attraction and craving rabbit stew. We go back to our old ways, analyzing every conversation we had with our new ex, thinking “If only I’d done this or done that.” Our insecurities come back with a vengeance, and the idea of taking a drink or a drug isn’t usually far behind.
It’s hard to stay out of the dating game, but try to remember that we’re putting ourselves in a dangerous position by getting into a new relationship that can leave us hurt. We don’t know how to handle arguments and break-ups without alcohol or drugs, and we’re going to be tempted to turn to using when things get rough. Against the advice of many, I got into a relationship during early recovery with someone who was also new to sobriety, and when things went south, I went straight to the liquor store. I was one of these people that always drank concerning relationships, whether I broke it off or they did, but this knowledge didn’t stop me from doing it. Mostly, it was because I loved the attention, no matter what the consequences.
Very often, men and women in early recovery don’t just decide to date; they decide to date each other. It's a bad idea to date anyone, but two newcomers dating are like two horny teenagers getting together, and the chances are very good that lust will get confused with love. We seem to be drawn to each other because we ‘get’ what the other is going through, but what we don’t know is that our judgment is clouded - we are not emotionally sober. ‘Emotional Sobriety’ in very basic terms, refers to a person’s ability to recognize if they have an unhealthy dependency on another person or thing and therefore unhealthy expectations. Having an expectation can lead to resentment - which can be deadly for any alcoholic or addict - especially a newcomer.
Unfortunately, two newcomers getting together is only one dating scenario, there’s also the case when a newcomer is attracted to a person who already has some time in recovery. During one of my failed attempts at sobriety, I met someone who had almost three years since his last drink. I only had three months myself, and anyone who could go a few years between cocktails was a winner in my book. It never entered my head that he could have other issues.

We started a relationship, and although I had a weird feeling about him, I pushed it aside because I was getting attention. It felt great just to be wanted. However, his affection quickly turned to an unhealthy need for control, which erupted into heated arguments and subsequently led to both of us drinking. The first time he relapsed, he became violent in a way that I’d never imagined he was capable. I was beaten black and blue, nursing a deep cut in my throat from being held down at knifepoint. It was a few days later, after being beaten unconscious numerous times, that I was finally able to escape to a safe house.
The problem was, I had no idea about emotional sobriety at the time and had already deemed myself ready to date. He could have been an axe murderer for all I knew, and it turned out that he very nearly was. But all I saw was a man with three years in recovery, and that amounted to an FBI background check in my mind. The weird feeling I had about him was an intuitive thought that was screaming “this isn’t right!” But, I chose to ignore it so I could get my needs met.
I did, however, learn valuable lessons from those bad dating choices and one of them was that I should have listened to the suggestions I was given by the people who had been there and done it before. Dating in early recovery is a bad idea, whether it’s another newcomer, another person with time in recovery or a ‘normal’ person. People can give the illusion that they work a perfect program or live the perfect life, but their actions will speak volumes about who they really are.

For example, it’s a huge red flag when someone who has time in recovery (more than a year) is dating newcomers, it's considered 'Thirteenth Stepping'. It's an unwritten rule in the rooms of recovery that we should not date a newcomer. And if someone is doing this, then chances are they aren't working a solid program or they'd be following this rule. It's also not a good sign if the person we are dating is controlling and manipulative - whether they are in recovery or not. The point is, there are people who have moral and behavioral issues that have nothing to do with alcohol or drugs and when we are not yet well ourselves, we’re hardly ready to judge who is safe and healthy from who isn’t.

Obviously, there are exceptions when people do the right thing, and in those cases it can work out. A sponsor told me a story about a man with quite a few years in recovery who was attracted to a female newcomer. After looking around for some advice from people with long-term sobriety, he asked the newcomer if she’d consider dating him when she had gone through the Twelve Steps and reached one year of sobriety. She agreed, and after her one year sobriety birthday, they began a relationship. They celebrated their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary a few years ago.

Try to remember, that in the first year of recovery especially - we are sick people getting well and we need to concerntrate on our recovery - not on another person. I may have kissed my fair share of toads, but I was certainly no princess either and two sick people getting together does not make one healthy relationship. Keep this in mind as you consider dating and ask yourself what is more important – romance or recovery? And don’t worry, there will be plenty of time for another romance down the line, but not all of us have another recovery.

Addiction relapse: Part of chronic illness

2011-02-04T07:44:00.001-08:00

By Elizabeth Landau, CNN
February 3, 2011 12:43 p.m. EST

Actor Charlie Sheen must realize that his problem is of the mind, body and spirit, experts say.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS
The brain needs at least a year to recover from heavy alcohol or cocaine use
Relapsed addicts need to first realize that what they were doing before isn't working
Group environment for rehab has been shown to be effective

(CNN) -- Actor Charlie Sheen has begun at least his fourth stint in rehab after he was taken from his home to a hospital by ambulance last week.
He was "very, very intoxicated, also apparently in a lot of pain" on Thursday, according to a 911 call from a doctor who had just talked to the actor.
Given that addiction is a chronic disorder, it's not unexpected that someone like Sheen would relapse multiple times, said Kathryn Cunningham, director of Center for Addiction Research at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, Texas.
And while rehab programs might last a few months, brain imaging studies have shown that among cocaine and alcohol addicts, the function of neurons in the brain doesn't return to normal for a year or even longer, Cunningham said.
"It's really difficult to be a family member or a loved one and have to deal with someone who seems like they're never going to get better," Cunningham said. "But they can, and it does."
It takes a number of strategies to get a person to stay clean for a long period of time, she said.
Experts say relapsed addicts need to first realize that what they were doing before isn't working.

It's really difficult to be a family member or a loved one and have to deal with someone who seems like they're never going to get better. But they can, and it does.
--Kathryn Cunningham, addiction expert

"What he should be doing is taking very seriously his problem, not trying to compartmentalize it or minimize it or trivialize it, but really to recognize that his is probably a problem of the mind, the body and the spirit," said William Moyers, vice president of foundation relations at the Hazelden Foundation, who worked for CNN as a journalist in the early 1990s.
At Hazelden, the primary treatment program for an alcoholic or drug addict lasts about 30 days. But if this is the second time or more, a longer treatment program of about two to five months is recommended, including intensive after-care treatment.
That longer regimen includes a lot of one-on-one counseling, group therapy and perhaps psychiatric and psychological options if there is a co-occurring mental disorder, Moyers said. Medication is used in some cases.
Group therapy is crucial to put a patient in an environment of people who are both empathetic and examples of recovery, Moyers said. Hearing the experiences of other people often gives hope and helps the healing process.
"At the end of the day, (Sheen's) ability to recover depends on his willingness to be part of a larger experience, and that larger experience will include group therapy and recovery meetings," Moyers said.
The group environment "provides an opportunity for caring confrontation from peers and the knowledge that others can understand what they are going through rather than experiencing the shame of isolation," said Lynn McKnight, manager of clinical services at Crossroads Centre, a rehab facility in Antigua started by musician Eric Clapton, who himself struggled with drugs.
"Research shows that ongoing recovery is most successful with long-term connections to community, self-help groups and appropriate medical management," she said.
She has seen people who've repeatedly gone through the revolving door of detox and rehab, with seemingly no hope. But some turn over a new leaf after multiple tries.

Charlie Sheen in private rehab

Behind the scenes of Sheen 911 call

RELATED TOPICS
Drug Addiction
Charlie Sheen
Celebrity News
Addiction and Recovery

"What makes the difference?" McKnight asked. "I think it is about surrender and release. Surrendering to the concept of powerlessness over their chronic disease and realizing that they cannot do it alone."
Some patients realize that they've been living in denial or minimizing their problems.
"Whether that means relying on a higher power, 12-step program or the group process, or help from a professional -- not trying to do it by will power alone is key," she said. "This is actually empowering in a paradoxical sort of way."
She said people who get to "the point of being willing to do whatever it takes to get and stay clean" usually get involved in self-help meetings.
Recovery is a lifelong experience and must be done in conjunction with others, Moyers said.
Sheen was court-ordered to enter rehab in 1998 and again in 2010. He also voluntarily checked into a rehab facility in February 2010"as a preventive measure," his publicist said at that time.
For Sheen's treatment, he is reportedly doing his rehab privately, according to People magazine. His publicist Stan Rosenfield did not confirm or deny this in a statement:
"In compliance with the national health privacy laws (HIPAA), no further information relating to Charlie Sheen's health or his rehab experience will be released without his written permission. I can say that all of us who know Charlie care about him very much. We will support him in any we can in this journey, beginning by respecting his privacy."
It's sad that when someone relapses, "they're automatically considered damned and failed," but when someone who is obese and diabetic eats a gallon of ice cream, the expectation is that he or she can try again, Cunningham said. The addict and the chronic overeater should be viewed the same, and they both have potential to change their harmful habits, she said.
Having supportive people around you is essential to recovery, Cunningham said.
"The bottom line is that Charlie Sheen can recover, whether he gets help at home or in a hospital, but he'll only recover if he realizes that he doesn't have to do it by himself," Moyers said

Why should I do all the recovery demands?

2011-01-26T12:13:00.000-08:00

What’s my motivation? The answer is this: Remember how much your addiction hurt. If you don’t do the work, your addiction will bleed through a thousand wounds all over again. What we know is that active addiction hurts every time. The consequences get worse and our lives fall apart. We make excuses but that is our old enemy denial just getting in the way one more time. Your addiction is out in the parking lot doing push ups. It is cunning, baffling, powerful and very patient. I relapse because I fail to remember the pain that addiction costs me. The cost goes up each time I relapse. What happens is that I forget. I forget the price I would have to pay.

Think of your last relapse:

What happened?

What is the lesson?

Forgetting about the cost of relapse is not like forgetting a phone number. It is like playing Russian roulette. We got complacent and careless. We began to listen to our addiction talking to us. We forget what addiction costs us when we allow the addcition to take over one more time. The nature of addiction is suffering, pain, loss, waste and tragedy.

No one relapses without first forgetting the cost!

Take the sick and tired moment as being the moment of change and learn to never forget.

Heroin snaring more of suburbia’s youth - Kansas City Star

2010-11-12T08:16:00.000-08:00

By MARÁ ROSE WILLIAMS
The Kansas City Star
More News
Heroin snaring more of suburbia’s youth

The smell of smoke at 4 a.m. abruptly woke Kristin and sent her rushing down to the kitchen.

She found mini tacos burning to a crisp in the oven — and her 20-year-old daughter sitting on the floor, head hung forward, arms limp.

“The first thing out of my mouth was, ‘What is wrong with you, is your blood sugar low?’” Kristin recalled frantically asking the former Olathe high school cheerleader and gymnast.

It wasn’t the sugar in her blood that was wrong. It was the heroin. The girl was nodding in its warm embrace.

The story is one of several catching the attention of authorities and area drug abuse counselors this year.

The problem has shown up in New York, Illinois, Alabama, New Mexico, Wisconsin, Utah and Washington state. Heroin use is on the rise among suburban youth, experts say, and although the numbers are still small, spikes in overdoses and even deaths show an alarming trend.

In Blue Springs, police dealt with five cases of heroin and youth in October after half a decade of seeing none.

In many cases, the way was paved by other opiates, the Oxycontin or Vicodin painkillers, often swiped from a medicine cabinet. But parents have become more alert to possible misuse.

While painkillers can run to $40 to $60 a pill, a bag of heroin, which produces a more intense high, is $5 to $10.

No trips on Interstate 35 to either Kansas City were necessary. The daughter said her dealer lived two blocks from Kristin’s upper-middle-class home in the 66062 zip code.

When told the truth, it was Kristin’s turn on the floor.

“I shrank on to the kitchen floor in to the fetal position,” Kristin said. “I had no strings. I lost it. I was afraid my daughter was going to die.

“I couldn’t believe it. If you could see my daughter you would never believe it, either. A blond-haired, blue-eyed California girl. Shooting up every other day? Not my girl.”

•••

The street heroin of the 1960s and ’70s was about 30 percent pure. Today, it’s often 60 percent, making it possible to smoke or snort.

Two years ago, the parents of Blue Valley Northwest High School graduate Brett Hayes found their 20-year-old son against the sink in his bathroom, the needle still in his arm, dead of an overdose.

Johnson County sheriff’s deputies listed him as one of 24 heroin overdoses and one of five deaths that year. The first five months of 2009 is the latest data they have compiled. In those months, 22 overdoses and six deaths were recorded.

The problem is steadily growing, said David Brown, a drug and alcohol abuse counselor in Olathe. “This year alone we did intervention on three young heroin addicts.”

His wife, Lucy Brown, also a drug-abuse counselor at Avenues to Recovery, added that the addicts were “children from intact homes where the parents make a comfortable living. These kids drive nice cars and have access to cash.”

Police indicated the problem had not surfaced in every suburb yet. Many said they were mostly battling other drugs, and saw keggers replaced by “pharm parties,” where teenagers pour a bottle of pilfered pills into a bowl.

•••

Maureen’s left arm is riddled with three years of scar tracks, “a daily reminder” of the injections, eventually 20 times a day.

As an Olathe high-schooler, she bought meds, such as Oxycontin, from classmates. Thus introduced to the feel of opiates, teens feel more comfortable with the idea of heroin.

Maureen said she kept a 3.7 grade-point average and was into photography.

It was as a freshman at the University of Kansas that she graduated to heroin, dropping out before her sophomore year.

“I started out snorting it and then injected it. It turned into a daily necessity,” she said. “I needed to use every day or I couldn’t get out of bed. It was a big obsession in my life.”

By 20, she was living out of her car and trying to satisfy a $200-a-day habit.

“There were a lot of us on the street,” she said of her fellow users. “We’d park our cars in Wal-Mart lots to sleep.”

Once hooked on black tar heroin, said Lucy Brown, “they are no longer involved with their school environment anymore. When they start using heroin they are exposed to a different population, and they want to be close to their source.”

Black tar heroin, predominantly from Mexico, is crudely made, with color that varies from dark brown to black.

Maureen: “I knew what I was doing was not healthy but all the people I was socializing with were using it.”

She worked periodically but could not hold a job.

“I either didn’t show up or I stole from them,” she said.

At first she was able to keep the secret from her “normal loving family” who lived in an upper-middle-class Olathe neighborhood.

When she told them about her heroin use, she got clean through rehabilitation and a prescribed substitute. But she fell back into her habit and her family had enough.

“I was using in their house. They asked me to get help or get out. All I wanted to do was get high so I left,” she said.

By the time she decided again that she had to get help, “I had stopped eating or sleeping. I ended up in the hospital and I was really sick,” Maureen said. “I was 100 pounds and my liver and my kidneys were damaged. I was either going to get better or I was going to die, and I didn’t want to die.”

Today Maureen is eight months clean and living amid recovery counselors and supporters in California. She will return to Johnson County, but “not until I get a better foundation for myself.”

She said she has heard that friends have younger brothers and sisters addicted to heroin.

“They tell me it is really bad.” said Maureen. “Sad.”

•••

The rise of heroin among suburban youth is more disturbing considering its decline among adults. Because fewer adults are involved now, the dealers tend to be other teens. Teens also are more likely to overdose, experts said.

Area high school officials said they had caught students smoking marijuana and possessing prescription drugs, but not with heroin yet.

“We have not seen a big outbreak of heroin use among students,” said Sgt. Brian Wessling, supervisor of Olathe school resource officers. Still, he said, officers “are looking for it,” and last year underwent training to spot signs of use. The canine unit that roams Olathe high school parking lots on drug searches is a big deterrent, he said.

“It’s only a matter of time before national trends hit the Midwest,” Wessling said. “We want to stay in front of that.”

Johnson County leaders launched a school initiative to alert children and parents to the danger.

•••

Kristin, who works in the medical field, was in denial even as she helped her 90-pound daughter up from the floor on taco night.

“Kids are master liars,” she said.

Yes, the kid, at 16, had been caught by police for marijuana possession. A phase, she and her husband told themselves. Later they would learn she had lifted painkillers prescribed to Kristin’s husband.

But she never fathomed her child’s slow, “air-head-like” speech was caused by heroin.

“Heroin, that’s a junkie drug,” Kristin thought. It’s an opiate that most associate with shabby apartments and dark alleys in the city core.

When Kristin mustered the courage to ask her daughter whether she was using heroin, “She told me she couldn’t go two days without it.”

The daughter has been more than half a year at a rehab center in California. Kristin said she wanted her to stay until she was clean at least a year.

“It is very devastating to the family,” she said. “I was afraid my daughter was going to die.”

It took all the strength Kristin could muster to give her daughter the ultimatum to get out of the house or let her parents help. She said she was glad she did not wait for her daughter to reach some “unidentifiable rock bottom.”

She and her husband blamed one another for not seeing the signs. Now they regularly attend group meetings for families of addicts.

“I’m in my own recovery,” Kristin said. “We had a false sense of security, thinking that just because you live in the suburbs and you send your kids to good schools. … Who would ever dream that their kid would start snorting heroin, much less, shoot up?”

Signs that a child might have a drug problem
•Drug paraphernalia — dirty spoons, syringes, pieces of burned foil, straws.
•Droopy appearance, as if extremities are heavy.

•Disorientation, poor mental functioning.

•Constricted pupils/pale, pasty skin.

• Apathy and/or lethargy. Nodding off.

•Eyes appear “lost” or have faraway look.

•Slurred speech.

•Nausea.

•Runny nose.

•Unkempt appearance/hygiene issues.

•Wearing long sleeves in warm weather.

•Missing cash or valuables, borrowing money.

•Change in performance — academic or otherwise.

•Unexplained absences at work, school or family events.

•Lying/deception

•Change in friends

•Withdrawal from usual activities or interests.

•Broken commitments

•Hostility

To contact Mará Rose Williams, call 816-234-4419 or send e-mail to mdwilliams@kcstar.com.

Posted on Fri, Nov. 12, 2010 12:06 AM

Why engage an Interventionist?

2010-10-13T07:18:00.000-07:00

A professional alcohol interventionist is a skilled and trained professional, acting as an arbitrator between an alcoholic and their family. Prior to staging an intervention, a group of people will be chosen to confront the alcoholic and this can consist of a person’s spouse, grown children, parents, sisters and brothers. Everyone that has loved someone with an alcohol problem will have a place in the group and the interventionist will provide advice, wisdom, support and guidance throughout the process.

Before going through an intervention the group will meet and possibly hold a “mock” intervention (pre intervention), which is done to prepare before the real one takes place. During the initial mock intervention, the group will be advised on what to say and what to do, and an interventionist may have the people each write a letter to the alcoholic. The letters are written to drive home the pain the alcoholism has caused to them individually and to stress how important it is for the person to get treatment. Once the interventionist feels comfortable and prepared, a date will be selected for the actual intervention to take place.

Once a date has been selected, an alcoholic is either told beforehand or in some cases, the person is just brought to a certain predetermined location and confronted. It is never the goal of an intervention to make a person feel self-conscious or trapped, instead the process is facilitated in a loving, but controlled environment and the situation is guided by the interventionist. After each person has taken a turn and told the alcoholic how they feel, the interventionist will speak with the individual and reinforce the goal of seeking treatment. If the person refuses to enter into treatment, he or she will be made aware of the consequences of their actions and it may even involve loved ones turning their back on the individual until they get help. The letters that are written will not only include the offer of the gift of treatment but will also include the individuals bottom line for the cade that the loved one refuses to accept the gift.

The ultimate goal of an intervention is to plan out the situation from start to finish and to make sure the focus of the group remains on getting the person into treatment. An intervention is done in a constructive, caring, calm, neutral environment in which the alcoholic is shown love, support and understanding. Instead of being confronted in the same ways as before, an intervention is done with love, care and compassion. Everybody stumbles in life and everyone has problems, but when dealing with alcoholism, until treatment is received, nothing will ever change.

An alcohol interventionist is available to help a person that is ready to break away from alcoholism and make changes in life. After researching a person’s addiction history and consulting with medical professionals and rehab specialists, an interventionist will assist an alcoholic in finding type of rehabilitation programs. For some alcoholics, the first step after an intervention is going through a detoxification program in order to get the toxins of alcohol removed from the body. Once detox has been successfully completed, a person is then ready to go on to the rehabilitation program for further completion of the treatment and healing process.

Alcoholism is a destructive and dehumanizing disease which takes no prisoners and destroys everything in its path. When alcoholism has completely taken over the life of someone you love and all past efforts to help the person get into treatment have failed, it is time to consider other alternatives and options. Contacting a professional alcohol interventionist is the best way to help a person realize the misery of alcoholism and is the wakeup call many alcoholics need to finally spur them into getting treatment. When you wish to help your loved one conquer alcoholism, receiving the assistance of an interventionist can be the catalyst needed to help open their eyes to all the joy and happiness that comes from living a clean and sober life.

'Mum sat on park bench drinking'

2010-07-05T07:37:00.000-07:00

Page last updated at 12:01 GMT, Monday, 5 July 2010 13:01 UK
E-mail this to a friend Printable version Ben kept his mother's drinking a secret from his friends It is the stuff of Victorian melodrama - children terrified of their drunken parents, their lives destroyed.

And according to a survey for the BBC's Newsround programme it is still happening.

The study of more than 1,200 children aged 10 to 14 found that many of them are seriously worried about their parents' drinking.

One 10-year-old, Ben, and his mother told the BBC how her alcohol abuse had a dramatic impact on their lives.

Ben said: "When my mum first started drinking she wasn't that bad because she drank a couple on a night. But when she started getting worse it used to be during the day."

Taxi journeys

His mother explained that she was drinking up to four bottles of whisky a day following the death of her father.

"I was doing it because I thought it was helping me cope, but obviously it was making everything worse," she said.

"I was under the influence that bad that I never realised how much drink I'd got. My every thought was taxi cabs to fetch more."

Continue reading the main story I'd look at her and I'd look away like I don't know her because it used to embarrass me
Ben
Her son added: "We did a lot of taxi journeys to go to the newsagents, drink shops basically. It would be every day. I would just stand outside waiting."

The mother was aware of the damaging effect such behaviour was having on her son - but could not stop because of the drink.

She said: "I could see that it was hurting him that I was fetching alcohol. But because of being under the influence of alcohol I didn't really care, unfortunately. You don't care. You don't care about anything at all as long as you've got that drink."

And that made life a nightmare for Ben.

"Sometimes when I used to walk to school my mum would be sitting on the park bench drinking. I'd look at her and I'd look away like I don't know her because it used to embarrass me," he said.

"The house was all fell apart, really. It was dirty, messy. My mum was on the sofa and there'd be cans all over the place. That's basically all you'd see - cans, clothes, bottles. That's it. All over the place."

'Angry and upset'

He added: "I kept it a big secret. I didn't tell my friends about my mum's drinking because I felt that they might take the mick out of me and call me names.

"I love my mum and I wanted her to get back the way she was before. It was really making me angry and upset."

Nearly half of the children surveyed said they were not bothered by adults drinking - but 30% said it made them feel scared.

The survey was carried out for Newsround by Childwise, a charity that provides support for the children of problem drinkers.

The charity's founder, Emma Spiegler, said: "I would say that in moderation and drinking responsibly, adults can drink and have a good time and for kids to see that there's no problem.

"But when kids are feeling frightened and scared and it becomes a problem for the adult then it is a concern."
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After 75 years AA works ---not sure how or why!

2010-07-01T08:48:00.001-07:00

The church will be closed tomorrow, and the drunks are freaking out. An elderly lady in a prim white blouse has just delivered the bad news, with deep apologies: A major blizzard is scheduled to wallop Manhattan tonight, and up to a foot of snow will cover the ground by dawn. The church, located on the Upper West Side, can’t ask its staff to risk a dangerous commute. Unfortunately, that means it must cancel the Alcoholics Anonymous meeting held daily in the basement.

A worried murmur ripples through the room. “Wha… what are we supposed to do?” asks a woman in her mid-twenties with smudged black eyeliner. She’s in rough shape, having emerged from a multiday alcohol-and-cocaine bender that morning. “The snow, it’s going to close everything,” she says, her cigarette-addled voice tinged with panic. “Everything!” She’s on the verge of tears.

A mustachioed man in skintight jeans stands and reads off the number for a hotline that provides up-to-the-minute meeting schedules. He assures his fellow alcoholics that some groups will still convene tomorrow despite the weather. Anyone who needs an AA fix will be able to get one, though it may require an icy trek across the city.

That won’t be a problem for a thickset man in a baggy beige sweat suit. “Doesn’t matter how much snow we get—a foot, 10 feet piled up in front of the door,” he says. “I will leave my apartment tomorrow and go find a meeting.”

He clasps his hands together and draws them to his heart: “You understand me? I need this.” Daily meetings, the man says, are all that prevent him from winding up dead in the gutter, shoes gone because he sold them for booze or crack. And he hasn’t had a drink in more than a decade.

The resolve is striking, though not entirely surprising. AA has been inspiring this sort of ardent devotion for 75 years. It was in June 1935, amid the gloom of the Great Depression, that a failed stockbroker and reformed lush named Bill Wilson founded the organization after meeting God in a hospital room. He codified his method in the 12 steps, the rules at the heart of AA. Entirely lacking in medical training, Wilson created the steps by cribbing ideas from religion and philosophy, then massaging them into a pithy list with a structure inspired by the Bible.

The 200-word instruction set has since become the cornerstone of addiction treatment in this country, where an estimated 23 million people grapple with severe alcohol or drug abuse—more than twice the number of Americans afflicted with cancer. Some 1.2 million people belong to one of AA’s 55,000 meeting groups in the US, while countless others embark on the steps at one of the nation’s 11,000 professional treatment centers. Anyone who seeks help in curbing a drug or alcohol problem is bound to encounter Wilson’s system on the road to recovery.

It’s all quite an achievement for a onetime broken-down drunk. And Wilson’s success is even more impressive when you consider that AA and its steps have become ubiquitous despite the fact that no one is quite sure how—or, for that matter, how well—they work. The organization is notoriously difficult to study, thanks to its insistence on anonymity and its fluid membership. And AA’s method, which requires “surrender” to a vaguely defined “higher power,” involves the kind of spiritual revelations that neuroscientists have only begun to explore.

What we do know, however, is that despite all we’ve learned over the past few decades about psychology, neurology, and human behavior, contemporary medicine has yet to devise anything that works markedly better. “In my 20 years of treating addicts, I’ve never seen anything else that comes close to the 12 steps,” says Drew Pinsky, the addiction-medicine specialist who hosts VH1’s Celebrity Rehab. “In my world, if someone says they don’t want to do the 12 steps, I know they aren’t going to get better.”

Wilson may have operated on intuition, but somehow he managed to tap into mechanisms that counter the complex psychological and neurological processes through which addiction wreaks havoc. And while AA’s ability to accomplish this remarkable feat is not yet understood, modern research into behavior dynamics and neuroscience is beginning to provide some tantalizing clues.

One thing is certain, though: AA doesn’t work for everybody. In fact, it doesn’t work for the vast majority of people who try it. And understanding more about who it does help, and why, is likely our best shot at finally developing a system that improves on Wilson’s amateur scheme for living without the bottle.

AA doesn't work for everybody, but when it does, it can be transformative. Members receive tokens to mark periods of sobriety, from 24 hours to one month to 55 years.
Photo: Todd Tankersley

AA originated on the worst night of Bill Wilson’s life. It was December 14, 1934, and Wilson was drying out at Towns Hospital, a ritzy Manhattan detox center. He’d been there three times before, but he’d always returned to drinking soon after he was released. The 39-year-old had spent his entire adult life chasing the ecstasy he had felt upon tasting his first cocktail some 17 years earlier. That quest destroyed his career, landed him deeply in debt, and convinced doctors that he was destined for institutionalization.

Wilson had been quite a mess when he checked in the day before, so the attending physician, William Silkworth, subjected him to a detox regimen known as the Belladonna Cure—hourly infusions of a hallucinogenic drug made from a poisonous plant. The drug was coursing through Wilson’s system when he received a visit from an old drinking buddy, Ebby Thacher, who had recently found religion and given up alcohol. Thacher pleaded with Wilson to do likewise. “Realize you are licked, admit it, and get willing to turn your life over to God,” Thacher counseled his desperate friend. Wilson, a confirmed agnostic, gagged at the thought of asking a supernatural being for help.

But later, as he writhed in his hospital bed, still heavily under the influence of belladonna, Wilson decided to give God a try. “If there is a God, let Him show Himself!” he cried out. “I am ready to do anything. Anything!”

What happened next is an essential piece of AA lore: A white light filled Wilson’s hospital room, and God revealed himself to the shattered stockbroker. “It seemed to me, in the mind’s eye, that I was on a mountain and that a wind not of air but of spirit was blowing,” he later said. “And then it burst upon me that I was a free man.” Wilson would never drink again.

At that time, the conventional wisdom was that alcoholics simply lacked moral fortitude. The best science could offer was detoxification with an array of purgatives, followed by earnest pleas for the drinker to think of his loved ones. When this approach failed, alcoholics were often consigned to bleak state hospitals. But having come back from the edge himself, Wilson refused to believe his fellow inebriates were hopeless. He resolved to save them by teaching them to surrender to God, exactly as Thacher had taught him.

Following Thacher’s lead, Wilson joined the Oxford Group, a Christian movement that was in vogue among wealthy mainstream Protestants. Headed by a an ex-YMCA missionary named Frank Buchman, who stirred controversy with his lavish lifestyle and attempts to convert Adolf Hitler, the Oxford Group combined religion with pop psychology, stressing that all people can achieve happiness through moral improvement. To help reach this goal, the organization’s members were encouraged to meet in private homes so they could study devotional literature together and share their inmost thoughts.

In May 1935, while on an extended business trip to Akron, Ohio, Wilson began attending Oxford Group meetings at the home of a local industrialist. It was through the group that he met a surgeon and closet alcoholic named Robert Smith. For weeks, Wilson urged the oft-soused doctor to admit that only God could eliminate his compulsion to drink. Finally, on June 10, 1935, Smith (known to millions today as Dr. Bob) gave in. The date of Dr. Bob’s surrender became the official founding date of Alcoholics Anonymous.

In its earliest days, AA existed within the confines of the Oxford Group, offering special meetings for members who wished to end their dependence on alcohol. But Wilson and his followers quickly broke away, in large part because Wilson dreamed of creating a truly mass movement, not one confined to the elites Buchman targeted. To spread his message of salvation, Wilson started writing what would become AA’s sacred text: Alcoholics Anonymous, now better known as the Big Book.

The core of AA is found in chapter five, entitled “How It Works.” It is here that Wilson lists the 12 steps, which he first scrawled out in pencil in 1939. Wilson settled on the number 12 because there were 12 apostles.

In writing the steps, Wilson drew on the Oxford Group’s precepts and borrowed heavily from William James’ classic The Varieties of Religious Experience, which Wilson read shortly after his belladonna-fueled revelation at Towns Hospital. He was deeply affected by an observation that James made regarding alcoholism: that the only cure for the affliction is “religiomania.” The steps were thus designed to induce an intense commitment, because Wilson wanted his system to be every bit as habit-forming as booze.

The first steps famously ask members to admit their powerlessness over alcohol and to appeal to a higher power for help. Members are then required to enumerate their faults, share them with their meeting group, apologize to those they’ve wronged, and engage in regular prayer or meditation. Finally, the last step makes AA a lifelong duty: “Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs.” This requirement guarantees not only that current members will find new recruits but that they can never truly “graduate” from the program.

Aside from the steps, AA has one other cardinal rule: anonymity. Wilson was adamant that the anonymous component of AA be taken seriously, not because of the social stigma associated with alcoholism, but rather to protect the nascent organization from ridicule. He explained the logic in a letter to a friend:

[In the past], alcoholics who talked too much on public platforms were likely to become inflated and get drunk again. Our principle of anonymity, so far as the general public is concerned, partly corrects this difficulty by preventing any individual receiving a lot of newspaper or magazine publicity, then collapsing and discrediting AA.

AA boomed in the early 1940s, aided by a glowing Saturday Evening Post profile and the public admission by a Cleveland Indians catcher, Rollie Hemsley, that joining the organization had done wonders for his game. Wilson and the founding members were not quite prepared for the sudden success. “You had really crazy things going on,” says William L. White, author of Slaying the Dragon: The History of Addiction Treatment and Recovery in America. “Some AA groups were preparing to run AA hospitals, and there was this whole question of whether they should have paid AA missionaries. You even had some reports of AA groups drinking beers at their meetings.”

The growing pains spurred Wilson to write AA’s governing principles, known as the 12 traditions. At a time when fraternal orders and churches with strict hierarchies dominated American social life, Wilson opted for something revolutionary: deliberate organizational chaos. He permitted each group to set its own rules, as long as they didn’t conflict with the traditions or the steps. Charging a fee was forbidden, as was the use of the AA brand to endorse anything that might generate revenue. “If you look at this on paper, it seems like it could never work,” White says. “It’s basically anarchy.” But this loose structure actually helped AA flourish. Not only could anyone start an AA group at any time, but they could tailor each meeting to suit regional or local tastes. And by condemning itself to poverty, AA maintained a posture of moral legitimacy.

Despite the decision to forbid members from receiving pay for AA-related activity, it had no problem letting professional institutions integrate the 12 steps into their treatment programs. AA did not object when Hazelden, a Minnesota facility founded in 1947 as “a sanatorium for curable alcoholics of the professional class,” made the steps the foundation of its treatment model. Nor did AA try to stop the proliferation of steps-centered addiction groups from adopting the Anonymous name: Narcotics Anonymous, Gamblers Anonymous, Overeaters Anonymous. No money ever changed hands—the steps essentially served as open source code that anyone was free to build upon, adding whatever features they wished. (Food Addicts Anonymous, for example, requires its members to weigh their meals.)

By the early 1950s, as AA membership reached 100,000, Wilson began to step back from his invention. Deeply depressed and an incorrigible chain smoker, he would go on to experiment with LSD before dying from emphysema in 1971. By that point, AA had become ingrained in American culture; even people who’d never touched a drop of liquor could name at least a few of the steps.

“For nearly 30 years, I have been saying Alcoholics Anonymous is the most effective self-help group in the world,” advice columnist Ann Landers wrote in 1986. “The good accomplished by this fellowship is inestimable … God bless AA.”

There’s no doubt that when AA works, it can be transformative. But what aspect of the program deserves most of the credit? Is it the act of surrendering to a higher power? The making of amends to people a drinker has wronged? The simple admission that you have a problem? Stunningly, even the most highly regarded AA experts have no idea. “These are questions we’ve been trying to answer for, golly, 30 or 40 years now,” says Lee Ann Kaskutas, senior scientist at the Alcohol Research Group in Emeryville, California. “We can’t find anything that completely holds water.”

The problem is so vexing, in fact, that addiction professionals have largely accepted that AA itself will always be an enigma. But research in other fields—primarily behavior change and neurology—offers some insight into what exactly is happening in those church basements.

To begin with, there is evidence that a big part of AA’s effectiveness may have nothing to do with the actual steps. It may derive from something more fundamental: the power of the group. Psychologists have long known that one of the best ways to change human behavior is to gather people with similar problems into groups, rather than treat them individually. The first to note this phenomenon was Joseph Pratt, a Boston physician who started organizing weekly meetings of tubercular patients in 1905. These groups were intended to teach members better health habits, but Pratt quickly realized they were also effective at lifting emotional spirits, by giving patients the chance to share their tales of hardship. (“In a common disease, they have a bond,” he would later observe.) More than 70 years later, after a review of nearly 200 articles on group therapy, a pair of Stanford University researchers pinpointed why the approach works so well: “Members find the group to be a compelling emotional experience; they develop close bonds with the other members and are deeply influenced by their acceptance and feedback.”

Researchers continue to be surprised by just how powerful this effect is. For example, a study published last year in the journal Behavior Therapy concluded that group therapy is highly effective in treating post-traumatic stress disorder: 88.3 percent of the study’s subjects who underwent group therapy no longer exhibited PTSD symptoms after completing their sessions, versus just 31.3 percent of those who received minimal one-on-one interaction.

The importance of this is reflected by the fact that the more deeply AA members commit to the group, rather than just the program, the better they fare. According to J. Scott Tonigan, a research professor at the University of New Mexico’s Center on Alcoholism, Substance Abuse, and Addictions, numerous studies show that AA members who become involved in activities like sponsorship—becoming a mentor to someone just starting out—are more likely to stay sober than those who simply attend meetings.

Addiction-medicine specialists often raise the concern that AA meetings aren’t led by professionals. But there is evidence that this may actually help foster a sense of intimacy between members, since the fundamental AA relationship is between fellow alcoholics rather than between alcoholics and the therapist. These close social bonds allow members to slowly learn how to connect to others without the lubricating effects of alcohol. In a study published last year in Alcoholism Treatment Quarterly, Tonigan found that “participation in AA is associated with an increased sense of security, comfort, and mutuality in close relationships.”

And close relationships, it turns out, have an even more profound effect on us than previously thought. A 2007 study of a Boston-area community, for example, found that a person’s odds of becoming obese increase by 71 percent if they have a same-sex friend who is also obese. (Wired covered the study in more detail in “The Buddy System,” issue 17.10.) And in April, a paper published in Annals of Internal Medicine concluded that a person is 50 percent more likely to be a heavy drinker if a friend or relative is a boozehound. Even if an alcoholic’s nonsober friends are outwardly supportive, simply being around people for whom drinking remains the norm can nudge someone into relapse. It is much safer to become immersed in AA’s culture, where activities such as studying the Big Book supplant hanging out with old acquaintances who tipple.

As for the steps themselves, there is evidence that the act of public confession—enshrined in the fifth step—plays an especially crucial role in the recovery process. When AA members stand up and share their emotionally searing tales of lost weekends, ruined relationships, and other liquor-fueled low points, they develop new levels of self-awareness. And that process may help reinvigorate the prefrontal cortex, a part of the brain that is gravely weakened by alcohol abuse.

To understand the prefrontal cortex’s role in both addiction and recovery, you first need to understand how alcohol affects the brain. Booze works its magic in an area called the mesolimbic pathway—the reward system. When we experience something pleasurable, like a fine meal or good sex, this pathway squirts out dopamine, a neurotransmitter that creates a feeling of bliss. This is how we learn to pursue behaviors that benefit us, our families, and our species.

When alcohol hits the mesolimbic pathway, it triggers the rapid release of dopamine, thereby creating a pleasurable high. For most people, that buzz simply isn’t momentous enough to become the focal point of their lives. Or if it is, they are able to control their desire to chase it with reckless abandon. But others aren’t so fortunate: Whether by virtue of genes that make them unusually sensitive to dopamine’s effects, or circumstances that lead them to seek chemical solace, they cannot resist the siren call of booze.

Once an alcoholic starts drinking heavily, the mesolimbic pathway responds by cutting down its production of dopamine. Alcohol also messes with the balance between two other neurotransmitters: GABA and glutamate. Alcohol spurs the release of more GABA, which inhibits neural activity, and clamps down on glutamate, which stimulates the brain. Combined with a shortage of dopamine, this makes the reward system increasingly lethargic, so it becomes harder and harder to rouse into action. That’s why long-term boozers must knock back seven or eight whiskeys just to feel “normal.” And why little else in life brings hardcore alcoholics pleasure of any kind.

As dependence grows, alcoholics also lose the ability to properly regulate their behavior. This regulation is the responsibility of the prefrontal cortex, which is charged with keeping the rest of the brain apprised of the consequences of harmful actions. But mind-altering substances slowly rob the cortex of so-called synaptic plasticity, which makes it harder for neurons to communicate with one another. When this happens, alcoholics become less likely to stop drinking, since their prefrontal cortex cannot effectively warn of the dangers of bad habits.

This is why even though some people may be fully cognizant of the problems that result from drinking, they don’t do anything to avoid them. “They’ll say, ‘Oh, my family is falling apart, I’ve been arrested twice,’” says Peter Kalivas, a neuroscientist at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston. “They can list all of these negative consequences, but they can’t take that information and manhandle their habits.”

The loss of synaptic plasticity is thought to be a major reason why more than 90 percent of recovering alcoholics relapse at some point. The newly sober are constantly bombarded with sensory cues that their brain associates with their pleasurable habit. Because the synapses in their prefrontal cortex are still damaged, they have a tough time resisting the urges created by these triggers. Any small reminder of their former life—the scent of stale beer, the clink of toasting glasses—is enough to knock them off the wagon.

AA, it seems, helps neutralize the power of these sensory cues by whipping the prefrontal cortex back into shape. Publicly revealing one’s deepest flaws and hearing others do likewise forces a person to confront the terrible consequences of their alcoholism—something that is very difficult to do all alone. This, in turn, prods the impaired prefrontal cortex into resuming its regulatory mission. “The brain is designed to respond to experiences,” says Steven Grant, chief of the clinical neuroscience branch of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. “I have no doubt that these therapeutic processes change the brain.” And the more that critical part of the brain is compelled to operate as designed, the more it springs back to its pre-addiction state. While it’s on the mend, AA functions as a temporary replacement—a prefrontal cortex made up of a cast of fellow drunks in a church basement, rather than neurons and synapses.

Finally, the 12 steps address another major risk factor for relapse: stress. Recovering alcoholics are often burdened by memories of the nasty things they did while wasted. When they bump into old acquaintances they mistreated, the guilt can become overwhelming. The resulting stress causes their brains to secrete a hormone that releases corticotropin, which has been shown to cause relapse in alcohol-dependent lab rats.

AA addresses this risk with the eighth and ninth steps, which require alcoholics to make amends to people they’ve wronged. This can alleviate feelings of guilt and in turn limit the stress that may undermine a person’s fragile sobriety.

Bill W., as Wilson is known today, didn’t know the first thing about corticotropin-releasing hormone or the prefrontal cortex, of course. His only aim was to harness spirituality in the hopes of giving fellow alcoholics the strength to overcome their disease. But in developing a system to lead drunks to God, he accidentally created something that deeply affects the brain—a system that has now lasted for three-quarters of a century and shows no signs of disappearing.

But how effective is AA? That seemingly simple question has proven maddeningly hard to answer. Ask an addiction researcher a straightforward question about AA’s success rate and you’ll invariably get a distressingly vague answer. Despite thousands of studies conducted over the decades, no one has yet satisfactorily explained why some succeed in AA while others don’t, or even what percentage of alcoholics who try the steps will eventually become sober as a result.

A big part of the problem, of course, is AA’s strict anonymity policy, which makes it difficult for researchers to track members over months and years. It is also challenging to collect data from chronic substance abusers, a population that’s prone to lying. But researchers are most stymied by the fact that AA’s efficacy cannot be tested in a randomized experiment, the scientific gold standard.

“If you try to randomly assign people to AA, you have a problem, because AA is free and is available all over the place,” says Alcohol Research Group’s Kaskutas. “Plus, some people will just hate it, and you can’t force them to keep going.” In other words, given the organization’s open-door membership policy, it would be nearly impossible for researchers to prevent people in a control group from sneaking off to an AA meeting and thereby tainting the data. On the other hand, many subjects would inevitably loathe AA and drop out of the study altogether.

Another research quandary is how to account for the selection effect. AA is known for doing a better job of retaining drinkers who’ve hit rock bottom than those who still have a ways to fall. But having totally destroyed their lives, the most desperate alcoholics may already be committed to sobriety before ever setting foot inside a church basement. If so, it might be their personal commitment, rather than AA, that is ultimately responsible for their ability to quit.

As a result of these complications, AA research tends to come to wildly divergent conclusions, often depending on an investigator’s biases. The group’s “cure rate” has been estimated at anywhere from 75 percent to 5 percent, extremes that seem far-fetched. Even the most widely cited (and carefully conducted) studies are often marred by obvious flaws. A 1999 meta-analysis of 21 existing studies, for example, concluded that AA members actually fared worse than drinkers who received no treatment at all. The authors acknowledged, however, that many of the subjects were coerced into attending AA by court order. Such forced attendees have little shot at benefiting from any sort of therapy—it’s widely agreed that a sincere desire to stop drinking is a mandatory prerequisite for getting sober.

Yet a growing body of evidence suggests that while AA is certainly no miracle cure, people who become deeply involved in the program usually do well over the long haul. In a 2006 study, for example, two Stanford psychiatrists chronicled the fates of 628 alcoholics they managed to track over a 16-year period. They concluded that subjects who attended AA meetings frequently were more likely to be sober than those who merely dabbled in the organization. The University of New Mexico’s Tonigan says the relationship between first-year attendance and long-term sobriety is small but valid: In the language of statistics, the correlation is around 0.3, which is right on the borderline between weak and modest (0 meaning no relationship, and 1.0 being a perfect one-to-one relationship).

“I’ve been involved in a couple of meta-analyses of AA, which collapse the findings across many studies,” Tonigan says. “They generally all come to the same conclusion, which is that AA is beneficial for many but not all individuals, and that the benefit is modest but significant … I think that is, scientifically speaking, a very valid statement.”

That statement is also supported by the results of a landmark study that examined how the steps perform when taught in clinical settings as opposed to church basements. Between 1989 and 1997, a multisite study called Project Match randomly assigned more than 1,700 alcoholics to one of three popular therapies used at professional treatment centers. The first was called 12-step facilitation, in which a licensed therapist guides patients through Bill Wilson’s method. The second was cognitive behavioral therapy, which trains alcoholics to identify the situations that spur them to drink, so they can avoid tempting circumstances. And the last was motivational enhancement therapy, a one-on-one interviewing process designed to sharpen a person’s reasons for getting sober.

Project Match ultimately concluded that all three of these therapies were more or less equally effective at reducing alcohol intake among subjects. But 12-step facilitation clearly beat the competition in two important respects: It was more effective for alcoholics without other psychiatric problems, and it did a better job of inspiring total abstinence as opposed to a mere reduction in drinking. The steps, in other words, actually worked slightly better than therapies of more recent vintage, which were devised by medical professionals rather than an alcoholic stockbroker.

AA is still far from ideal. The sad fact remains that the program’s failures vastly outnumber its success stories. According to Tonigan, upwards of 70 percent of people who pass through AA will never make it to their one-year anniversary, and relapse is common even among regular attendees. This raises an important question: Are there ways to improve Wilson’s aging system?

AA is obviously not about to overhaul its 75-year-old formula. But there are a few alterations that would almost certainly make the program work for more people, starting with better quality control. Since no central body regulates the day-to-day operations of local groups, some meetings are dominated by ornery old-timers who delight in belittling newcomers. Others are prowled by men looking to introduce nubile newcomers to the “13th step”—AA slang for sexual exploitation. Finding a way to impose some basic oversight of such bad behavior would likely reduce the dropout rate.

Some AA groups would also do well to shed their resistance to medication. There is nothing in the Big Book that forbids the use of prescription drugs, but there are plenty of meetings where such pharmaceutical aids are frowned upon. Perhaps this sentiment made sense back in AA’s formative years, when a variety of snake oils were touted as alcoholism cures. But today there are several medications that have been proven to decrease the odds of relapse. One such drug, acamprosate, restores a healthy balance between glutamate and GABA, two of the neurotransmitters that get out of whack in the brains of alcoholics. Naltrexone, commonly used to treat heroin addiction, appears effective at preventing relapse by alcoholics who possess a certain genetic variant related to an important mu-opioid receptor. Both can be valuable aids in the recovery process.

But the best way to bolster AA’s success rate may be to increase the personalization of addiction medicine. “We’re starting to get an inkling that something about the initial state of the brain prior to therapy may be predictive as to whether that therapy will be a success,” says Grant of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. In other words, certain brains may be primed to respond well to some therapies and less so to others.

NIDA and other government agencies are currently funding several studies that aim to use neural imaging technology to observe how various therapies affect addicted brains. One alcoholic might have a mesolimbic pathway that normalizes quickly after receiving a certain type of therapy, for example, while another will still suffer from dopamine disregulation despite receiving the same care. The hope is that these studies will reveal whether neurobiology can be used to predict a person’s odds of benefitting from one treatment over another. Perhaps there is one sort of mind that is cut out for the cognitive behavioral approach and another that can be helped only by the 12 steps.

A person’s openness to the concept of spiritual rebirth, as determined by their neural makeup, could indicate whether they’ll embrace the steps. Last September, researchers from the National Institutes of Health found that people who claimed to enjoy “an intimate relationship with God” possess bigger-than-average right middle temporal cortices. And a Swedish study from 2003 suggests that people with fewer serotonin receptors may be more open to spiritual experiences.

For the moment, though, there is no way to predict who will be transformed by AA. And often, the people who become Wilson’s most passionate disciples are those you’d least expect. “I always thought I was too smart for AA,” a bespectacled, Nordic-looking man named Gary shared at a meeting in Hell’s Kitchen this past winter. “I’m a classical musician, a math and statistics geek. I was the biggest agnostic you ever met. But I just wrecked my life with alcohol and drugs and codependent relationships.”

And now, after more than four years in the program? “I know God exists,” he says. “I’m so happy I found AA.”

Maybe one day we’ll discover that there’s a quirk in Gary’s genetic makeup that made his prefrontal cortex particularly susceptible to the 12 steps. But all that really matters now is that he’s sober.

Contributing editor Brendan I. Koerner (brendan_koerner@wired.com

Since 2008, celebrating the Fourth of July has meant enjoying a 3-day weekend. With parades, picnics, and fireworks, the festivities can all too often

2010-07-01T08:43:00.000-07:00

Since 2008, celebrating the Fourth of July has meant enjoying a 3-day weekend. With parades, picnics, and fireworks, the festivities can all too often lead to a trip to the hospital emergency room for underage individuals who have been consuming alcohol.
On an average July day in 2008, there were 502 emergency department (ED) visits involving underage alcohol use across the United States, according to estimates from the Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN). Over the 3-day Fourth of July holiday weekend, however, the number of daily ED visits jumped to 938, an increase of 87 percent. Figure 1 provides some additional details concerning underage alcohol consumption.While all underage alcohol consumption is of concern, consumption that leads to a hospital visit should be of particular concern to adults and to health care professionals. For everyone interested in preventing underage drinking, SAMHSA offers educational and other materials at: http://www.underagedrinking.samhsa.gov/.

http://oas.samhsa.gov/spotlight/Spotlight003UnderageAlcoholUse.pdf

New Survey Again Raises Alarm About Teen Drug Use, Attitudes

2010-03-08T12:33:00.001-08:00

By Bob Curley

A new report finds that more kids say they are using alcohol and other drugs, but many parents are unable or unwilling to deal with the issue -- a bad combination when declining support for prevention and cultural apathy about the issue leave parents as the last and sometimes only line of defense against adolescent drug use.

The 2009 Partnership Attitude Tracking Study (PATS), released March 2 by the Partnership for a Drug-Free America (PDFA) and MetLife Foundation, reported rather dramatic year-over-year spikes in past-month alcohol use (up 11 percent) and past-year use of marijuana (up 19 percent) and ecstasy (up 67 percent) among U.S. students in grades 9-12.

PDFA chairman and CEO Steve Pasierb noted that all three are "social drugs," and the survey of more than 3,200 students, conducted by Roper Public Affairs, found "a growing belief in the benefits and acceptability of drug use and drinking." For example, the percentage of teens agreeing that "being high feels good" increased from 45 percent in 2008 to 51 percent in 2009, and those who said "friends usually get high at parties" increased from 69 percent to 75 percent. Thirty percent of students surveyed strongly agreed that they "don't want to hang around drug users," down from 35 percent in 2008.

"The resurgence in teen drug and alcohol use comes at a time when pro-drug cues in popular culture – in film, television and online – abound, and when funding for federal prevention programs has been declining for several years," according to a PDFA press release on the survey.

The reported spike in alcohol and other drug use and attitudinal shifts are startling enough to warrant skepticism about the validity of the findings. However, Pasierb notes that the PATS survey has been conducted using the same methodology for the past 21 years. The most recent Monitoring the Future survey, released in December, also found that use of illicit drugs has leveled off or increased after years of steady declines, and that youth attitudes about drug use appear to be softening. The 2009 PRIDE Survey of 6th- to 9th-graders reported small increases in current drug use, as well.

The PATS survey found that kids are almost as likely to get information on drugs from the Internet and websites like Youtube as from their parents, school, or media ads. "The preponderance of information that kids get online about drugs is pro-use, and to teens it's more credible," Pasierb told Join Together.

Perhaps the most surprising survey result is the reported increase in use of ecstasy -- a drug that, unlike alcohol and marijuana, has seemed to largely disappear from public consciousness since the mid-2000s. If the survey results are to be believed, more teens are now using ecstasy on a monthly (6 percent) or annual (10 percent) basis than at any point since 2004, and reported lifetime use is higher than ever reported since 1998.

Pasierb said that federal data shows that availability of ecstasy has not declined since 2001-02, and that prices for the drug have fallen. "There was just more news coverage then," he said.

"I don't buy the argument that drug use is cyclical," said Pasierb. "I think it's generational, and based on what we talk to our kids about." Drug-use trends among youth are "very malleable," he added, and what is considered cool or popular can change rapidly from the time a kid enters high school to when they graduate.

Parents Waging a Lonely Battle -- Or Not

About 20 percent of the parents surveyed by PATS believed that their children had gone beyond the experimental phase in use of alcohol or other drugs. However, almost half of these parents either did not take any action (25 percent) or waited for between a month and a year to address the perceived problem (22 percent).

Parents of children engaging in non-experimental drug use were less confident in their ability to influence their kids' drug-use decisions, according to the survey, and were more likely to believe that all teens will experiment with drugs and that occasional use of alcohol or marijuana is tolerable.

"Parents with drug-using kids have never been served by our field," said Pasierb. "They're the outliers, and they should be the focus." PDFA has developed a program called Time to Act that is designed to improve parental knowledge about teen alcohol and other drug use, set rules and boundaries, intervene when necessary, and seek outside help when needed.

"Government prevention programs have all been defunded, and society is not on our side. It's all on the parents now," said Pasierb. "Parents are convinced that their kids are getting all this (drug prevention) in school, and it's just not true. The doctor, school, or football coach is not going to step in."

COMMENTS ON THIS ARTICLE:

Posted by Dan Iser on 03 Mar 10 11:10 AM EST
It would appear that the "cultural apathy" has also filtered into the decisionmaking process that our congressional leaders utilize to determine funding for prevention. Most recently they voted to eliminate the state grants portion of the federal safe and drug-free schools program. This program provided nearly $300 million in funds to all school districts across our nation. Congress eliminated this valuable program because the amount that the average school district received was not enough to make a real difference in prevention substance abuse and violence. Many school-community anti-drug coalitions will be devasted by this action once the flow of funding stops during the 2010-2011 school year. Isn't it about time that we adopted a lesson learned by the tobacco lawyers. We need to sue someone and even perhaps the federal government itself. In realitity it was the Supreme Court that reversed prohibition that allowed the free flow of alcohol across our nation. And isn't it the responsibility of our legal and judicial system at the federal level to stop the passage of heroin and other illegal substances from coming across our borders. How often do you hear that federal agents have been monitoring the flow of illegal drugs from Mexico, South America, etc., and then from one state to another, and finally to the street corner of our communities. This process takes months and even years in order to "build a solid case". In the meantime, more of our children and young adults continue to make purchases and are well on their way to becoming full blow addicts.

Posted by Susie Vanderlip on 03 Mar 10 11:54 AM EST
This article confirms what I'm seeing especially over the last 6 months as a significant decrease in school and societal acknowledgement of the alcohol and drug use and abuse problem among teens. I am a prevention and healthy choices speakers to teens in middle and high schools and the interest in assemblies addressing these issues has severely declined in recent months. Yes, school budgets are struggling, but even Obama's state of the union address did not mention the alcohol/drug issue, and funding has been cut to Safe and Drug Free Schools. Add to that the push to legalize marijuana and apparent message to teens that pot is "safe and everybody's doing it," we are creating the perfect storm for an epidemic alcohol and drug problem in the current generation of youth and into their adult/family futures.

Posted by Lorinda Strang - Orchard Recovery Center on 03 Mar 10 11:55 AM EST
Time to Act - A must read for all parents

Posted by Diane on 03 Mar 10 12:21 PM EST
An interesting statistic to me is that "the percentage of teens agreeing that "being high feels good" increased from 45 percent in 2008 to 51 percent in 2009". Would people really get high if it didn't "feel good"? It's like saying "people eat to fill full". The other reason people use (besides after become addicted) is what?

Posted by A Parent on 03 Mar 10 12:51 PM EST
Let's stop whining about the decrease in government funding and put the pressure to educate our children about drugs, alcohol, and life in general where it should be - the parents. Our schools can't even adequately educate our children in normal educational areas (reading, writing, math, science). How will they ever be able to if they're also having to raise our children?

Posted by Ruth on 03 Mar 10 01:38 PM EST
Being a parent of a recovering addict I started a Life Skills Prevention Org.In order to prevent addiction, teaching life skills from 5th grade on is imperative..boosting self-esteem as well as giving students the tools to make healthy choices in order to live life on life's terms. For this to have a better chance of working, parents need to be involved in this process through forums and workshops, to be heard.and able to seek advice through Q & A. On another note; maybe when kids say "being high feels good" they are those in the experimental stage,and are they really feeling good? Or, are they running from themselves and that's what feels good? If those in the addiction stage were asked I know the answer would not be the same....they're not feeling good..they're not feeling! We owe it to the next generation of adults, our children, to prevent addiction and their consequences by teaching life skills, working with parents and present Staff Development in Schools. Proact not React!!!!

Posted by Dave on 03 Mar 10 01:43 PM EST
The other reason people use is to stop feeling bad. Depression, anxiety, problems in living all can be (temporarily) removed with alcohol or drugs. You may not feel good, but at least you don't feel so bad. In recovery we need to address both issues: people need to find new healthy ways to get "high" and they also need to find ways to cope with stress and other things that make them unhappy. From a prevention standpoint, these skills are precisely what parents can model to their children to protect them from the increasingly addictive character of our culture. The problem though is not only that the parents lack confidence or hope that they can help their kids; even more its that the parents themselves are engaging in addictive behaviors focussed on self-centered, pleasure oriented quick fixes. What we need is a new spirit of community and mutual responsibility rather than the post modern nihilism or the know-it-all fundamentalism that currently dominates our culture. These statistics are truly frightening: we could be seeing the beginning of the decline and fall of European/U.S. culture.

Posted by Jerry Epstein on 03 Mar 10 01:48 PM EST
The National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse commissioned by President Nixon - 1973 report "Drug Use In America: Problem in Perspective" "We are convinced that public policy, as presently designed, is premised on incorrect assumptions ... " Unless present policy is redirected, we will perpetuate the same problems, tolerate the same social costs, and find ourselves as we do now, no further along the road to a more rational legal and social approach than we were in 1914." Their main target was alcohol (over 80% of all drug use and addiction) and (for all drugs) the vital distinction between use and abuse The foofaraw about SPECIFIC drugs and periodic faddish fluctuations just distracts from fundamental analysis. Prohibition = drug cartels = schools flooded with all drugs at a critical age. False assumptions still abound; policy must be " redirected." Parents ability to educate is damaged by the hypocrisy and much more.

Posted by Susie Vanderlip on 03 Mar 10 01:53 PM EST
Diane asked, "The other reason people use is what?" The answer from my experience is to cope with/avoid feelings. Thousands of conversations with using teens after school assemblies and via email has made it abundantly clear to me that many use to cope with feelings they do not have a clue about what to do with: grief, loss, self-loathing, abandonment, verbal abuse wounds, hopelessness plus PTSD and persistent anxiety from the influence of domestic violence throughout childhood and more. I recommend we focus on developing healthy emotional coping skills in youth - call it stress management if you must - but deal with some of the underlying emotional issues.

Posted by MyThoughts on 03 Mar 10 02:33 PM EST
It's true, it's all about the parents. We are the ones who brought them into the world and it's up to us to teach them about it. I would never assume someone else is doing this for my kids especially gov't or any institution for that matter. I have to say that I have surrounded myself with people who mostly think like I do and I feel that they aid me in my dialog with my kids but I do not depend on them to set a direction for my kids. It takes a village to find others who can help but it still comes down to what you do personally (as well as your level of knowledge on the subject). Stop looking for others to do what you should be doing and start doing it now(find out and take action). Sorry if you read brashness or directness it's just the best way I believe to approach a subject like this. Kids will learn about their world... if you are involved you will be less surprised by the outcome of the lessons learned. It is a shame that kids find it easier to get illicit drugs in school than some very resourceful parents but that is a direct characteristic of the current prohibition policy and that my friends is another very related topic.

Posted by John from Oceanside on 03 Mar 10 04:31 PM EST
Look at the numbers. The drug legalizers Drug Policy Alliance(DPA) and Marijuana Policy Project(MPP) keep stating President Bush's failed drug policy but in the bush years he cut drug use 25% over his 8 years in office. Since the Obama administration has taken over he has let his statement about marijuana be spinned by DPA and MPP. His statements are no different than President Bush but when DPA and MPP spin his words the next day he has the Drug Tzar respond but the media never picks up his statements. This is al

If you have teenagers you must read this

2010-03-08T11:36:00.001-08:00

http://www.jointogether.org/news/features/2010/new-survey-again-raises-alarm.html

CASA 2003 TEEN SURVEY: HIGH STRESS, FREQUENT BOREDOM, TOO MUCH SPENDING MONEY: TRIPLE THREAT THAT HIKES RISK OF TEEN SUBSTANCE ABUSE

2009-09-09T21:48:00.001-07:00

High Stress Teens Twice as Likely to Smoke, Get Drunk, Use Illegal Drugs

WASHINGTON, August 19, 2003 – The risk that teens will smoke, drink, get drunk and use illegal drugs increases sharply if they are highly stressed, frequently bored or have substantial amounts of spending money, according to The National Survey of American Attitudes on Substance Abuse VIII: Teens and Parents, an annual back-to-school survey conducted by The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University. This was the first time in its eight-year history that the survey measured the impact of these characteristics on the likelihood of teen substance abuse.

Among CASA’s survey findings:

· High stress teens are twice as likely as low stress teens to smoke, drink, get drunk and use illegal drugs.
· Often bored teens are 50 percent likelier than not often bored teens to smoke, drink, get drunk and use illegal drugs.
· Teens with $25 or more a week in spending money are nearly twice as likely as teens with less to smoke, drink and use illegal drugs, and more than twice as likely to get drunk.
· Teens exhibiting two or three of these characteristics are at more than three times the risk of substance abuse as those exhibiting none of these characteristics.
· More than half the nation’s 12-to-17 year olds (52 percent) are at greater risk of substance abuse because of high stress, frequent boredom, too much spending money, or some combination of these characteristics.

“High stress, frequent boredom and too much spending money are a catastrophic combination for many American teens,” said CASA Chairman and President and former U.S. Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare Joseph A. Califano, Jr. “But it is a catastrophe that can be avoided through parental engagement. Parents must be sensitive to the stress in their children’s lives, understand why they are bored and limit their spending money.”

Other findings of this year’s survey:

· More than 5 million 12-to-17 year olds (20 percent) can buy marijuana in an hour or less; another 5 million (19 percent) can buy marijuana within a day.
· The proportion of teens that consider beer easier to buy than cigarettes or marijuana is up 80 percent from 2000 (18 percent vs. 10 percent).
· For the first time in the survey’s eight-year history, teens are as concerned about social and academic pressures as they are about drugs.
· Teens at schools with more than 1,200 students are twice as likely as teens at schools with less than 800 students to be at high risk of substance abuse (25 percent vs. 12 percent).

“Two of the most common questions regarding teen drug use and addiction are: how can it happen to my child, and how can it happen to young boys or girls who seem to be typical teens?” said Califano. “These questions are often asked where the drug-abusing teen does not exhibit one of the usual warning signs of drug abuse – being physically or sexually abused, having a learning disability or eating disorder, suffering from serious depression or another mental health condition. CASA’s teen survey suggests that for many teens, the answers to these questions can be found in high stress, frequent boredom and too much spending money.”

Drug-Free Schools

The proportion of students who say that drugs are used, kept or sold at their high schools is up 18 percent over 2002 (from 44 to 52 percent). “This is a significant deterioration from last year, when most high school students attended drug free schools,” Califano observed. As in previous years Catholic and other religious middle and high schools are likelier to be drug free than are public schools (78 percent vs. 58 percent). For the first time there was a large enough sample of students from secular private schools to assess their status: 76 percent of such schools are drug free. Girls vs. Boys The incidence of high stress was greater among girls than boys, with nearly one in three girls saying they were highly stressed compared to fewer than one in four boys. And while girls and boys are equally likely to have more than $50 a week in spending money, girls with this much spending money are likelier than boys to smoke, drink, get drunk and use marijuana.

Parental Pessimism

Parents are likelier than teens to view teen drug use as a fait accompli. More than four out of 10 parents said teens are “very likely” or “somewhat likely” to try drugs, compared to only one of 10 teens. Teens whose parents believe that future drug use is “very likely” are more than three times likelier to become substance abusers than teens whose parents say future drug use is “not likely at all.” More than half of parents whose children attend schools where drugs are used, kept or sold would not send their teen to a drug-free school if they could. Asked why, these parents answer: no schools are drug free (54 percent), kids should make their own choices (22 percent), drugs are not a problem (11 percent), and the child likes his or her school (seven percent).

“Many parents think they have little power over their teens’ substance use and a disturbing number view drugs in schools as a fact of life they are powerless to stop,” noted Mr. Califano. “How parents act, how much pressure they put on school administrators to get drugs out of their teens’ schools, their attitudes about drugs, and how engaged they are in their children’s lives will have enormous influence over their teens’ substance use. Parent Power is the most underutilized weapon in efforts to curb teen substance abuse.”

Other Key Findings

· Fewer teens are associating with peers who use substances: 56 percent have no friends who regularly drink, up from 52 percent in 2002; 68 percent have no friends who use marijuana, up from 62 percent in 2002; 70 percent have no friends who smoke cigarettes, up from 56 percent in 2002.
· Teens who attend religious services at least once a week are at significantly lower risk of substance abuse.
· The average age of first use is 12 years 2 months for alcohol, 12 ½ for cigarettes and 13 years 11 months for marijuana.
· Between the ages of 12 and 17, the likelihood that a teen will smoke, drink or use illegal drugs increases more than seven times and the percentage of teens with close friends who use marijuana jumps 14 times.

QEV Analytics conducted The National Survey of American Attitudes on Substance Abuse VIII: Teens and Parents for CASA from March 30 to June 14, 2003. The firm interviewed at home by telephone 1,987 teens aged 12 through 17 and 504 parents, 403 of whom were parents of interviewed teens. Sampling error is +/- 2.2 percent for teens and +/- 4.4 percent for parents.

The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University is the only national organization that brings together under one roof all the professional disciplines needed to study and combat all types of substance abuse as they affect all aspects of society.

CASA's missions are to: inform Americans of the economic and social costs of substance abuse and its impact on their lives; assess what works in prevention, treatment and law enforcement; encourage every individual and institution to take responsibility to combat substance abuse and addiction; provide those on the front lines with tools they need to succeed; and remove the stigma of substance abuse and replace shame and despair with hope.

With a staff of more than 70 professionals, CASA has conducted demonstration projects at 69 sites in 40 cities and 22 states focused on children, families and schools, and has been testing the effectiveness of drug and alcohol treatment, monitoring individuals in numerous programs and drug courts in several states.

Click here to view the survey

# # #

Parent Power: Five Ways Parents Can Reduce Teen Risk

1. Be sensitive to the stress in your children’s lives and help them cope.
2. Understand when and why your children are bored and help relieve their boredom.
3. Limit the amount of money your children have to spend and monitor how that money is spent.
4. Know who your children’s friends are.
5. Be engaged in your children’s lives: help them with their homework, attend their sports events, participate in activities together, and talk to them about drugs.

Note to Roger Ebert

2009-09-02T11:31:00.001-07:00

By David B on August 27, 2009 6:37 PM
Roger,

Thanks for the brave recap of your worst days. I know what the 11th tradition says but if we remain totally inflexible we will go backwards. I laughed and cried as I read your article. You mentioned Grant Hospital, and in the summer of 1982 I was living in the park opposite...Oz Park. Mine was the third bench in on the left hand side. It is still there. I talked to the sister of my drug buddy who had done something strange - she had gotten clean and sober. What that meant I had no idea about but I was interested in moving up in the world - or at least getting a room at the YMCA. She sent a male friend out to see me in the park and he told me his own story of insanity. It was all about drugs and alcohol and sounded strangely like my life. I had no desire to stop those...all I wanted was a better address perhaps even with a front door! When he was done he asked if I would like to go to an AA meeting with him and of course I said I would think about it. He told me that drunks like us cross an invisible line and that we will never be able to drink like "normal" people ever again. I did a little more research that weekend and found out that what he was saying was true.
Side Note: this kind man who spent time with me carrying the message dies in his alcoholism!
On Sunday night at the beginning of August I attended my first AA meeeting at that beloved Cathedral just off Rush Street - the Mustard Seed. It was lead by Alan B and he scared the crap out of me. But I was immediately taken by the atmosphere and the hope and like you I never left and by Gods Grace have not found it necessary to take a drink or a drug since the 1st August 1982. I went back every day sometimes two or three times as I saw that this was the only hope that I had. I met my sponsor there Tom M and we have been fast friends ever since. I ran into Alan B, and St.Jimmie H,(from Yale to jail, from Park Avenue to Park bench) Henry H, Nancy H (with her mink)and Celia and Howard. It was people like these that saved my life period. They taught me how to live, be a man, a husband and a father and I am eternally grateful.
I also ran into you and your newsreading sidekick Ron M and like the guy you talked about would go and watch a late evening lead with you two and would wonder if I was watching TV or was at a meeting. I have shaken your hand and have protected your anonymity because you came across like another scared drunk just like me! I met my wife Lucy B in that room at the Mustard Seed,I served food there on Thanksgiving,and it became the center of my new life.

So Roger dear friend in recovery thanks for the words, thanks for the inspiration, and thanks for the example....am also a movie freak and still always look to see what you say. But all in all nothing you say about movies can ever be as important as what you have shared here. I put it on a par with Rollie Hemsley breaking his anonymity in 1940 and that did not bring our beloved AA down.

Olathe, Kansas 2009

Roger Ebert

2009-09-02T11:29:00.001-07:00

My Name is Roger, and I'm an alcoholic
By Roger Ebert on August 25, 2009 7:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (1051)
In August 1979, I took my last drink. It was about four o'clock on a Saturday afternoon, the hot sun streaming through the windows of my little carriage house on Dickens. I put a glass of scotch and soda down on the living room table, went to bed, and pulled the blankets over my head. I couldn't take it any more.

On Monday I went to visit wise old Dr. Jakob Schlichter. I had been seeing him for a year, telling him I thought I might be drinking too much. He agreed, and advised me to go to "A.A.A," which is what he called it. Sounded like a place where they taught you to drink and drive. I said I didn't need to go to any meetings. I would stop drinking on my own. He told me to go ahead and try, and check back with him every month.

The problem with using will power, for me, was that it lasted only until my will persuaded me I could take another drink. At about this time I was reading The Art of Eating, by M. F. K. Fisher, who wrote: "One martini is just right. Two martinis are too many. Three martinis are never enough." The problem with making resolutions is that you're sober when you make the first one, have had a drink when you make the second one, and so on. I've also heard, You take the first drink. The second drink takes itself.That was my problem. I found it difficult, once I started, to stop after one or two. If I could, I would continue until I decided I was finished, which was usually some hours later. The next day I paid the price in hangovers.
I've known two heavy drinkers who claimed they never had hangovers. I didn't believe them. Without hangovers, it is possible that I would still be drinking. Unemployed, unmarried, but still drinking--or, more likely, dead. Most alcoholics continue to drink as long as they can. For many, that means death. Unlike drugs in most cases, alcohol allows you to continue your addiction for what's left of your life, barring an accident. The lucky ones find their bottom, and surrender.
Bill W., co-founder of A.A.

An A.A. meeting usually begins with a recovering alcoholic telling his "drunkalog," the story of his drinking days and how he eventually hit bottom. This blog entry will not be my drunkalog. What's said in the room, stays in the room. You may be wondering, in fact, why I'm violating the A.A. policy of anonymity and outing myself. A.A. is anonymous not because of shame but because of prudence; people who go public with their newly-found sobriety have an alarming tendency to relapse. Case studies: those pathetic celebrities who check into rehab and hold a press conference.

In my case, I haven't taken a drink for 30 years, and this is God's truth: Since the first A.A. meeting I attended, I have never wanted to. Since surgery in July of 2006 I have literally not been able to drink at all. Unless I go insane and start pouring booze into my g-tube, I believe I'm reasonably safe. So consider this blog entry what A.A. calls a "12th step," which means sharing the program with others. There's a chance somebody will read this and take the steps toward sobriety.

Yes, I believe A.A. works. It is free and everywhere and has no hierarchy, and no one in charge. It consists of the people gathered in that room at that time, many perhaps unknown to one another. The rooms are arranged by volunteers. I have attended meetings in church basements, school rooms, a court room, a hospital, a jail, banks, beaches, living rooms, the back rooms of restaurants, and on board the Queen Elizabeth II. There's usually coffee. Sometimes someone brings cookies. We sit around, we hear the speaker, and then those who want to comment do. Nobody has to speak. Rules are, you don't interrupt anyone, and you don't look for arguments. As we say, "don't take someone else's inventory."

I know from the comments on an earlier blog that there are some who have problems with Alcoholics Anonymous. They don't like the spiritual side, or they think it's a "cult," or they'll do fine on their own, thank you very much. The last thing I want to do is start an argument about A.A.. Don't go if you don't want to. It's there if you need it. In most cities, there's a meeting starting in an hour fairly close to you. It works for me. That's all I know. I don't want to argue with you about it.

What a good doctor, and a good man, Jakob Schlichter was. He was in one of those classic office buildings in the Loop, filled with dentists and jewelers. He was a gifted general practitioner. An appointment lasted an hour. The first half hour was devoted to conversation. He had a thick Physician's Drug Reference on his desk, and liked to pat it. "There are 12 drugs in there," he said, "that we know work for sure. The best one is aspirin."

One day, after a month of sobriety, I went to see him because I feared I had grown too elated, even giddy, with the realization that I need not drink again. "Maybe I'm manic-depressive," I told him. "Maybe I need lithium."

"Alcohol is a depressant," he told me. "When you hold the balloon under the water and suddenly release it, it is eager to pop up quickly." I nodded. "Yes," I said, "but I'm too excited. I wake up too early. I'm in constant motion. I'd give anything just to feel a little bored."

"Lois, will you be so kind as to come in here?" he called to his wife. She appeared, an elegant Jewish mother. "Lois, I want you to open a little can of grapefruit segments for Roger. I know you have a bowl and a spoon." His wife came back with the grapefruit. I ate the segments. He watched me closely. "You still have your appetite," he said. "When you feel restless, take a good walk in the park. Call me if it doesn't work." It worked. I knew walking was a treatment for depression, but I didn't know it also worked for the ups.

Anyway, after I pulled the covers over my head, I stayed in bed until the next day, for some reason sleeping 13 hours. On the Sunday I poured out the rest of the drink which, when I poured it, I had no idea would be my last. I sat around the house not making any vows to myself but somehow just waiting. On the Monday, I went to see Dr. Schlichter. He nodded as if he had been expecting this, and said "I want you to talk to a man at Grant Hospital. They have an excellent program." He picked up his phone and an hour later I was in the man's office.

He asked me some questions (the usual list), said the important thing was that I thought I had a problem, and asked me if I had packed and was ready to move into their rehab program. "Hold on a second," I said. "I didn't come here to check into anything. I just came to talk to you." He said they were strictly in-patient. "I have a job," I said. "I can't leave it." He doubted that, but asked me to meet with one of their counselors.

This woman, I will call her Susan, had an office on Lincoln Avenue in a medical building across the street from Somebody Else's Troubles, which was well known to me. She said few people stayed sober for long without A.A.. I said the meetings didn't fit with my schedule and I didn't know where any were. She looked in a booklet. "Here's one at 401 N. Wabash," she said. "Do you know where that is?" I confessed it was the Chicago Sun-Times building. "They have a meeting on the fourth floor auditorium," she said. It was ten steps from my desk. "There's one today, starting in an hour. Can you be there?"

She had me. I was very nervous. I stopped in the men's' room across the hall to splash water on my face, and walked in. Maybe thirty people were seated around a table. I knew one of them. We used to drink together. I sat and listened. The guy next to me got applause when he said he'd been sober for a month. Another guy said five years. I believed the guy next to me.

They gave me the same booklet of meetings Susan had consulted. Two day later I flew to Toronto for the film festival. At least here no one knew me. I looked up A.A. in the phone book and they told me there was an A.A. meeting in a church hall across Bloor Street from my hotel. I went to so many Toronto meetings in the next week that when I returned to Chicago, I considered myself a member.

That was the beginning of a thirty years' adventure. I came to love the program and the friends I was making through meetings, some of whom are close friends to this day. It was the best thing that ever happened to me. What I hadn't expected was that A.A. was virtually theater. As we went around the room with our comments, I was able to see into lives I had never glimpsed before. The Mustard Seed, the lower floor of a two-flat near Rush Street, had meetings from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m., and all-nighters on Christmas and New Years' eves. There I met people from every walk of life, and we all talked easily with one another because we were all there for the same reason, and that cut through the bullshit. One was Humble Howard, who liked to perform a dramatic reading from his driver's license--name, address, age, color of hair and eyes. He explained: "That's because I didn't have an address for five years."

When I mention Humble Howard, you are possibly thinking you wouldn't be caught dead at a meeting where someone read from his driver's license. He had a lot more to say, too, and was as funny as a stand-up comedian. I began to realize that I had tended to avoid some people because of my instant conclusions about who they were and what they would have to say. I discovered that everyone, speaking honestly and openly, had important things to tell me. The program was bottom-line democracy.

Yes, I heard some amazing drunkalogs. A Native American who crawled out from under an abandoned car one morning after years on the street, and without premeditation walked up to a cop and asked where he could find an A.A. meeting. And the cop said, "You see those people going in over there?" A 1960s hippie whose VW van broke down on a remote road in Alaska. She started walking down a frozen river bed, thought she herd bells ringing, and sat down to freeze to death. The bells were on a sleigh. The couple on the sleigh (so help me God, this is what she said) took her home with them, and then to an A.A. meeting. A priest who eavesdropped on his first meeting by hiding in the janitor's closet of his own church hall. Lots of people who had come to A.A. after rehab. Lots who just walked in through the door. No one who had been "sent by the judge," because in Chicago, A.A. didn't play that game. "If you don't want to be here, don't come."

Sometimes funny things happened. In those days I was on a 10 p.m. newscast on one of the local stations. The anchor was an A.A. member. So was one of the reporters. After we got off work, we went to the 11 p.m. meeting at the Mustard Seed. There were maybe a dozen others. The chairperson asked if anyone was attending their first meeting. A guy said, "I am. But I should be in a psych ward. I was just watching the news, and right now I'm hallucinating that three of those people are in this room."

I've been to meetings in Cape Town, Venice, Paris, Cannes, Edinburgh, Honolulu and London, where an Oscar-winning actor told his story. In Ireland, where a woman remembered, "Often came the nights I would measure my length in the road." I heard many, many stories from "functioning alcoholics." I guess I was one myself. I worked every day while I was drinking, and my reviews weren't half bad. I've improved since then.

There are no dues. You throw in a buck or two if you can spare it, to pay for the rent and the coffee. On the wall there may be posters with the famous 12 Steps and the Promises, of which one has a particular ring for me: "In sobriety, we found we know how to instinctively handle situations that used to baffle us." There were mornings when I was baffled by how I was going to get out of bed and face the day.

I find on YouTube that there are many videos attacking A.A. for being a cult, a religion, or a delusion. There are very few videos promoting A.A., although the program has many. many times more members than critics. A.A. has a saying: "We grow through attraction, not promotion." If you want A.A., it is there. That's how I feel. If you have problems with it, don't come. Is it a "religion?" The first three Steps are,

* Step 1 - We admitted we were powerless over alcohol - that our lives had become unmanageable.

* Step 2 - Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

* Step 3 - Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understand Him.

The God word. The critics never quote the words "as we understood God." Nobody in A.A. cares how you understand him, and would never tell you how you should understand him. I went to a few meetings of "4A" ("Alcoholics and Agnostics in A.A."), but they spent too much time talking about God. The important thing is not how you define a Higher Power. The important thing is that you don't consider yourself to be your own Higher Power, because your own best thinking found your bottom for you. One sweet lady said her higher power was a radiator in the Mustard Seed, "because when I see it, I know I'm sober."

Sober. A.A. believes there is an enormous difference between bring dry and being sober. It is not enough to simply abstain. You need to heal and repair the damage to yourself and others. We talk about "white-knuckle sobriety," which might mean, "I'm sober as long as I hold onto the arms of this chair." People who are dry but not sober are on a "dry drunk."

A "cult?" How can that be, when it's free, nobody profits and nobody is in charge? A.A. is an oral tradition reaching back to that first meeting between Bill W. and Doctor Bob in the lobby of an Akron hotel. They'd tried psychiatry, the church, the Cure. Maybe, they thought, drunks can help each other, and pass it along. A.A. has spread to every continent and into countless languages, and remains essentially invisible. I was dumbfounded to discover there was a meeting all along right down the hall from my desk.

It prides itself on anonymity. There are "open meetings" to which you can bring friends or relatives, but most meetings are closed: "Who you see here, what you hear here, let it stay here." By closed, I mean closed. I told Eppie Lederer, who wrote as Ann Landers, that I was now in the program. She said, "I haven't been to one of those meetings in a long time. I want you to take me to one." Her limousine picked me up at home, and we were driven to the Old Town meeting, a closed meeting. I went in first, to ask permission to bring in Ann Landers. I was voted down. I went back to the limo and broke the news to her. "Well I've heard everything!" Eppie said. "Ann Landers can't get into an A.A. meeting!" I knew about an open meeting on LaSalle Street, and I took her there.

Eppie asked, "What do you think about my columns where I print the 20-part quiz to see if you have a drinking problem?" I said her quiz was excellent. I didn't tell her, but at a meeting I heard a two-parter: If you drink when you didn't intend to, and more than you intended to, you, my friend, have just failed this test.

"Everybody's story is the same," Humble Howard liked to say. "We drank too much, we came here, we stopped, and here we are to tell the tale." Before I went to my first meeting, I imagined the drunks would sit around telling drinking stories. Or perhaps they would all be depressing and solemn and holier-than-thou. I found out you rarely get to be an alcoholic by being depressing and solemn and holier-than-thou. These were the same people I drank with, although now they were making more sense.