5 Tips for Keeping Your Teen Safe This Holiday Season and into the New Year

The festive lights that started twinkling along 5th Ave – despite it seeming as if we had only just gotten to this side of Halloween – weren’t enough of a sign for me. It wasn’t until after my family’s own Thanksgiving dinner, when I loosened my belt a notch, that it hit me. The holiday season is upon us, in full swing – with all of its candles and lights, connecting with family and friends, eating and drinking, gift-giving, celebrating, and of course partying.

It is also a time when your teenagers will be out of school and facing much less structure and supervision. School breaks typically mean lots of freedom and time spent socializing with friends, not to mention the increased access to alcohol that comes with the parties. Many work hard to find positive activities for their teens during the holiday break from school. But even so, a lot of teens are left seeking something to do with the idle time in between. And because boredom is a major reason teens give for substance abuse, even the most trustworthy can be at risk.

Additionally, The Brookline Parents Education Network reports that New Year’s Eve, in particular, can be a difficult night for parents to set guidelines for their teens. More than any other event, this night is associated with drinking. Many kids have internalized a dangerous and false message: “Unless you are at a large gathering of friends drinking, you are a loser.” They put pressure on their parents to let them attend unsupervised parties and sleepovers.  Parents may be out with their own friends and less vigilant about supervision. And children may be less forthcoming about where they will be, and with whom.

Here are 5 tips parents can use to keep their teenagers safe during the holiday season and into the New Year:

•    Be sure your teen understands that drinking under the age of 21 is illegal and unacceptable.

•    Know where your teen is going, and ask lots of questions. Who will be there? Will alcohol or other drugs be present? Will adults be home? Do those adults tolerate drinking in their home?

•    Discuss with your teen situations in which he or she might be offered drugs or alcohol, and plan ways for how they can respond. Be sure your teen knows to call 911 immediately if a partygoer needs medical attention. For tips on how to talk to your teen and for strategies he or she can use to decline drugs or alcohol, see our Parent Talk Kit.

•    Make a plan with your teen for how he or she will get home. Remind him or her never to get in a car with a driver who has been using drugs or drinking. Provide money for a taxi or public transportation if it is available and safe in your area. Make an agreement with your teen that if he or she calls to ask for a ride, you will come immediately (no matter where or what time), with no questions asked until later. Here is a contract you and your teen can use to establish a clear understanding of acceptable actions.

•    Be a role model, and know that your behavior is a major influence on your child. Drink responsibly, and don’t abuse alcohol or drugs. Never drive under the influence of alcohol or any other intoxicating substance. Never get in a car with a driver who is under the influence. Safeguard your prescription medicine and only use it as directed by a doctor.

What challenges or concerns are you facing this holiday season? Please use the comments section below to share any ideas or questions you have about keeping your teens safe through the New Year.

On behalf of the Partnership at Drugfree.org, I wish you and your family a safe holiday season and a happy, healthy New Year

New study finds pro-ana websites are flourishing among teen girls

Despite social media sites' attempts to crack down on pro-anorexia images and blogs, more than 500,000 predominately teenage girls visit pro-anorexia websites every year.

A new report released Wednesday also finds that one in five girls who have visited "thinspiration" sites are between the ages of six and 11.

Dr. Emma Bond at the University Campus Suffolk in the UK estimates that there are between 400 to 500 eating disorder sites, some of them claim 2,600 members, talking about 1,580 topics in different chat rooms across 15,000 posts.

Pro-anorexia websites, also known as "pro-ana" sites, offer instructions, inspiration, and tips for an anorexic and/or bulimic lifestyle. Many sites feature "thinspiration," or photographs or video montages featuring slender or excessively thin models or celebrities. Others feature tips on dieting, with the recommended calorie intake of around 400 to 500 calories per day; hiding symptoms of anorexia and bulimia from friends and family; or finding an "anabuddy" for support and advice.

"Eating disorders are not going away, if anything they are becoming more common," says Bond. "We need to alert people to the dangers of harmful content on the Internet." She adds: "Everyone needs to understand better the risks online and the harm that eating disorders can do to young people." Copyright (AFP RELAXNEWS), 2012.

Hooked on opiates: DARE out, former addicts in to fight use in schools

Minneapolis resident Will Connell is photographed, Monday, December 10, 2012.  He has one year in a treatment program for heroin addiction. (Pioneer Press: Chris Polydoroff)

In the battle against drug abuse, students are increasingly likely to have a recovering addict like Will Connell dissuade them from using rather than a cop -- like his dad, Hastings police officer Tim Connell. "I can't think of a better deterrent," said Will Connell, who spent last year with the Know the Truth program visiting Twin Cities schools to talk about his heroin addiction. Connell became an addict through what experts say is a popular new gateway: abusing opiate painkillers initially prescribed to a family member or friend. The legal prescription of opiates, drugs including oxycodone (called "oxy" on the street), has grown by 72 percent in Minnesota since 2005. Opiates are dangerous when they fall into hands of young people who see them as less harmful than traditional street drugs. "I wish I would have known how many people this affects," Connell said. "I never thought I'd be the model of a drug addict." Connell's work with the Know the Truth program is an example of the changing face of drug prevention efforts across Minnesota and the nation that are working to combat the misperception that prescription drugs are safer than others. Long a staple in the fight, Drug Abuse Resistance Education officers like Connell's father have all but disappeared from metro schools because of funding cuts and questions about DARE's effectiveness. In their place are more continuous and holistic approaches to educating students about the dangers of drug and alcohol abuse. They begin as early as kindergarten and are part of the curriculum through high school. EMULATING MOM, DAD Education is paired with outreach to parents and the community, providing students with peer groups in which they can address the real and perceived prevalence of drug use in school. Educators also work to include in their messages the latest trends, such as the popularity of prescription pills or synthetic drugs. "We do a lot on the awareness side. PRESCRIPTION OPIATES AND HEROIN IN MINNESOTA The rising use of legal prescription opiates, primarily painkillers such as oxycodone and hydrocodone, known also by their brand names OxyContin and Vicodin, have led to increased addiction to these drugs and an increase in heroin use. Deaths from these drugs and heroin have spiked, more people are getting substance abuse treatment and police are reporting increases in related crimes. Explore Minnesota prescription and treatment data here. Search national distribution data here. Trying to explain why these things are dangerous," said Barry Scanlan, prevention programs coordinator for Anoka-Hennepin schools, the state's largest district. Some schools still use DARE officers when funding is available; others are making the transition to new programs. Regardless of the approach, school leaders work constantly to correct students' misimpressions about drugs, Scanlan said. "We are up against a culture where drugs are seen everywhere," he said. "Students start to feel, 'If Mom and Dad can do it, why can't I?' " Real-life stories from recovering addicts such as Connell help school leaders give students a picture of what addiction can look like. "(Students) don't see me as some authority figure telling them what to do," Connell said. "We have the ability to relate to them much quicker and easier." Connell's dad said he supports his son's work to keep others from drug addiction, but he's critical of the move by so many communities to abandon the DARE program. "You can replace the educational element, but you can't replace the relationship element," Tim Connell said. "That was the critical part of being a DARE officer, building relationships with kids who were impressionable and needed to recognize authority so they could respect authority. "They say it wasn't supported by the numbers. But sometimes they are just wrong." Will Connell's story is one police and addiction experts warn about. He started drinking at 13 after his parents divorced. "I didn't care what happened to me," he said. His use soon extended to drugs like marijuana and Ecstasy. Then he tried an old prescription for painkillers his mother had in the house. Weeks later, he was hooked. Prescription opiates and other pills are now second only to marijuana among the drugs students try, according to a 2010 national survey of young people ages 12 to 25 by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Opiate painkillers like oxycodone now are used almost as frequently as marijuana, the study found, with 2 million young people trying the drug in 2010. "I wanted them to last forever," Connell, who is now 22, said of his first experience with opiates. The drugs felt "cleaner," were easier to dose, and he could function in society. "I could eat and sleep and go to class," he said. "It was my drug of choice." The pills eventually ran out, and he had trouble getting more, so he turned to heroin. For drug money, he began selling his belongings, including a snowmobile. "I lost all desire to do anything but get high," he said. These addictions can quickly turn deadly. In the past three years, four of Connell's former Hastings High School classmates have died from heroin overdoses. Police believe those young addicts started out using prescription drugs and then injected heroin, a drug that Twin Cities police say currently has some of the highest levels of purity in the nation. Addicts also often turn to crime to feed their addictions. Two Little Falls High School students, Haile Kifer, 18, and Nicholas Brady, 17, were shot and killed Nov. 22 during an apparent break-in. While police have not directly addressed the motive for the burglary, they found prescription drugs stolen from another home in the car Kifer and Brady were using the day they broke into Byron Smith's home. Little Falls police said they often came into contact with the cousins but wouldn't disclose why other than to say it included suspicious activity. Friends and family members acknowledged Kifer had recently undergone treatment for substance abuse. Pati McConeghey, of the Minnesota Adult and Teen Challenge rehabilitation program where Connell got involved with Know the Truth, said the perception that prescription opiates are "cleaner and safer" is one police and addiction experts are working hard to change. "The perception is everyone is doing it but them," McConeghey said of student drug use. "No one comes to school on Monday and says, 'I got so sober this weekend.' " Reaching kids at a younger age is key to changing that perspective, McConeghey said. A survey of 25,000 Minnesota students last school year found nearly 23 percent of sixth- through eighth-graders used drugs and 44 percent drank alcohol. Of those students, 37 percent of girls and 30 percent of boys abused prescription drugs. Know the Truth has expanded its efforts in middle schools across the metro, but McConeghey said the demand for its programs far outweighs the funding available to provide it. Last year, 25,000 Minnesota students attended Know the Truth programming and 1,100 parents attended seminars about talking to their children about drug abuse. PARENTS ARE KEY Parents have always been the first line of defense against drug abuse, and McConeghey said their role is more important than ever in the fight against prescription drug abuse. In Minnesota, 70 percent of the pills young people abuse come from family or friends and 68 percent of students say their parents' disapproval is a deterrent to drug abuse. "It needs to be an ongoing conversation," McConeghey said. "It's not about 'Just Say No.' (Students) need to have refusal skills, and they need to have a partner in this." Many communities are broadening prevention efforts beyond the school building or police department. Little Falls schools superintendent Stephen Jones and Morrison County Administrator Deb Gruber said they have had a community-wide partnership to reduce drug and alcohol use since 2006. As speculation about how addiction might have played a role in Kifer and Brady's deaths grew, Jones and Gruber highlighted community efforts to address prescription and other drug abuse. They include heightened monitoring of prescribing practices, a tip line, a drug take-back initiative and educational forums. The community also launched a new campaign to "correct dangerous misperceptions students have about the normalcy of substance use," Jones and Gruber said in a news release. "I think it really has to be a community-wide approach if it is going to have any impact," Jones said. "Obviously, we are aware it is a concern, and this is a proactive approach to address it." x

Former addicts warn teens about dangers of substance abuse

By Robert Nott 

“Donald,” now in his mid-50s, recalled getting drunk when he was in seventh grade. “I wanted to be cool. I was so cool that I threw up all over myself.” By the 9th grade, he was smoking pot. As an adult he began using cocaine and then crack cocaine. “My life went way downhill,” he said.
“John” — whoa is a few years older than Donald — didn’t start drinking too much until after the death of his brother, “Jim.” Jim was a star athlete in high school who relied on scotch and water, and later cocaine, to fuel his fun. “He essentially lived his life to get ‘more,’ ” John said of his brother’s habit. When Jim died from conditions related to his addiction, his brother went to the morgue to identify him. “I almost didn’t recognize him … he had no face,” John recalled.
Marck Romero — who, unlike John and Jim, is comfortable having his real name published in the newspaper — is in his mid-30s and has been clean and sober for three years. Alcohol first nabbed him when he was a teen. “I didn’t have control,” Romero said. “I was a puppet. The alcohol was controlling me.”
The three former addicts, alumni of St. Michael’s High School, spoke to an attentive crowd of over 600 teens in the school’s Tipton Gymnasium on Thursday morning. The event, organized by the school’s Student Wellness Action Team, was moderated by teacher Lisa Bybee, who said the purpose of the forum was for the students “to see what not to do” when it comes to substance abuse.
Last February, St. Mike’s — a private Catholic school that serves about 650 kids in grades 7 through 12 — announced that it would start random drug testing of students this semester. The goal of the tests, principal Sam Govea and president Marcia Sullivan stressed at that time, was not to pull a “gotcha” on the kids but to educate them and hopefully discourage substance abuse.
Part of that education plan, according to Bybee and some members of the school’s SWAT group, was a drug-and-alcohol-use survey that went out to all students last week. The surveys were returned this week, but the results have not yet been analyzed. The school expects to have that information soon.
The three former addicts spoke in relatively subdued, somber tones of the downward slide their lives took once they became hooked. The two older men, who both work in professional fields in Santa Fe, sometimes had a hard time keeping back the tears as they spoke of the personal cost of addiction. Romero, a musician who is attending Santa Fe Community College, displayed a matter-of-fact attitude that suggested he was tired of all the bad choices he had made in his life.
“If we save just one life here, it will have been worth it,” Donald, who graduated from the school in 1976, said after the talk. Marijuana and alcohol, he told the assembly, made him feel important at school because, as he put it, “I didn’t feel special within myself.” A millionaire at 38, he found himself broke and undergoing rehab a year or so later. He was neglecting his family, including his young son, who would sit for hours waiting in vain for his father to come pick him up for an appointment.
Donald knew John’s brother Jim, another grad from 1976, and watched Jim waste away. “I’m an addict,” Donald said. “My friend was dying and I didn’t do anything.” He has been clean since 2004. “I don’t have to drink to dance,” he said. He urged the students to find a way to connect with their peers who may be falling under the influence of drugs and alcohol. “It’s not about ratting out,” he stressed, but rather, reaching out, “with love, care, and concern.”
Romero said he first got drunk (on Jack Daniels) at age 13. He got kicked out of St. Michael’s for his behavior and transferred to Capital High School. There, he joined up with the wrong crowd, including older teens who encouraged him to drink. At 17, he became a father after an incident of unprotected sex. “I drank and drank and it wasn’t fun anymore,” he said. So he turned to cocaine.
Now, he realizes his actions affected his brain development. “I was just cutting off my personal growth … my intelligence,” he said. “I’m sort of 18 again, and starting all over.”
Donald told the kids to communicate with their parents. “We were your age once,” he said. “We’re not stupid.” If a teen tells his or her parents that he or she is addicted, he said, “Your parents are gonna get mad — but they won’t love you any less.” And their love, he said, could save a life.
After the event, junior Soren Brown, a member of the school’s SWAT group, said the assembly was important because “a lot of kids tend to think that they know everything all the time.” The three recovering addicts, he said, “are real people, so the students can recognize that this can happen to anyone.”
According to Sullivan, St. Michael’s has tested 11 board members and seven senior administrators voluntarily and seven faculty members and nine students randomly. She said the school plans about 40 random tests next semester.
The school uses hair samples to test for the presence of cocaine, marijuana, opiates, methamphetamines, and phencyclidines, but not alcohol. Students who test positive get 100 days to clean up their act before being tested again.

Teen's help County DWI unit pinpoint vendors who sell to minors

BY KAREN SCHMIDT 

Teens will be heading into liquor stores this holiday season to see if lax merchants will sell them alcohol despite their underage status.  

In this case the endeavor isn’t part of teenage rebellion — it’s an effort orchestrated by a Sandoval County DWI and Prevention program to pinpoint vendors who might be tempted to overlook an alcohol buyer’s underage status.

Several times a year, high school students volunteering with the DWI program hit up about a dozen establishments at a time that sell alcohol in an attempt to crack down on vendors violating the law by selling to minors.

“We take a minor to go into a store that looks like they’re 21,” DWI and Prevention Executive Administrator Diane Irwin said. “We’ve taken kids that look like they’re 12 years old in there before and (who) have a regular ID — the vertical one — and they go in there and try to purchase alcohol.”

Irwin said when the teens go into the stores they don’t use any tricks — such as fake IDs — to try to get the person behind the counter to sell them alcohol.

“They certainly don’t try to deceive (the sellers),” Irwin said.

Of the 79 establishments in the county that sell alcohol, Irwin said during their checks they occasionally find people selling to minors.

But Irwin said sometimes is still too much.

“It happens more frequently than I’d like to see,” she said.

For example, during Bernalillo’s Wine Festival earlier this year, through one of the program’s checks they caught a vendor selling wine to a minor.

If a business is discovered to have sold alcohol to a minor during one of the DWI Program’s sweeps, Irwin said they report it to the Special Investigative Division of the State Police, which then issues a citation to the store.

Once a business gets three citations, it risks losing its liquor license, according to the state Regulation and Licensing Department. Individuals caught selling alcohol to minors face serving as long as 18 months in jail and paying a $5,000 fine, according to the state Regulation and Licensing Department.

The relatively good news is that children don’t seem to be getting away with buying alcohol in New Mexico. The rates of youth ages 12 to 20 in New Mexico who reported buying their own alcohol were among the lowest in the nation at 2.5 percent, according to statistics compiled from 2008 to 2010 by the National Survey on Drug Use and Health.

But children don’t always have to try to get alcohol on their own — sometimes parents, perhaps thinking they’ll find the means to get it anyway, buy liquor for their children.

Parents buying alcohol for underage children is one of the themes of a series of new public service announcement videos created by students at Independence High School in Rio Rancho.

Along with the retail establishment checks, the PSAs are part of the DWI Program’s campaign that includes billboards, posters, lectures and other methods intended to help prevent underage drinking.

The video, filmed and edited by the students, shows a smiling mom handing over a case of beer to her underage daughter and telling her to promise to stay home with the alcohol.

As the video shows the teen carrying the beer to a roomful of her underage friends, a voice-over says, “She thinks she’s doing me a favor, but she’s committing a fourth-degree felony … and encouraging a life-long addiction to alcohol.”

More than 450,000 youth in the state ages 17 to 21 see those PSAs each month, according to Nielson figures cited by Irwin.

Irwin said the program focuses its prevention techniques on that age group because “that’s really when the most serious drinking goes on and they get behind the wheel.”

The PSAs, which run monthly 200 to 300 times each on My50-TV and New Mexico’s CW, are part of the media literacy project taught at the high school.

“(The program) looks at how media glamorizes using alcohol,” Irwin said. “Then (the students) try to put a spin on it to get the truth about what’s happening and get statistics about drinking and driving.”

One statistic Irwin cited is particularly troubling: the average age adults involved in DWI treatment programs reported that the first time they’d had a drink was between ages eight and nine years old.

Beginning to drink that early can have far-reaching effects. According to the Centers for Disease Control, children who start drinking before they’re 15 are five times more likely to become alcoholics than those who begin drinking when they’re legal.

Other problems children face when they drink include poor grades; fighting; unwanted, unplanned and unprotected sex; alcohol-related car crashes; and dying from alcohol poisoning.

The latter is the subject of one of the billboards created by Independence High students. The billboard design, one of which is on Interstate 25, displays a teen girl sprawled next to a tipped-over bottle of alcohol under the heading “Alcohol poisoning kills.”

Those working to prevent underage drinking hope that among the 227,000 views the billboard gets weekly from people driving past are teens who will think twice before taking a drink.

People in Sandoval County will be seeing even more billboards at the beginning of next year. Part of an additional $90,000 in funding is going toward a spot on the electronic billboard at Sundt Road and NM 528. Four or five messages with an emphasis on the perils of underage drinking will flash a total of 2,500 times a day on the billboard.

How those messages are approached will continue to be guided by Independence High students, who are the ones most likely to know how to reach their peers, Irwin said.

“Whatever their circumstances are that have happened in their life of how they’ve gotten alcohol, that’s what they usually want to address.”

Most teens with mental disorders not on meds: study

By Genevra Pittman

NEW YORK 

(Reuters Health) - Despite concerns that too many U.S. youth use prescription psychiatric drugs, a new study suggests just one in seven teens with a mental disorder has been prescribed medication, and far fewer without a diagnosis are on treatment.

Researchers from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which funded the study, said there was "no compelling evidence for either misuse or overuse of psychotropic medications," which include stimulants for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), antidepressants and antipsychotics.

The findings are based on interviews with more than 10,000 teens and their parents - most of whom were at least high-school educated and middle-class or above.

In contrast, data suggesting high rates of prescription drug use in that age group has come largely from pharmacy claims records, according to an editorial published with the study.

Researchers said it's possible the drugs are used too often among certain types of kids and not often enough in others.

"Certainly the use of psychiatric medications has been increasing in children and adolescents over the years," said Dr. Benedetto Vitiello from the NIH, who worked on the study.

But, he told Reuters Health, "Most of the adolescents who met the criteria for a condition were not receiving medication, which suggests that they were being treated with something else, maybe psychotherapy, or maybe they were not even treated."

"This data may suggest that there may be underuse (of psychiatric medications) in some cases," Vitiello said.

He and his colleagues found 2,350 teens had any type of mental disorder, including anxiety, eating disorders, depression and ADHD.

Just over 14 percent of youth with a mental disorder had been prescribed a psychiatric drug in the past year. That varied by drug and type of disorder: one in five teens with ADHD were recently prescribed stimulants, for example, compared to one in 22 with anxiety who were on an antidepressant.

In youth without signs of a current disorder, 2.5 percent had been prescribed a psychiatric drug recently - most of whom had some signs of distress or a past mental disorder, the research team reported in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.

The study did not keep track of how many teens were taking drugs they weren't prescribed, such as misusing stimulants as study aids.

OVERTREATMENT VS. UNDERTREATMENT

Because the interviews were conducted in the early 2000s, the findings may not mirror current trends in prescribing to youth, the researchers cautioned.

What's more, in his commentary on the study Dr. David Rubin from Children's Hospital of Philadelphia pointed out that the report includes a disproportionate number of higher-income families.

Kids on Medicaid, the government-sponsored health insurance program for the poor, tend to take more psychiatric drugs. That's especially true among the smaller subset of youth in foster care, of whom 12 percent were prescribed antipsychotics in 2007, according to Rubin's own research.

Medicaid enrollees get mental health services for free. But where they can access them, those services are often skewed toward medication, Rubin said, instead of talk therapy, for example.

For middle-class youth, on the other hand, insurance co-pays may present more of a barrier to any type of care, including medication.

In the new study, only about 2 percent of African American youth with depression were on antidepressants, compared to 17 percent of white teens. Similarly, 6 percent of blacks with ADHD took stimulants, compared to 23 percent of whites.

"The concern regarding the overtreatment versus undertreatment of mental health conditions is really a difficult problem to answer," said Dr. Robert Fortuna from the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York, who has studied psychiatric drug prescribing to youth but wasn't involved in the new study.

"It really requires a more nuanced view that we are possibly overprescribing in some situations and missing opportunities to treat in other situations," he told Reuters Health.

"There has to be open discussion and recognition that mental health conditions do affect many adolescents," Fortuna said, and that medications can be one way to treat them.

SOURCE: bit.ly/KEGTVv Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine

Road to recovery: Holidays have new meaning for former addict

By Elisabeth Waldon 

Carrie Anne Ross will spend this Christmas with her family for the first time in years.

The 28-year-old Greenville woman spent the better part of the past decade trying to find herself and learn how to express her feelings. Instead, she found herself lost in the hellish world of an all-consuming drug addiction — with a jail and prison record, near-death experiences and emotional scars as proof.

Carrie Ross plays with her two pit bulls, dogs she adopted from a rescue agency. Their names, Kubera and Janis, have symbolic meanings for Carrie. — Daily News/Cory Smith

Now Ross is out on the other side with a new outlook on life. She agreed to share her story with The Daily News with the goal of helping someone else learn from her experience before it’s too late.

“I only do this in hopes that maybe even one person may read it and know that they are not hopeless,” she said. “That is what I needed. And that is what I try to give to those who still suffer.

“Addiction is life-consuming,” she said. “But so is recovery, if you give it a chance. All you need to be is willing.”

A happy childhood

Ross has no traumatic childhood issues upon which to blame her struggles. She grew up with loving parents, an older sister and two younger brothers.

“I actually had a really good childhood,” she said. “I was loved and I felt loved.”

Ross was born in Dearborn, but her family soon moved to a suburb in Cincinnati, Ohio, where she flourished in school, both educationally and socially. When her family relocated to Greenville, Ross was placed in honors and advanced classes.

But making new friends wasn’t as easy as making A’s. Ross recalls spending a lot of time in the library.

Carrie Ross enjoys a guitar jam session with a friend on her front porch. — Daily News/Cory Smith

“It took me a long time to make friends after moving up here from Ohio,” she said. “I was socially awkward and didn’t really fit in.”

Ross’ mother, Pamela, encouraged all four of her children to get involved in extracurricular activities. Ross began playing string bass at age 10, which led to her picking up additional instruments later on, including the guitar. She sang in choir and played soccer. Ross’ mother worked at an inpatient rehabilitation center for senior citizens and Ross found herself spending a lot of time there, wrapping Christmas presents and bringing in pets for the residents to enjoy.

Ross was especially close to her father, Roger. She bonded with him by hanging out in his garage and listening to classic rock music while he shared his vast knowledge of Harley Davidson motorcycles with her.

“He was my best friend,” Ross said. “He had the biggest heart. One of those people that everybody loved.”

The beginning of a vicious cycle

Ross eventually made new friends in Greenville, but she never quite felt comfortable in her own skin. She knew her friends accepted her, but she often felt anxious and quiet.

Barely into her teens, Ross began attending parties with her new friends and suddenly her feelings of inadequacy disappeared.

“All of a sudden, all of the inner awkwardness I had felt my whole life had gone away,” she said. “I was able to open up, have a good time and actually felt like I belonged.”

What would eventually become a lengthy and vicious cycle started simply enough with Ross going to parties and drinking alcohol on the weekends. She smoked marijuana a few times, which led to smoking pot every day and drinking more often.

Carrie Ross smiles during a Celebrate Recovery Walk and Rally in Detroit on Sept. 16. Ross helped arrange for a charter bus to transport recovering addicts to the rally for free, with the assistance of Riverhaven Coordinating Agency. — Courtesy photo

At age 16, Ross began snorting cocaine – but only on the weekends. She didn’t feel like she was losing control. She tried crack, ecstasy and other psychedelic drugs.

“Of course, it went from weekends to weeklong binges, but I still didn’t think I had a problem, because I could stop using one drug,” she said. “But I always seemed to replace it with another.”

Carrie’s older sister, Cassandra, felt like it was her fault since Cassandra and her friends smoked pot too.

“She was such a good girl,” recalled Cassandra, now 30 years old. “She would tell me how I was ruining my life and all this other stuff because of drugs.”

Cassandra left drug use behind after high school, for the most part. Carrie didn’t.

The first real high

In October 2003, Ross’ father was diagnosed with liver cancer. Ross was suddenly faced with having to help care for Roger, the rock in her life, and watching his health slowly and painfully decline.

“The inner pain was excruciating, but I felt unable to express it, because I didn’t want him to see me break down,” Ross said. “I felt like I needed to be strong for everyone, because things were falling apart.”

Ross took Oxycodone to cope. It was stronger than anything she had ever taken before.

“I got a nice buzz off of it,” she recalled. “It felt warm and calming. It completely numbed everything, mind, body and spirit. And it worked for me, because I have never been comfortable in my own skin or with intense feelings. I felt the illusion of peace, masked by the inability to feel anything at all.

“It felt like a warm wave of comfort manifested into physical feeling,” she said. “It was what I conceived as happiness at the time.”

Carrie Ross enjoyed attending this year’s ArtPrize event in Grand Rapids, as well as spending time with her sister — something that wasn’t a priority when Ross was addicted to drugs. — Courtesy photo

For the first time, Ross felt no pain. She misinterpreted that feeling for happiness. She began taking Oxycodone every day. She could get them easily, so it was a convenient habit and she justified it due to the stressful situation with her father. She began selling Oxycodone, which made it easier to afford the pills.

Ross also entered into a serious, longterm, romantic relationship.

“All I will say about that is that it ended up being extremely destructive from both sides,” she said.

Life after high school

Despite her drug use, Ross continued to function in society. She graduated from Greenville High School in 2003. She worked several jobs at one time, including a grocery store deli, concessions at fairs, an art boutique, various jobs on Mackinac Island and various cashier and waitressing jobs … “just a means to get by, nothing with any potential for growth,” she noted.

As her drug use continued to escalate, she found it easy to get jobs, but difficult to keep them.

“Once I got into opiates, I would dabble in the occasional coke or meth, but nothing too drastic,” she said. “The pills served every purpose I needed. My addiction progressed from eating to snorting and ended at intravenous injection. Once you resort to using the needle, there is really no going back.”

When doctors began restricting Oxycodone prescriptions, Ross said an influx of heroin hit the local streets to fill the need of addicts.

“Basic economics at its worst,” she said. “I found it was way cheaper and since my tolerance had went up so high, that was a good thing to me at the time. A detox nurse later told me that the amount I was describing was not possible, that it would be a sure overdose. My reply was, ‘You want to see?’”

Still, Ross never viewed herself as a drug addict until the first time she went to jail.

Jail and prison

Ross began using methamphetamine at age 19. This went on for about a year. The periods of use were months long. She lost track of time and reason.

“I distinctly remember my mom shaking me and screaming, ‘You are going to die!’ Ross recalled.

Ross was arrested for the first time in July 2004 for carrying a concealed weapon. She had a loaded gun under her car seat, mainly for safety while she was selling pills. She had come to recognize how desperate drug addicts could be when going through withdrawal, although she had never gone through withdrawal herself.

Ross experienced withdrawal for the first time during a weekend in the Montcalm County Jail.

“It was the most excruciating pain I had ever experienced,” she said. “I couldn’t stop throwing up. My insides were revolting. My body hurt. I couldn’t stop shaking. I was freezing, yet profusely sweating. I couldn’t even stand. I just remember laying on the holding tank floor, crying. I didn’t even really know what was going on.”

After her first withdrawal, Ross began to realize she had a problem, but she thought she could control it.

She couldn’t.

She continued to sell drugs and began stealing as well. She repeatedly violated the terms of her probation until it was revoked.

“I found myself homeless, sick and without hope,” she said. “I was almost raped, experienced abuse and left hopeless to find my own way. The insanity is that I continued to use knowing it was the source of all of my problems.”

Ross’ father Roger died from liver cancer on Oct. 10, 2006 – four days after Ross’ 22nd birthday. Once again, she didn’t know how to express her feelings of inner turmoil in a healthy way. The drug use continued to escalate.

Ross was convicted of four felonies and multiple misdemeanors from 2004 to 2011. She spent as much time behind bars as free. She spent two and a half years in prison for retail fraud.

Ross can’t count the number of times she tried to quit drugs. She went to inpatient rehab once, but left after several weeks. She put herself into detox five times, each time lasting five days, but she would be physically ill when she left and would get high to relieve the withdrawals. She even tried going cold turkey.

“Sometimes, I would get a period of time without using, but would always go back,” she said. “A lot of it had to do with the fact that I was never willing to give up the lifestyle. I kept the same schedule, same behaviors, same associations. And eventually, every time, I would start getting high again, no matter how badly I wanted to be clean. I didn’t have any clean friends. I didn’t have the vast support system needed for a recovering addict. Everything was the same.”

Wake-up call

The final straw came last year.

Ross thought she had her life together with a good job and stable home life. She had been clean from drugs for a new length of time. But she was fooling herself … and once again she found herself feeling hollow and alone.

Everything fell apart one night in August 2011 in a room at the Flat River Inn & Suites in Greenville. Officers from the Greenville Department of Public Safety were searching for a local drug dealer. Instead, they found Ross and another man in the drug dealer’s motel room, along with a backpack full of drugs.

“The day before my last arrest, the thought occurred to me that I was going to die from this disease,” Ross recalled. “Divine intervention came in the form of a police raid. And I remember praying that if I get one more chance, I will do everything possible to get better and to make a difference.”

Ross got her one more chance – the Montcalm County Drug Court program. She was told she would be allowed to participate if she pleaded guilty to what would be her fourth felony. She agreed.

“At first I was scared, because everyone says the program is set up for failure,” she said. “I find that is only true for people who don’t want to stay sober. To be honest, everyone involved really cares and just wants the best for you, even though sometimes you may not agree, but remember, my logic got me into this in the first place.”

Road to recovery

No one helped Ross more than her probation officer, Bonnie Steed, who had revoked Ross’ probation twice in the past. The second time Steed revoked Ross’ probation, she had left her with haunting words that rang in Ross’ ears for years after, saying, “WHEN they find you dead in a ditch somewhere, I will not be supervising you.”

After almost a decade of drug abuse, Ross was finally ready to come clean for good. She recognized that the feeling from drug high was actually only the feeling of not being able to feel anything at all. She began to learn the importance of surrounding herself with people who were not addicts. She realized that while she and some of her former friends had a genuine connection, they also helped each other destroy themselves.

“We were all just really sick and the desperation was shared,” she said. “That is probably the No. 1 reason people relapse once they get clean. It was for me. I would get off the drugs, but be desperate for that bond that had grown between friends over years of struggling together. It was a twisted form of camaraderie.

“I still hope to see them get better,” she said. “And I am extremely happy when I get the opportunity to do so. I know though that I have to wait for them to come around on their own. All I can do is live a life that they may want one day.”

A purpose-driven life

Ross will be home with her family this Christmas for the first time since 2007. She and her sister Cassandra are reconnecting for the first time since their teenage years.

“She came out of jail (after the Flat River Inn & Suites incident) with a whole new mindset,” Cassandra said. “I thought she was better when she got out of prison, but when she got out jail, she had a whole new mindset. She had goals and said, ‘I’m gonna do it.’”

The sisters recently enjoyed attending a Trans Siberian Orchestra concert, which has been a traditional way of celebrating Cassandra’s birthday for the past nine years. Carrie went to the first concert nine years ago. She missed the next seven. This year, she was here for the ninth.

“I am so, so proud of her,” Cassandra said. “She is doing so good. I’m so happy for her. She wants to be a drug counselor and she can relate to drug users, which is so, so huge.

“I’m her older sister and she inspired me,” she added. “I’ve been trying to do more and give more every chance I get. It’s just such a beautiful story. I think she’s got the guns for it this time. I’m so looking forward to seeing what she does with her life.”

Ross is also finally getting to know her younger brothers, Keith and Cody.

“They were still so young when I started heavily using that I never got the opportunity to get to know who they really were,” Ross said. “They are great men now and every moment I get to share with them is a source of gratitude.”

Keith, 22, is enjoying his new friendship with his sister. They have been spending time working on cars together and talking.

“She’s been gone for years and it’s like now I can finally hang out with her,” Keith said. “It’s pretty good. She’s a lot more open with people nowadays. She seems happier and she’s a lot more successful now. She does a lot for everybody else.

“I’m just hoping that she keeps up with this program,” he added. “She’s teaching classes now too, she’s teaching this community how to be better. And Greenville has been through some tough times lately.”

Ross has a good job now. She recently moved into a new house with the two pit bulls she adopted through a rescue agency. One dog is named Kubera, after the wrathful guardian and god of wealth in Buddhism. Ross associates Kubera’s wealth namesake not with materialist wealth, but spiritual wealth. The other dog is named Janis after Janis Joplin. The dog’s name was inspired because she enjoys howling along while Ross plays guitar.

“They are both rescue dogs and got me through a lot,” Ross said. “Loneliness can be a big factor and early in my recovery I had gotten Kubera to avoid that pitfall. It worked and I saw it fit to get him a friend as well. That is where Janis came in.”

Ross is on a mission today: to help ease the suffering of those who struggle with addiction. She does so via service work with drug court and other volunteer committees. She organized a bus trip for recovering addicts to attend the Celebrate Recovery Walk & Rally last year in Detroit. She helps collect coats for the homeless. She volunteers at food kitchens. She is attending college with the goal of becoming an addiction therapist.

“It is a humble way of life,” she said. “The biggest thing I can do is stay sober and hopefully someone will see something that I have and they want. You can’t push recovery on anyone. I was blessed with the gift of desperation to do whatever it takes to stay sober. And I do that through a rigorous recovery program. The biggest thing though is living clean and being willing to share that with people searching for the same thing.”

Ross’ road to recovery was long, dirty and hard-fought. But she’s on the right road now, headed in a new direction, excited for what the New Year holds. Her hazel eyes are clear and sparkling. Her smile radiates innocence and hope. Her enthusiastic personality is contagious and full of life.

“I am thankful to be present and to have the relationship with my family that I am gaining,” she said. “Thankful to have real friends who just want to help me recover. And thankful to be able to pass the ripple on.

“And it took all of that for me to finally be willing to change,” she summarized of her story.