Pubdate: Sun, 14 May 2006
Source: Peoria Journal Star (IL)
Copyright: 2006sPeoria Journal Star
Contact:  http://pjstar.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/338
Note: Does not publish letters from outside our circulation area.
Author:  Scott Hilyard
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/youth.htm (Youth)

STARTING SOBRIETY YOUNG

Adolescent Addicts Face Same Challenges As Experienced Adults

BLOOMINGTON - On May 25, Brent, an 18-year-old from Milford, will 
leave Chestnut Health Systems after a stay of 87 days, a stretch of 
time that will mark the beginning of a lifelong fight to bury his 
addiction to drugs and alcohol in his rocky, blurry past.

The next day he will graduate, on time, with the rest of the Milford 
High School Class of 2006.

Talk about a fresh start.

"I feel good about where I am right now," Brent said recently inside 
his Chestnut counselor's office. "And I haven't been able to say that 
for a long time."

While there is a path to substance abuse rehabilitation that is more 
familiar - start young, slowly grow the addiction to where lives 
crumble and crash, hit proverbial rock bottom and then seek help at 
age 30, or 40, or 50 - Brent's story of adolescent addiction is

hardly unusual.

The treatment of teenage addicts is a challenge that runs parallel to 
the challenges of treating older addicts - counseling, group therapy 
and 12-step programs are central to both - but cannot be identical 
because of the differences in life experiences.

Identifying and treating the illness early in a person's life can 
preclude the decades of chaos and sorrow that usually settle like fog 
on the family and friends of those who are addicted to alcohol and drugs.

But first you have to get them to rehab.

"Teenage addicts don't usually know the pain of hitting bottom - 
losing jobs, losing family, losing everything," said Mychele Kenney, 
director of youth services at Chestnut, where most of the 52 
residential beds are filled with adolescents referred by the juvenile 
justice system. "So what we do is bring the bottom up. Our goal is 
always abstinence, but if there's decrease in the amount and 
frequency of use and we get those things accomplished, we're still pleased."

Here are some facts and numbers from the federal Substance Abuse and 
Mental Health Services Administration. Alcohol is the No. 1 drug of 
choice among children and adolescents. In 2002, about 2 million youth 
ages 12 through 20 drank five or more drinks on one occasion, five or 
more times in one month (and more than 7 million reported this level 
of consumption at least once in the survey month). Also in 2002, 1.5 
million youth in that same age group met criteria for admission to 
alcohol treatment, although only 120,000 actually received treatment.

Drug abuse statistics are equally, pardon the pun, sobering. A 2001 
National Household Survey on Drug Abuse indicated that 10.8 percent 
of the 12 to 17 population were current drug users, a number that 
grew by nearly a full percentage point from the year before. There is 
no evidence that the trend has slowed since the survey.

"There appears to be a certain fairly constant percentage of people 
among us who are predestined to try drugs and alcohol and get 
addicted," Kenney said. "Our work is aimed at helping pick up the 
pieces after that has happened to a young man or woman."

Snap decision

Brent started drinking beer in eighth grade and smoking marijuana in 
ninth grade when he ditched whatever "just-say-no" lesson he had 
heard on his very first real-life test.

"One day after football practice one of the older guys on the team 
asked me if I wanted to smoke, and I said sure," Brent said. "That's 
how it started for me."

His freshman B's and C's became sophomore C's and D's as his 
addiction took anchor and grew. When six or eight beers no longer 
satisfied, he drank 12 to a case of beer. He started snorting cocaine 
and stealing money to pay for it. A couple of times a week became 
five times a week then every day of the week. His mother confronted 
him often about his obvious downward spiral.

"She'd be yelling at me, and I'd just walk away and go do it again," 
Brent said.

He decided not to go out for football his senior year.

"I figured it would get in the way of my partying," he said.

Inevitably, cops, lawyers and judges entered Brent's life, and in 
short succession he was arrested twice for criminal damage to 
property (in one instance he smashed the window of a teacher's car in 
the school parking lot), twice for illegal consumption of alcohol and 
finally for residential burglary. He and a friend made a drug-fired 
snap decision to break into a friend's house to steal drug money. 
Within minutes of entering the house, the owners returned home. They 
all waited around for the police to arrive.

The burglary got Brent sent to a juvenile facility in St. Charles and 
then off to a boot camp setting in Murphysboro, where he stayed 
almost four months. He thought the rough experience of incarceration 
changed him for the better.

"I thought I got the message," he said. "I was using within two weeks."

Beer, pot, cocaine, pills, mushrooms.

"Heroin was never around," he said. "Meth was around me, but somehow 
I was smart enough to stay away from that."

On Feb. 7, Brent was kicked out of school for being intoxicated. On a 
short legal leash because of his previous transgressions, he had few 
options. Something was different, however, about this patch of 
trouble. Brent said he had finally tired of the lifestyle.

"I looked back at my life and saw I was 18 years old with nothing to 
show for it and nowhere to go," he said. "A lawyer and my parents 
thought it was a good idea to come for treatment."

Brent was 60 days sober the day he was interviewed for this story.

His days at Chestnut are filled with school, group therapy sessions, 
more school, then more group therapy sessions. There is also physical 
activity inside the gymnasium, and privileges like movies and 
community outings can be earned by good behavior. Many of Chestnut's 
youth residents come from wildly dysfunctional families, and 
counselors often need to work on more than issues of addiction. Most 
of the cost of the treatment for Chestnut residents and outpatients 
is borne by Medicaid.

"We work with the (Alcoholics Anonymous )12-step program, but we do 
it in a kid-friendly way," she said. "Some of the steps are pretty 
abstract, and we really work to make them concrete ideas in their 
minds. We make them think about the bad things that happened to them 
while they were using and to recognize what might be triggers to 
starting up again when they get back home."

Alternate path

Jimmy Malone of Peoria took a slightly different route to sobriety at 
Proctor Hospital's Illinois Institute for Addiction Recovery. Because 
Proctor does not take Medicaid payments, most of its adolescent 
residents and outpatients are covered by a private insurer and are 
more likely to come from families that are at least financially 
better off than Chestnut families.

"Most of our referrals are self-referrals of kids who are getting in 
trouble in school and in their families, but are not necessarily in 
trouble with the law," said Phil Scherer, the clinical coordinator at 
the institute. "It usually comes after a series of incidents that 
trigger parental alarm."

Malone started smoking marijuana and drinking alcohol during his 
sophomore year at a religion-affiliated school in the area.

"I liked it," he said. "I liked how I felt and I liked the rebellion 
part of it, too."

The habit quickly expanded from weekend-only status to an everyday 
event. Malone became masterful at hiding his burgeoning addiction.

"I had four different facades," he said. "My parent facade, my 
nonsmoking friend facade, my school facade and my work facade. I was 
the first to volunteer to pray. My first thought every day was, 'How 
can I hide this?' "

The act fell apart one day in school. A secretary followed Malone 
outside when he asked permission to retrieve his lunch from his car 
but really intended to smoke pot. When he got to the car - no lunch.

"I told her I must have forgotten it," said Malone, now 20, whose 
Proctor rehab stay was a little more than two years ago, the length 
of his current run of sobriety.

Red flag.

"It raised suspicion," he said. "And my principal followed me out to 
my car later in the day and searched it and found a bag of pot, some 
pipes and a lighter, shot glass. He called my parents and gave me an 
option - withdraw from school or be expelled. I withdrew."

Malone agreed to an addiction assessment at Proctor, thinking all the 
time that he'd do a quick outpatient program that would allow him to 
quickly resume smoking marijuana and drinking alcohol. He was 
surprised when Proctor recommended a residential stay.

"Even then I wasn't thinking I was ready to quit," he said.

Proctor has up to 20 beds dedicated to the adolescent residential 
rehab program. Malone slept in one of them an attitude-altering 29 
nights before he was discharged to outpatient status. He continued 
with after-care for 16 weeks, a service he credits with cementing his 
sobriety. The feeling of being clean and productive trumped the urge 
to get high.

"Just about everyone I knew who skipped after-care relapsed," said 
Malone, who graduated on time at a different area high school than 
the one he left. Currently he has a job and is taking classes at 
Illinois Central College on his way to Illinois State University and 
a career in elementary education.

Difficult steps

While the Proctor setting differs from Chestnut, the programs are a 
similar combination of 12-step work, group and family therapy and 
continued schoolwork. Counselors focus on making the 12 steps easily 
understood by adolescent brains.

"They think they're invincible," said Ed Betzelberger, a counselor in 
the young adult unit at Proctor. "We bring their recovery down to 
their level of understanding and give them real life tools and 
specific tasks they can do to prevent relapse. They need to learn 
that if they are not moving forward in recovery they are moving 
toward relapse."

Shortly after leaving Proctor and after returning to regular high 
school classes, Malone said he found a bag of pot in the parking lot 
of the school.

"I picked it up and looked at it for a while, opened it up and ran my 
fingers through it," Malone said. "A lot of (stuff) went through my 
mind, like how proud my parents are of me now and how good it felt to 
be clean. It was quite a temptation though."

Malone dumped the bag on the asphalt, got in his car and drove off in 
the direction of his future.
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MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman