Pubdate: Sun, 21 May 2000
Source: St. Petersburg Times (FL)
Copyright: 2000 St. Petersburg Times
Contact:  http://www.sptimes.com/
Forum: http://www.sptimes.com/Interact.html
Author: Bill Maxwell, Columnist, St.Petersburg Times

TRANSFORMING IDEAS OF DRUG REHABILITATION

Operation PAR Inc.'s success in treating addiction can be attributed in 
part to the cooperation of both Democrats and Republicans. It is changing 
how Florida's leaders view treating youthful drug abuse.

Sundae, a Florida native, is divorced and has a 4-year-old son. She wants a 
successful future for the boy, and she dreams of owning a restaurant.

She could just as easily have been a statistic in America's politically 
charged war on drugs, except that she found a place in Largo that taught 
her how to turn her life around. She came to grips with her "insanity," as 
she calls her drug habit, through the help of PAR Village, a residential 
drug treatment and parenting center.

Sundae's story, and that of PAR, offer some simple human lessons in our 
societal struggle with demon drugs. They also speak to a remarkable 
political embrace in a county that long has prided itself on conservative 
principles of law and order.

 From birth, Sundae's home life was dysfunctional. Her parents fought 
constantly, drank excessively and used drugs. They had diagnosed mental 
health problems, and they divorced when Sundae (whose last name is being 
withheld to protect her identity) was 4. During the next 10 years, she went 
back and forth between the two households. Despite the volatile 
circumstances, she made excellent grades and was a star athlete.

But when she was 14, her mother committed suicide and everything fell 
apart. Her grades dropped, and she started drinking booze and smoking 
marijuana. At 16, she graduated to cocaine and began selling it to 
schoolmates and whoever else would buy. She got into fights, and was 
arrested for assault and battery and put on house arrest. She went through 
three high schools, and ultimately dropped out.

"I became very self-centered, hateful and very angry," she says.

She got married at 19, entering what she now calls an "abusive relationship 
that included drug use." After becoming pregnant, she stopped smoking 
cigarettes, drinking and using and selling drugs. Three months after her 
son was born, however, the father was convicted and sent to prison. Shortly 
afterward, her father was sent to federal prison for 20 years.

She returned to drugs.

"To get cocaine, I started spending every dollar I made working and then 
wrote bad checks and started on a crime spree," she says. "I was insane and 
ended up in jail 10 times."

Her arrests included grand theft, forgery and possession of drug 
paraphernalia. She turned to prostitution, robbery. She says she was raped, 
and her life was constantly in danger. She neglected her son, who was 
raised by her family.

Then, a police cruiser tried to pull her over one day and she sped away. 
The police gave chase. She lost control of the car, hit a tree, and, in the 
process, her boyfriend lost an eye and the mobility in his right leg. She 
was treated at the hospital and taken directly to jail.

Instead of giving Sundae long jail time, an empathetic judge sentenced her 
to PAR Village. Perhaps best of all, Sundae's son was permitted to live 
with her at the 50-bed center for women during her eight-month treatment. 
Today, because of Operation PAR Inc., a Pinellas Park-based nonprofit drug 
treatment agency, Sundae and her child are living in their own apartment. 
She is drug-free and is working.

"PAR has provided me with the opportunity to raise my child," she says. "I 
have a clean slate and have hope for my future. I now have stability in my 
life. PAR gave me structure and taught me responsibility."

Sundae's plight shows that drug abuse, especially among young people, is 
not so easily resolved by some of the more fashionable political 
prescriptions of the day, by elected officials who want to lock 'em up and 
throw away the key. Thanks to an inspiring community drug treatment 
program, some of those same politicians are now able to see Sundae in all 
of her complex humanity, as a vulnerable young woman who gave in to the 
worst temptation, who did not have the inner strength to create a firewall 
of self-definition that would protect her.

Today, agencies such as PAR are leading the way in rescuing the Sundaes of 
this state and nation. At PAR, part of the real story is that it was 
founded by Republicans, a political party that has had a national history 
of supporting Draconian solutions to drug problems. When Florida's current 
governor, Jeb Bush, ran against Lawton Chiles the first time in 1994, he 
was hardly a guy who would have spent time with the likes of Sundae.

Now, however, Bush can be seen at PAR singing the agency's praises. When he 
recently unveiled his $60-million drug control plan, he did so at the 
Shirley D. Coletti Academy for Behavioral Change, a PAR residential 
treatment center for juvenile offenders. His outreach has attracted 
bipartisan support, as Republicans and Democrats have rallied behind his 
efforts to combat youthful drug abuse.

In other words, some of the old divisive politics of the war on drugs have 
given way to an acceptance of the complex, personal face of drug addiction. 
And old rivals have come together to fund programs such as PAR Village.

Since 1992, when it was established with a five-year grant from the Center 
For Substance Abuse Treatment, PAR Village has rescued nearly 500 women 
such as Sundae. When these women improve, their children's chances of 
living healthy, happy lives are doubled. The agency also has served 853 
children either born prior to or during their mother's stay there. Each 
child born at the facility was drug free at birth, according to official 
reports.

The profile of typical women entering the center is numbing:

77 percent used cocaine; 5 percent, marijuana; 12 percent, alcohol.

90.2 percent have criminal records 87 percent were referred by the criminal 
justice or social system.

60 percent were involved in prostitution.

95 percent were unemployed.

60 percent were pregnant at the time of admission.

The average education level was ninth grade.

36.1 percent had custody of their children, and the average had three children.

Given these statistics, PAR's task of steering its female clients toward a 
new way of life is daunting. Professionals, such as Rebecca Wade, PAR's 
nurse educator, know that many addicts have mental-health problems. As part 
of their preparation to rejoin society, mothers receive parenting training, 
techniques in discipline and recognition of stages of children development, 
vocational assessment and employment counseling and advice on sexual 
trauma. They also attend classes on depression and self-defeating 
relationships. And academic courses are a centerpiece of the daily routine, 
which includes: wake up at 5:30 a.m., roll call at 6:45; dorm clean-up 
after roll call; breakfast at 8; taking the children to the on-site day 
care or putting them on their buses to public school; and dorm check at 
10:30 p.m.

Training mothers alone, however, is not enough. The children, who in the 
past would more than likely have been taken from the mothers, also must 
learn to overcome the effects of their parents' addiction. Most of them 
have been severely neglected. Therefore, they receive, among other things, 
speech therapy, medical attention and motor-skills therapy and after-school 
care designed for those with perinatal drug exposure, which occurs near the 
time of birth.

PAR Village works because of its systemic, common-sense, practical method. 
Wade, a registered nurse who conducts group therapy sessions, says that 
PAR's staff members know their clients want the same things that everyone 
else wants.

"They want to get a job, have a family and be safe," she says. "They want 
to be happy. PAR gives them that opportunity. They gain back their 
self-respect. When you give people back their lives, they become taxpayers 
and citizens. That's why we help clients with education and help them get 
jobs. The lack of an education and jobs are what hold addicts back. It's a 
vicious cycle. It's hopelessness."

Cheryl, 34, is a mother of two boys, and is one of those clients who wants 
help. She has been at PAR Village for 11 months, after 20 years of abusing 
drugs and alcohol.

"I finally couldn't do it anymore," Cheryl says. "I wanted to stop the 
insanity of my addiction. I gave up everything I had for my addiction -- my 
home, my children and any values I had ever been taught."

Cheryl found out about PAR from the state Department of Children and 
Families, and she was surprised to find out her children could live with 
her during treatment. Her 4- year-old attends PAR's day care, and her 
8-year-old attends a public school. Scheduled to leave PAR in November, she 
is realistic about her condition and her chances of succeeding on her own. 
She is ready to go home but knows that she has not totally kicked her 
addiction.

"I am not cured," she said. "PAR has taught me how to live with my 
addiction. I have a great support system now, something I didn't have 
before. I am a better mom now. I spend a lot of time with my children. My 
8-year-old knows what's going on. I've explained it to him. He grew up with 
my addiction. I think I have a bright future now."

Cheryl's new perspective explains the acronym PAR -- Parental Awareness and 
Responsibility. And the seed for PAR was planted in 1969, when 
Pinellas-Pasco State Attorney James T. Russell, then-Pinellas Sheriff Don 
Genung, County Commissioner Charles Rainey and others organized a volunteer 
group to slow youthful drug abuse in the area. One evening, Russell 
received a telephone call from a neighbor and friend, Shirley Coletti, who 
told him that her teenage daughter was using drugs.

Coletti wanted help -- and information. When the homemaker found nothing, 
she formed a group of volunteers and went to work. The result today is a 
private agency with an annual budget of $25-million, a staff of more than 
600 and integrated addiction and mental health services at various sites in 
Hernando, Pinellas, Pasco and Manatee counties. Last year, PAR treated 
nearly 12,000 clients.

Even after 30 years as PAR's president, Coletti still speaks of her mission 
with passion, and her determination to keep families and their children 
away from substance abuse is stronger than ever.

"When we talk about drug rehabilitation, we are really talking about 
habilitation," she says. "We're talking about teaching people new skills so 
they can learn to live quality, drug-free lives. This also includes leisure 
skills. Just ask an addict what they do during their leisure time, and 
their answer will be "get high' or "go to the bar.' Most drug abusers, 
regardless of their age, have never experienced healthy hobbies or 
recreational activities."

Like other veterans of the nation's therapeutic community, Coletti is 
tough, and she is realistic about the profound allure of drugs and their 
far-reaching impact. "Recovering from drugs and alcohol use requires a 
lifelong commitment from the drug user, their family and their community," 
she says. "On average, one or two episodes of treatment cannot arrest an 
individual's addiction, particularly severe chronic use."

The main key to solving drug abuse, Coletti says, is making entire families 
aware and responsible. Too many children, such as 18-year-old Josh, grow up 
seeing one or both of their parents using drugs. Although his mother has 
been drug-free for 11 years, Josh remembers the old days and how her 
addiction influenced him to start smoking marijuana.

"When I was 14, I was smoking a lot of pot," he says. "I came to treatment 
just to keep from going to prison. But now that I've been here, I see that 
my life has changed a whole lot. When I get out of here in June, I want to 
go to college or a vocational school. I know I can do it because I have 
faith in myself now. I'm also very close to my mother, grandmother and 
brother. I believe I can make it now."

Susan Latvala, chairman of PAR's board of directors and a member of the 
Pinellas School Board, knows that PAR can help teenagers such as Josh turn 
their lives around. Like Coletti and many others with the agency, she is a 
veteran of the drug wars and carries personal scars. She sought Coletti's 
help several years after her teenage son became addicted to drugs.

"My commitment to PAR developed through my son's treatment and the fact 
that our whole family was educated on the facts of drug addiction, 
treatment, relapse and long-term recovery," she says. "Drug addiction 
cannot be cured by inoculation. It requires long-term behavioral change as 
well as a strong family and community-support system.

"I am convinced that we can dramatically improve the quality of life in our 
community, state and country if we prevent children from ever using drugs 
and provide long-term treatment to those families already affected. There 
is no pain like the pain of seeing your own child suffering and headed for 
failure. There is no joy like seeing that child whole again."

To his credit, Gov. Bush, unlike many of his counterparts in other states, 
is listening and acting. He has rejected the harsh, punitive approach to 
youthful drug abuse popular just a few years ago. Florida's therapeutic 
community welcomes his goal of reducing substance abuse in Florida by half 
in five years through prevention, treatment and increased law enforcement. 
His plan will add approximately 10,000 beds to treatment centers statewide 
and two drug- enforcement units in South Florida and one in Central Florida.

While many other residential treatment programs around the country are 
reporting negligible success with their clients, PAR's statistics remain 
impressive. Studies show that individuals who remain in residence for more 
than 90 days reduce their use of drugs and criminal activity and are more 
likely to return to school and find a job. The overwhelming majority of 
those who complete their treatment stop using drugs altogether -- 
especially when family, friends and others support them.

PAR's success is directly attributable to the hard work of Coletti and her 
staff and perhaps, unwittingly, to the bipartisanship that has begun to 
transform how Florida elected officials and civic leaders view treating 
youthful drug abuse. In other words, when a child is in trouble with a 
substance, both Democrats and Republicans are helping. It is this shared 
willingness to look at the faces of individuals, such as those of Sundae, 
Cheryl and Josh, that offers perhaps the greatest hope of all.
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