RECOVERY MUST BE A FAMILY AFFAIR

Joyce Griffin, an adolescent counselor at the Spirit of St. Louis Outreach Center in Cape Girardeau, has been counseling a man who is recovering from using methamphetamine and alcohol. (Don Shrubshell) (Color)

Youthful desire, parental patience, and family counseling are necessities for successful meth recovery in adolescents.

A religious, upper-middle-class upbringing didn't stop "Daniel" from using drugs.

He was drinking with so-called safe childhood and church friends before he could legally drive. Later he experimented with marijuana, inhalants and LSD, among other drugs.

By the time he was 17 he was snorting methamphetamine. Before he was 21 he was injecting it intravenously.

"It was probably the fifth or sixth drug I did," said Daniel, 22, who is in the fifth month of his third recovery attempt. Daniel isn't his real name; he asked that his name not be published.

"At first I could stay up late, and it was no big deal," he said. "It took maybe a year to go from doing a line or two every week or so to staying up for a week."

Daniel said he had many friends at Cape Girardeau Central High School who used drugs of some type, and probably three of every five students he knew had sampled meth.

Meth is attractive to teens because it can make them feel good about themselves personally and socially. The drug is a stimulant and appetite suppressant, which increases its allure to adolescents seeking weight loss or wanting to stay awake for long periods of time. Meth also produces a long-lasting feeling of euphoria that can energize teen-agers and alter the mood swings common among that age group.

But the drug also can cause extreme paranoia and a psychosis that resembles schizophrenia.

Being reminded of the "high" the drug brings on can interrupt a recovering meth addict's rehabilitation.

"The relapses have triggers similar to asthma attacks," said Joyce Griffith, an adolescent counselor with the Spirit of St. Louis Outreach Center in Cape Girardeau.

Recovering addicts "have to constantly be on the lookout for a memory or feeling or event or street or even a smell that might remind them of when they were using, because that might influence them to start using again," said Griffith.

Lack of desire to stop using meth can also reduce the effects of any treatment program, said Rodney Fisher, clinical supervisor with Comprehensive Substance Treatment and Rehabilitation Center (C-STAR), an adolescent drug treatment program with a number of sites in Missouri.

Griffith, who counsels Daniel, agreed. Drug rehabilitation almost never works when it is instigated by the parents, and even then the rate of success is marginal, she said.

"The only real success is when the kids really want it," she said. "Kids come to treatment frequently because parents notice some kind of use."

So it was for Daniel, who first entered in-patient recovery treatment at his parents' insistence at age 18. He returned to using meth just two days after successfully completing a two-week in-patient treatment program.

"I read their books, gave them the answers they wanted to hear, and was out in two weeks," he said. "I didn't want to quit using drugs. I went to treatment to please everybody but myself."

The desire for recovery alone isn't always enough to help a young meth addict recover, however. Daniel had a sincere desire to be released from his meth addiction just after his 21st birthday, but a disagreement about what his addiction involved socially led to his second relapse.

"I had just turned 21, and these people were telling me I couldn't go to bars," he said. "I'm sitting there thinking 'Drinking isn't my problem; my problem is shooting up meth.'"

A month after his release from treatment, Daniel entered a bar and drank. "A couple of weeks later somebody in the bar had something stronger, and there I went again," he said.

After that relapse, Daniel returned to a nomadic lifestyle that characterized his meth binges and broke off communication with his family. His mother said she often feared she would receive a telephone call informing her Daniel was dead.

"I would just pray -- that's all I could do," she said. "There would be no arguments or anything. He would just leave."

Daniel, in his third recovery attempt, said this time he is confident he will succeed. He began his first semester at Southeast Missouri State University this week and will live with his mother and stepfather for at least his first year of classes.

"It's different this time, because I'm willing to do whatever it takes to get better," he said. "I understand that I have to spend as much time recovering as I did using. With meth and needles, that was pretty much 24 hours a day."

His mother said she was able to handle the situation during the past seven years because of the prayers offered by others on Daniel's behalf. She said she also shared her experiences and anxieties with members of support groups like Narcotics Anonymous.

"This is a family disease because its effects are felt by everybody," she said. "The people with the success rate are the people who have family support."

His mother and Griffith think Daniel's third recovery attempt has been successful so far because it emphasized Daniel's desire for rehabilitated and his strong family involvement during and after in-patient treatment.

"Me, his stepdad, his sister, two grandparents, and even (Griffith) drove an hour and a half to see him while he was in treatment," said his mother. "Any family of a meth user should check out the family programs at a facility, and make sure they are also getting some kind of support."

Daniel said he regrets his lost adolescence as well as the distrust and pain he has caused his family. Although the time cannot be regained, he said he will work the rest of his life to heal the family's wounds.

"I have a really awesome family, a lot better than I ever imagined," he said. "It's going to take a long time before people in my family stop worrying when I walk out the door that I won't come back, but I believe trust can be rebuilt.

His mother agreed, saying her faith in God and support from family and friends has already made the difference.

"I don't really worry anymore," she said. "I know we have to take it one day at a time, and he knows that too."