Can Kids On Drugs Be Saved?

Chad Barnes had been through three drug-treatment programs by the time he was thirteen. None of them worked. As a last resort his parents sent him to the toughest program in Texas. But Chad vowed to beat it.

by Skip Hollandsworth

June 1990

(Page 5 of 5)

Despite the criticism, Straight garners strong national support. President Bush has endorsed the organization. Nancy Reagan and Diana, Princess of Wales praised the organization after touring the facilities in Washington, D.C. And in Texas there’s Clayton Williams. “I like it,” Williams told me, “because if you start going wrong, they four-point you to the ground until you’re ready to do it the right way.” Straight officials introduced me to several graduates of the program, all of whom said that Straight had whipped them into sobriety. The organization claims—without offering any statistical evidence—that 70 percent of its graduates remain drug-free.

David Tatum recognized the importance of “tough love” treatment programs for undisciplined drug-using youngsters, but he still wanted to know whether the ends justified Straight’s means. Tatum launched a formal investigation in July, and by October 20, he had received a total of fifteen complaints against Straight—all of them from parents whose children did not complete the program. The state investigators looked into five incidents in which Straight kids were restrained for such incidents as “failure to sit up properly,” “failure to move,” and “failure to attend to personal hygiene.” One staff member allegedly tied a client with a nylon rope to prevent him from escaping from a vehicle, and other staff members did nothing while some kids scratched their arms with pieces of metal. Even though the investigation was in progress on October 9, when the free-for-all took place in the meeting room (the one where nearly a dozen kids ended up fighting, including Chad Barnes), Tatum never learned about the fight.

State investigators would learn about another incident involving Chad, however. Through the summer and fall of 1989, Chad had stayed true to his word. Remaining in first phase, he kept up his insurrection, shouting at those who tried to confront him and finding himself restrained over and over. He shut his eyes and pretended to sleep during the group meetings. Regularly, he tried to run away from his host home.

The counselors were increasingly frustrated with him. “We tried everything,” says Amy Cameron, who was then an adult counselor for Straight. “We sent him out for family counseling with an outside therapist, we had his parents and little sisters write him letters, we had him write letters back—and he still stayed resentful.”

The staff kept telling the Barneses that if they continued to believe in the program, Chad would eventually break. But Chad was out to break Straight. He kicked the chairs in front of him when he was forced to sit erectly. He was dragged off to time-out rooms when he bothered the rest of the group. On Thanksgiving afternoon a paraprofessional, angry at Chads rebelliousness, hit him in the face. A Straight parent reported the incident to the commission.

It was not the best time for Straight to have to deal with another allegation of physical abuse, considering that the state investigation was not yet completed. Straight fired the paraprofessional. The program’s officials told the commission that it was cleaning up its own problems. “Straight was highly cooperative,” says Tatum, “and very open in saying that whatever we felt they needed to do, they would do.”

As a result, last December Straight and the Texas Commission on Alcohol and Drug Abuse agreed that only trained staffers—the paraprofessionals and the adult counselors—would be allowed to restrain clients. Time-out rooms were banned, and host homes were required to provide better living arrangements. The state was to make inspections every 120 days through 1990. But Straight did not have to admit to any of the allegations of abuse. When I asked Straight director Carol Koenecke about the list of complaints, she replied that Straight “does not admit the charges are accurate.”

“We feel very comfortable with what the state has done,” she said. “Believe me, if the state had thought we were abusing kids, they would have taken our license away.”

But things at Straight didn’t seem that different. In January, when I visited Straight again, one angry boy kicked the chair in front of him and was grabbed around the chest by a fifth phaser until he calmed down—an apparent violation of the rules. And early this spring, the start of one Family Night had to be postponed for twenty minutes because another big fight broke out between some boys, requiring staffers, other male clients, and five or six fathers to help break things up.

Straight still had that same feeling of potential explosiveness. There never seemed to be enough supervision; only two adult counselors and three paraprofessionals were in the room of one hundred kids at one time. After two years at Straight, one counselor quit this past spring because she said she suffered from burnout. “It is impossible to care for such a huge group of people every day without feeling like you were neglecting some of them,” the counselor told me.

The Moment Of Change

But one thing at Straight did change. One January afternoon I walked into the meeting room and saw Chad Barnes, his shin hanging limply from his hollow-chested body, standing up to address a newcomer in the group. I heard him say, “You just have to set goals for yourself. You have to say you want off these drugs.” The newcomer was scowling. “I’m telling you,” said Chad, “it works.”

Amy Cameron walked up beside me. “He started to work the program right at the start of the year,” she said, sounding a little amazed. “We were about a week away from sending him home for good, and he just started participating.”

“Did you tell him you were going to send him home?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “What finally worked, I think, was that I kept telling him that he was always going to be in this group, that he was never going to go home, unless he started to work. I think it finally sunk in that we all meant it, that we were going to outlast him.”

Chad sat down, smiling. I had never seen any look on his face other than anger. Could someone change that quickly? Lori Means, another adult counselor, also watching, said that Chad’s new antidepressant medication certainly helped. “But I also think he was lonely. He was tired of being the bad guy. He didn’t have any friends in this program, and he knew no one else was going to put up with him. He started working to be accepted by the others,” she told me.

“Maybe he’s faking,” I said.

“Time will tell about that,” she replied. “He isn’t going anywhere for now.”

Chad was moved up to second phase in January, allowing him to spend the night in his own bed for the first time since last June. “It was odd,” recalls Donald Barnes. “He came in and was actually affectionate. He started talking about the future, which we had never heard him do. He said he wanted to go to a trade school and get a job. My wife and I looked at one another and said, ‘Could it be? Is he really working the program?’”

Or had he come up with a new tactic just to get out? A month later, when I got a chance to talk with Chad, he said that he had begun to feel lonely. Sitting in a chair in a conference room, he put his arms on his knees and blankly looked at the ground. “I thought maybe if I started talking and stuff, I’d get some friends,” he said matter-of-factly. “I knew I’d have to work the program if anybody was going to like me. I also wanted to move on in life, you know, go to automotive trade school, something like that.”

“Are you working the program because you want to stop using drugs?” I asked.

Chad paused before answering. “Yeah. I saw people in the group feeling good about themselves, and I wanted to feel good too.” He looked at his hands. “I guess I used drugs because they made me feel less lonely. I used them to hide my feelings.”

It was hard to determine if Chad was sincere or if he was simply quoting a line that he had picked up in a group meeting. A smart teenager can quickly figure out how to play the peer-pressure game and, when left alone, return to his old ways. But right then, looking at Chad, who at that moment was acting more like a confused little boy than a teenage social deviant, I understood what his father had been going through, a man who wanted so desperately to believe in his own son again. “After all the years of hell,” Donald told me, “hearing just one positive statement from Chad is like a blessing. Now I think if Chad stays with the program, he can finally have the right kind of life.”

Maybe Chad can. But maybe the problem is that we expect too much out of those programs—and maybe some parents are trying to avoid their own responsibilities. Studies consistently show that the kids who become drug abusers are those who grow up under poor parenting; the kids adopt their parents’ inability to cope or to communicate their feelings. In one survey of kids in treatment, 50 percent of those labeled as substance abusers had substance-abusing parents. Our war to save kids is being waged with quick-fix promises, but what about the long haul? Any treatment program—from Straight to a psychiatric hospital—can inspire or coerce a kid to stop his drug use. How to maintain abstinence, however, is a different question, one that we have yet to find an answer. Treatment constitutes only 5 to 10 percent of a child’s recovery from drug dependence. The rest comes in outpatient counseling programs, of which there are very few. Why? Insurance doesn’t cover them.

And that is why, on a mild Friday evening in February, I watched with mixed emotions as the Family Night meeting convened, the kids in Straight sang, the introductions were made, and a counselor rose to announce that some of the kids in the program had been promoted to higher phases. I found myself wondering: Were they closer to recovery or closer to relapse?

One by one, children who had advanced stood and shouted the good news to their parents. There was a silence. Then Chad Barnes leaped from his chair and yelled across the room: “Third phase!”

It was a moment of triumph for Straight—exactly the example it needed to show other parents that their children could improve as well. Many of the parents, who had watched Chad fight the system for months, who knew about his other treatment programs and his litany of failures, were in tears. “He won’t be the all-American kid that every mom and dad hopes for,” said Amy Cameron. “But he’s turning into a good kid.”

Donald and Gail Barnes rose to look back at their boy. They knew that a critical period was coming, for Chad could now return to school or work, away from the protected life of Straight, into the world of temptation.

Donald, his hand trying to remain steady as he held the microphone, said, “I remember once saying I was embarrassed to have you for my son. And now, Chad, I’m not. I love you.”

A counselor looked at Chad, to see if he had anything to say. Chad lifted his head and looked directly at his parents.

“I love you too.”

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5