Reviving Ophelia (31 page)

Martin said, “We weren’t prepared. The first time we smelled alcohol on Danielle’s breath we were too shocked to respond.”

“I got away with more than most kids because they couldn’t check on me.” Danielle continued, “I’m the one who drives in the family. I told them I was going one place and went another. If they called and caught me lying, I’d tell a bigger lie.”

Martin said, “Yes. Our car supposedly had ten flat tires this year. I checked with a friend and he told me this wasn’t likely.”

“Why did you start drinking?”

Danielle shrugged. “I always felt different from other kids. Everyone told me how much my folks depended on me, how important I was to them. In junior high I got sick of that. I wanted to be normal. All the normal kids were getting in trouble, and I thought, Why can’t I?”

I watched the parents’ faces as Danielle talked. Their faces were less guarded than those of sighted people. They had spent less time on impression management. Their faces showed curiosity, concern, pride and fear.

Danielle continued, “I know this sounds lame, but I like to get high. I like the experience of being relaxed and happy. I like marijuana too. It was wrong to be loaded and driving; I won’t do that again. But otherwise I don’t want to change. My parents want me to go into treatment, but it would wipe out their life savings. I won’t let them spend their money that way.”

Antoinette asked me, “What should we do to help Danielle?”

Martin looked hopefully in my direction. “Please reason with her. Her health is the most important thing to us.”

I thought Danielle used chemicals in an experimental and recreational way. I saw no reason to doubt her explanation that she wanted to be a normal kid. I suspected that she pressured herself to be an ideal daughter to these two loving parents. Perhaps I could help her lower her expectations of herself and also learn to relax in healthier ways.

I said that Danielle was already on her way to being more responsible about her alcohol use. She’d admitted she had a problem and talked about it with her family in an honest, open way. She’d promised not to drive and drink again. I agreed with the parents that her health was the most important thing, but I wasn’t sure that Danielle needed a treatment center. We could try therapy first.

Danielle picked Bon-Bon off her mother’s lap. “I’ll try therapy, but I want to pay for it myself.”

“No, no,” her parents said in unison. “We want to help you.” Martin came over and gave her a hug. So did Antoinette. I thought as I watched this family with their cat and their music that they were fortunate people.

Dressed in green polyester pants and a yellow golf shirt, Kevin looked provincial in spite of his international work as an agronomist. Roberta, who was a public health nurse, was sweet-faced and matronly. She began, “We found pot in Kelli’s bedroom.”

“We have known Kelli was on something for months now,” Kevin said. “She and her boyfriend, Brendan, act too goofy sometimes.”

I asked about alcohol, and Roberta said, “Kelli wouldn’t touch the stuff. She’s a vegetarian and hates alcohol and tobacco. She’s attracted to the drugs of the sixties. She’s a hippie at heart.”

Kelli was the youngest of three daughters. Her older sisters were smart, successful and attractive. Carolyn had been a straight-A student and a Miss Nebraska finalist who was married to an attorney and pregnant with her first child. Christina was in her senior year at Grinnell, where she’d been a student leader. Soon she’d be on her way to medical school.

Roberta said that they were an ordinary family who liked church, Big Red football and community socials. Their first two daughters were easy to raise. “We mainly stayed out of their way. Other kids flocked around them. They never needed rules or curfews. We actually told Christina not to study so hard.

“Kelli is so different,” she said. “We’ve been at a loss what to do with her. She likes different food, movies, music and people. She’s attracted to strangeness. All the things that worked with the others seem to be wrong for her.”

“The older girls were self-motivated while Kelli doesn’t care about success,” Kevin said. “She’s hard to punish because she doesn’t want money, television or new clothes. Once we tried to ground her from her boyfriend and she threatened to kill herself. She would have too.”

“We’re sure she’s having sex,” Roberta added. “Brendan and she are inseparable. He’s a nice enough boy, but we know they do drugs together. Her sisters never drank or took drugs.”

“It sounds like the older girls are a hard act to follow,” I said.

Kelli was desperately seeking her own niche, different from her sisters. Since they had the glorious and successful niches, Kelli was left with the black-sheep niche.

“One of the problems with your earlier success is that it makes it hard to do things differently. It was easy to parent Christina and Carolyn. But for Kelli, you may need a consultant.”

“Kelli thinks we love her sisters more than her, but it’s not true,” Roberta said. “We’re just mainstream people and Kelli is harder for us to understand.”

The next week I met with Kelli, who was tall and thin with long brown hair. She could have been a beauty queen if she tried, but clearly she wasn’t trying. She wore an orange shirt, torn jeans and combat boots with thick olive socks. She was polite but distant. I had the feeling she was enduring this session, so I talked about the sixties for a while.

Kelli said, “I wish I’d been alive back then. I have nothing in common with the kids of today.”

“What do you like to do?”

“Hang out with Brendan. We feel the same way about things. He likes me just the way I am.”

She looked at me suspiciously. “Did my mom tell you we were having sex?”

I nodded.

“It’s no big deal,” Kelli said. “We love each other and I’m on the pill.”

I asked her what a “big deal” was from her point of view.

She tossed back her hair and said, “My parents. They just aren’t like me. They like to play bridge and do crossword puzzles. They watch John Wayne movies and listen to Conway Twitty albums. I feel like the hospital made a mistake and sent me to the wrong home. My sisters were perfect for my parents. They are middle-class success stories. I’m not going to be.”

I asked how she felt as she talked. “It hurts. They try to love me as much as my sisters, but they can’t. My parents love it when we achieve—that’s what makes us worth something. They don’t know what to love about me.”

“What do you want?”

“Enlightenment—what the Buddhists call ‘Nirvana.’ ”

I said, “That’s pretty ambitious.”

“Brendan and I read about Buddhism. When we have the money we’re going to the Naropa Institute in Boulder.”

We spent the rest of the session talking about Buddhism. Kelli knew a surprising amount for a fifteen-year-old. She was animated on this subject, and at the end of our time she seemed reluctant to go.

The next session Kelli wore those same boots, jeans and socks, but this time with a rose-colored T-shirt. She brought me some drawings she’d made of the Buddha, the tree of his enlightenment and the elephant god. She said, “I hate alcohol and cigarettes. They destroy consciousness.”

“How about other drugs?”

“We take mushrooms now and then and acid.” She paused. “Some of the best moments of my life were on acid.”

She liked the way LSD changes reality—the way music sounds different, colors are more vivid and oranges taste better. She had a battered old copy of Timothy Leary’s
Road Maps to the Mind.
But she said, “I prefer a natural high.”

We discussed nonchemical ways to alter consciousness. I told her about psychological research on “flow experiences.” We talked about how meditating and also the creative process can alter consciousness. Kelli asked if she could bring Brendan in to meet me and I agreed.

I met again with Roberta and Kevin and agreed with them that Kelli was different from her sisters. They would need different ways to approach her. For example, maybe they could take her and Brendan to visit the Naropa Institute or help them enroll in a course on Buddhism. Kelli needed to define herself in new ways, not as different from her sisters, not as a drug user, but as a sensitive, idealistic and philosophical person.

When I talk to teenagers about chemical use, I try to remember that curiosity and exploration are normal at this age. Healthy teenagers experiment, and it’s not sensible to label every teenager who uses chemicals as an addict. Except in extreme cases, it’s better to deal with the problems that inspire chemical use and the problems that chemical use causes. I avoid labels.

Relationships are powerful agents for change. I work at connecting and at helping parents connect with teenage girls who are abusing drugs or alcohol. I also try to find something to substitute for the chemicals—a new habit that’s more positive and a new identity that’s less self-destructive. And I include friends in the process. I acknowledge bonds and encourage teens to help each other.

Research shows that girls are less likely to be heavy drinkers if they are introduced to moderate drinking in their homes. Teenage girls who drink only when they are with peers are more at risk for problems. Probably it’s a good idea to offer girls a small glass of wine at special dinners or on holidays. That keeps drinking from being viewed as rebellious behavior.

Heavy chemical use in teenagers can be a signal that families need to make changes. Often chemical abuse is a cry for help. Sometimes teenagers may simply need more attention. Ordinary families may need help dealing with the stresses of adolescence. Or they may need lessons in how to communicate, relax, appreciate each other or have fun. Other times parents may have their own addictions to conquer, or the family may have secrets to unravel. Heavy alcohol or drug use may indicate self-hate or despair about unsolved family problems.

It’s good that schools now have early and fairly extensive education about chemical use and abuse. Everyone should learn the signs of problem drinking and drug use. For example, the National Council on Alcoholism recommends the 1, 2, 4 rule. That is, don’t have more than one drink an hour, two drinks a day or four drinks a week total, and you’ll be safe from developing problem drinking. Most girls are shocked when I share this rule. They say, “Everyone I know drinks more than that.”

Teenagers are eager to help family members and friends with chemical abuse problems and they can be given guidance in this. Peer counseling and support for moderate use is highly effective. Everyone should know where to go for help and, regardless of income, have access to that help.

Finally our culture needs to change. For many adolescents, smoking and drinking stand for rebellion and maturity. The media contributes to this illusion, linking sophistication with self-destructive, unrestrained behavior, not prudent, thoughtful behavior. The characters with self-control are often portrayed as boring geeks.

Corporate America encourages girls to consume products such as Cokes and designer jeans, and chemicals such as alcohol and nicotine, to sedate their natural and understandable pain. As the cigarette companies have discovered, adolescent girls are perfect targets for anyone peddling sophistication. In fact, adolescent girls are the only population group whose smoking has increased over the last twenty years.

Advertising teaches that pain can be handled by buying and consuming products. There’s big money to be made in creating wants and then encouraging consumers that these wants are needs, even rights. We are taught to go for it. We’re encouraged that if it feels right, it is right. And we’re told, “Don’t worry, spend money.”

The junk values of our mass culture socialize girls to expect happiness and regard pain as unusual. Advertising suggests that if they aren’t happy, something is wrong. Pain is presented as something that can and should be avoided by consuming the right things. It’s treated as an anomaly, not an intrinsic and inescapable part of being human. Contrast this worldview with Thoreau’s line: “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” Or with Buddha’s statement: “Life is suffering.”

America in the 1990s places enormous emphasis on the gratification of every need. It hasn’t always been so. When Robert E. Lee was asked the best message to teach the young, he replied, “Deny thyself.” Freud wrote that happiness was the experience of loving and working. He believed that the gratification of all wants was impossible and would be dangerous to individuals and society as a whole.

As a society we have developed a “feel good” mentality. We need to rethink our values and to break the link between negative feelings and chemical use. Ideally, we would offer our children new definitions of adulthood besides being old enough to consume harmful chemicals, have sex and spend money. We would teach them new ways to relax, to enjoy life and to cope with stress. We have a responsibility to teach our children to find pleasure in the right things.