You or a loved one can get help for a drug or alcohol problem and still keep your job and stay at home.
Hi, I'm George Vandal, a counselor with Northern Michigan Hospital's Outpatient Substance Abuse Services.
Along with other professionals, I am available now to take your call and help you with any questions you have about substance abuse and treatment options.
Call us now at Health Access, 1-800-248-6777. We're here to help you.
I started drinking when I was 13 years old. I was just going into high school, trying to fit in, cool crowd I guess.
The average age in the 1980s, first use with the drug alcohol was 13 and 14 years old. We now see it at ages 10 or 11.
My brothers, not just my family brothers, but my extended family brothers, they all tried to warn me that I was having a problem, but it's good to see it.
People have stereotypes about what alcoholics look like and drug addicts and never think that it can happen to them or to people that they love.
99% of alcohol abusers and alcohol dependent people look just like me and you. You can't tell them apart.
I loved the bus and I did whatever I had to do, no matter how humiliating it was. I did what I had to do to get it.
Other than alcohol, abuse of prescription drugs is the second most common problem we see in this field.
When you have a sense of identity and who you are, it helps you, I think, to resist those ineffective coping mechanisms that lead to substance use and abuse.
It's real hard to describe, but my heart gets really, really full and I get really, really grateful.
I get full of emotion like I am right now when I think of those kinds of people that are successful. I think of my own recovery and it's kind of like, wow, this is incredible.
Since the heyday of drug use in the 70s, substance abuse has been in the news, the focus of political campaigns, and the enemy in a war on drugs.
Closer to home, alcohol and drugs have been behind automobile accidents, spousal abuse, and juvenile violence.
What is substance abuse? When do drinks after work turn into dependency? Is partying simply a rite of passage?
To understand the answers, one must discern between the myths and the facts about alcoholism, drug use, and addiction.
The stereotype that people have about alcoholics is what aids in the denial of the disease.
We have a mental image in our mind of what an alcoholic is.
A lot of times it may be the person with a brown paper bag and laying in the gutter.
And then when we look at ourselves, we say, well, I don't look like that person there, so therefore I can't be an alcoholic.
I like to explain the fact that substance abuse or addictive diseases, it's sort of like, think of a penicillin allergy.
I give penicillin to 100 patients, but maybe only 5 of the 100 will have an allergic reaction to it.
But then they'll be allergic to it the rest of their life.
The community at large needs to understand addiction as addiction instead of a moral leper.
That person has a disease, and lots and lots of our society doesn't want to believe that.
Northern Michigan may be removed from the congestion and high crime of urban areas, but it is not removed from substance abuse.
Frequent use of alcohol is higher in northern Michigan than in the state overall,
and addictions to illegal and prescription drugs affect families and community life here just as elsewhere.
Recovery from addiction usually requires social support, education, and self-examination.
Individuals can find assistance through support groups, treatment centers, and prevention programs.
Harbor Hall in Patoskey is one residential program that treats chemically dependent males,
most of whom have been involved in the judicial system because of their addictions.
Having started drinking at age 13, Mike lost control over alcohol and drug consumption when he went to college.
After several run-ins with the law, he was given a choice, jail or treatment.
He entered Harbor Hall just before his 20th Christmas.
My first reaction coming to Harbor Hall was, you know, I was pretty afraid of coming.
I didn't know what to expect, you know.
Came in, you know, probably with a big wall, big shield, you know.
Didn't want to let anybody see what I was feeling.
You know, just had no idea, no idea what I was getting into.
When a person comes into treatment, you know, that's the initial idea that I have this long period of time that I have to stay here.
But we get them involved in a lot of recreation and leisure activities, working out in the gym, learning how to eat healthy,
going out to work and developing good work habits, learning how to make my bed on a daily basis, just developing some self-discipline.
You know, these changes don't happen overnight. They take a period of time.
How's it going, Mike?
Hey, you're doing good. How are you doing, Terry?
Mike began a journey to self-discovery.
He saw that he had started drinking to make friends and that it had become an escape.
I set myself up when I was a little kid, stuffed feelings, you know.
Didn't let people know what was bothering me, which led, you know, down the road to my using
because then I could drink and feel normal, you know, and let those emotions out, let those feelings out, you know.
I thought it was, I thought alcohol was something to help me, you know, that I was able to get those feelings out, but they were all, you know, like, artificial.
Mike's mother, Diane, vividly remembers when Mike started holding his feelings in.
It was the day his father died.
I sat on my bed and I thought, how am I going to tell Mike?
Because they were best buddies.
So it was, I think, one of the most difficult things as a parent to explain that, you know, to your child.
And what Michael did at that point after explaining, you know, Dad's not coming home, that he took his baseball bat and his ball and his glove
and he went out in the backyard and he spent all afternoon batting that ball against the fence.
I let him. I didn't interrupt it.
But I have always left the door open to talk about Dad or talk about anything.
He really had to work to draw what he was thinking, what he was feeling out.
I saw it coming as one of the symptoms to possibly problem drinking.
Alcoholism ran in both sides of Mike's family.
Aware her children were at high risk, Diane taught them about alcoholism and kept a close eye on Mike's activities.
But even as Mike maintained his grades in sports, his drinking increased.
Junior year was the worst year of our life.
He got his driver's license. He had his own truck.
And we would blame the truck. You know, this is a bad omen. This is bad luck. Let's get rid of the truck.
When that wasn't the case at all, you know, we were making excuses at that point.
When he entered Harbor Hall three years later, Mike was still in denial.
Yet listening to similar stories of other clients, he began to understand his disease.
Education plays an important role in having the person recognize the destructive nature of alcoholism and the addiction,
recognizing it for what it is, that it is an addiction.
A lot of times people are coming in with the idea that if I can just control my use,
you know, and then to come to that realization that an addiction is something that's much more powerful than myself as a human being,
and I cannot control that.
It's important for the person to know that they're going to have to have support and being able to maintain abstinence.
And I like to use the adage with clients of like the Apollo 13, it took millions of people to get that first person on the moon.
The same thing is true with sobriety. We do not sober up alone. We need help from others.
Today things that keep me stable is, you know, friends, people to talk to, you know, people who talk to me, helping out others, you know.
Many things all together.
What it takes to successfully recover from addiction is to develop a whole new lifestyle.
It's a lot more than, you know, putting the cork in the bottle.
The client needs to look at all aspects of their life.
I always wanted to fit in, be accepted, you know, and to not do drugs or to not drink would have been something different for me,
and I was, you know, kind of scared of that.
And at first, you know, I started listening to people and, you know, there was...
Mike's now participating in Alcoholics Anonymous, going to college, and speaking to youth about his experience in hopes they will take a different road.
Residential programs enable patients to reconstruct their lives away from familiar surroundings.
But many persons benefit from outpatient programs that enable them to live at home during treatment.
The outpatient program that we have here at Northern Michigan Hospital provides a place for a person to get help for their problem, alcohol or drugs,
and it allows them to continue their jobs, continue to live in their home environment.
It doesn't disrupt the life very much.
And we impact their drinking time and their drug-using time between 6 o'clock and 9 o'clock at night, which is prime time.
When Chris was 17, she started using opiates or painkillers for a high.
Opiates and similar drugs containing codeine often are prescribed after accidents, injuries or surgery.
But Chris was one of those individuals easily addicted to drugs, and for the next 13 years, they controlled her life.
It was like I was never able to be normal.
They were always a part of my life.
I got into shoplifting. I would lie right through my teeth all the time, constantly.
Stealing, lying, cheating. I stole from my family.
Like, no morals. It was like I had no morals at all.
Nothing mattered to me more than the alcohol or drugs.
Alcoholism is commonly thought of as leading to other addictions.
I don't know if it really leads to it, but the same receptor in the brain is stimulated by many similar drugs,
be it cocaine, marijuana, benzodiazepines, such as Valium, Librium, and such.
In other words, the guy that gets a kick from his two martinis will learn that also a little Valium will give him a kick, and so will cocaine.
It took a big scare for Chris to finally enter treatment.
Her husband wanted a divorce.
The involvement of families in the treatment of the addictive diseases is critically important.
They're often the first ones to recognize it. They're the first ones to really suffer from it.
But they assist us in helping to get the person to therapy, continue therapy, and especially in follow-up.
The roles that the family plays in a person's recovery, what we suggest is to hold the addicted person accountable for all behavior.
Don't let them off the hook. Don't enable them. Don't call in to work for them.
Don't make excuses for them. Don't pick up the bad check.
Hold them strictly accountable for all of their behavior.
Are you talking more with your family?
Yes, yes. Communication is there.
Yeah, I'm able to tell somebody how I feel when I feel it, when before I would go get high,
instead of dealing with those feelings, instead of talking about them.
Through therapy, lectures, and spiritual counseling, Chris began to understand her illness and forgive herself for her actions.
I've always had a hard time accepting and dealing with everything that I've done.
The last time I went to treatment, I finally accepted that I do have a disease.
And now a lot of that guilt is gone.
A lot of the guilt for the things that I've done and the people that I've hurt is gone.
I blame it on the disease. I'm an alcoholic addict, and I have a disease.
And all I can do is go to my meetings and work the 12 steps and do what I can do, one day at a time, to better myself.
For different groups, you need to know that culture in order to be effective in implementing health care to that specific group.
Substance abuse among Native Americans is still a high prevalence.
There's still a lot of denial for the use among Native Americans, but health professionals and I think other professionals can see that the devastating effects that alcohol and substance abuse does have on Native Americans.
Compared with the general population, a lower percentage of Native Americans drink.
But for physiological reasons, those that do run twice the risk of alcoholism.
For most Indian people, they should not have that first drink because it does open up that door for the intolerance and create that craving.
Yes, I lost part of my life because of alcohol. There's a lot I don't remember because of the blackouts.
There are a lot of situations that occurred during the Nigerian thing that wiped out a lot of friendships.
Joe, also known as Red Wolf by his Odawa community, started drinking as an adolescent.
They say there's a very thin line between cool and fool and somewhere in my teen years I stepped over that line because before I reached the age of 20, I was having a lot of problems.
Although he worked regularly, he drank his way through the weekends. His contact with the police grew frequent.
In 1974, Joe faced charges of driving while intoxicated and finally entered a halfway house treatment program, but he felt very uncomfortable with the Shagunash, or English-speaking, counselors.
I felt very beneath them because they were there in their suits and ties.
I felt very uncomfortable because I felt like I was talking to a superior being. Of course, they probably were. They had to be because I was so far down in the pits.
As a nurse and counselor, Arlene Nagunash became convinced that treatment should be tailored to groups such as women or the elderly.
She believes Native people recover most fully in programs geared to their traditions.
Even though maybe you're not actively practicing your traditions, that value is there and you may have some feelings about it.
Maybe you can't express those feelings, but that is there and that creates an inner conflict with you.
And when you're with other Indian people, they can understand and feel how you feel.
Native Americans treatment programs incorporate spiritual and cultural traditions, such as pipe smoking, drumming, and dancing.
Joe applied for a transfer from the halfway house to such a program in the Upper Peninsula. There, seeds were planted for his future.
This one spiritual helper came in and he explained that when you leave here, hopefully you will be a warrior.
And they said that a warrior is not what you see on TV. A warrior is a man or a woman that knows and accepts responsibilities to his tribe, his community, his family, and to himself.
But after six months, Joe left treatment against staff approval. Two weeks later, he was drinking.
I left there ASA. That's against staff approval. They didn't feel I was ready to leave yet, but I felt that I had enough.
I felt that I had enough knowledge about alcohol, alcoholism. Here I was. I was a wealth of knowledge. I knew all that stuff, you know.
But when I left there, I found out that I didn't know about Joe.
I feel that for Indian people, a treatment program needs to include spirituality because they live within a circle and all things are connected.
I think like my friend talked about the other day is that he learned about alcohol, but he didn't learn about himself.
And so in order for you to get recovered and maintain your recovery, you need to know about self. And you need to know how you live within that circle.
In 1977, the bottom fell out for Joe. He experienced a case of tremors and hallucinations so frightening that he checked himself into detoxification.
From that day on, he reclaimed his life.
As I always tell people, as the clouds are blowing away, you know, the clouds, the dark clouds of my life are blowing away, I'm starting to realize more things.
I realize that there's been help there all along. It was just me that wasn't ready. I couldn't recognize it.
But now that I know that it's out there, it's made a big difference.
I feel more comfortable with myself now. I come to a point where I like me again.
It wasn't until I was eight, ten years that somebody actually said that I was a warrior.
And I felt I must be making some headway.
The revival of the 70s. Bell bottoms, tie-dye shirts, and the Beatles are back.
So are marijuana symbols, drug messages and music, and the belief that marijuana and other drugs are not harmful.
In the area of substance use, preteens and teens are a special concern.
A growing number are smoking grass, huffing inhalants, and turning to LSD.
Adolescence is a time of expanding horizons and emerging independence. Is experimentation simply a part of growing up?
Part of adolescence is to be able to experience the topsy-turvy emotions, some of the pain, our bodies are going through changes,
just the whole process of growing up.
And the negative consequences of drug or alcohol use at that age is that it stunts the emotional growth.
We live in a society where we want immediate results.
As a person's feelings, those take a period of time to be able to work through, and we're not used to taking that time.
And if we learn at an early age that if I don't feel good, I can take something like a drink or a pill or a fix to make me feel good,
that stunts the emotional development that we need to be able to deal with life's problems.
Celia Kelly and her husband Scott run Bay Area Substance Education Services in Charlevoix.
To focus on prevention, the Kellys work in area schools, run a teen center, and teach parenting workshops.
A lot of parents have difficulties with discussing drug use with their children because, number one,
they need to become educated as to what the drug is, what the drug is about.
Today we are faced with numerous drugs that have varying strengths.
If you look at alcohol, alcohol is a lot different than it was back in the 70s.
Marijuana is a lot stronger, you know, so things are a lot different, and there's a lot more drugs out there that kids can get into.
So parents need to educate themselves first and then talk with their children.
Communication is the key factor.
Another difference from the 70s is the use of aerosols, solvents, glues, and other items commonly found in household cupboards and refrigerators.
Huffing is something that scares me a great deal as a health care provider.
I think that we erroneously, when we teach about drugs in high school and grade school, include that as a category of a drug
when, you know, most of the substances that adolescents are inhaling are not meant to be consumed by humans.
They're used as solvents.
Potential consequences of huffing are great. The chemicals dissolve human tissue.
Diagnostic tests have revealed loss of brain mass after repeated use.
Youth have died when chemicals coated their lungs.
The good news is that the best prevention lies in skillful parenting, having open communication with one's children,
strongly accepting them, and supporting their efforts to make friends.
And the earlier one teaches children how to refuse unhealthy choices, the better.
Kids have a lot of difficulty with how to resist peer pressure, and one of the main focuses is to develop their refusal skills.
And there's usually two different refusal skills.
There's the assertive, where the child is able to say, no, I do not wish to engage in that activity and stand by that.
And then there's the aggressive refusal skill, where they almost get into a blatant yelling,
how could you impose this particular idea on me at this time?
So teaching them to be assertive and just make their statement is extremely important.
And although youth will complain loudly, setting and enforcing consistent limits is important.
What the parent needs to do is to be in tune with what's going on with the adolescent,
know the parents of where the adolescent is going to be.
For instance, if Johnny's going down to visit Sam, know what that belief system is of that particular family system.
Know where they are, what they're doing, who they're with, the five W's, the who, what, when, where, and why.
The task of raising children can seem daunting, but relatives and mentors can play supportive roles.
And there are community resources such as sports, recreation programs, school counselors, and doctors.
Education about the realities and myths of substance abuse is an ongoing task,
one that begins with simple, open communication with young children.
For those in recovery, the journey from abuse and addiction is one that begins with acceptance.
It is a lifelong journey that involves self-discovery, requires family and community support, and takes one step at a time.
I know that there's no guarantee that I have it being gone.
You know, it's still right there, and I can take it back anytime I want.
But today I choose not to.
My marriage is great now.
I have a better relationship with my kids, with all of my family.
But they're coming older, because I guess they feel I have something to offer.
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