Cure Not Worth It, Disillusioned Drug Program Backers Decide

To hundreds of adults who knew and swore by him, no one possessed the magical touch of Bob Meehan in plucking teen-agers from the living hell of drug and alcohol abuse and restoring them to a life of sobriety.

Hundreds of San Diego-area teen-agers turned their backs on chemical abuse after finding that life could be more fun sober, Meehan’s way.

And so it was that Freeway, a private drug and alcohol recovery program founded locally by Meehan in 1981, won thousands of supporters as families trumpeted success stories of kids-turned-sober under the guidance of Meehan-trained counselors.

This same Freeway is today out of business, shut down by critics who say its members simply exchanged one addiction--to drugs and alcohol--with another addiction--to a life style of self-gratifying antisocial behaviors, dependency on one another at the expense of their home life, and a cult-like adoration of Meehan as the most important person in their life.

Most of these children, off drugs and alcohol, were encouraged by Freeway counselors to turn to a life of chain-smoking, vulgarity, lying to parents and “fun felonies”--Meehan’s description of teen-age pranks--according to some former staff members of Freeway.

Some of those activities included turning flammable aerosol cans into blowtorches, disrupting restaurants with food fights and vandalism, bashing in or setting off fireworks in mailboxes, and joy riding at breakneck speeds down freeways or mountain roads.

To supporters, Freeway was the only cure to the heartbreak of a child ravaged by drugs or alcohol.

To critics, Freeway was a scam that, in the curse of getting kids straight, ravaged their values, social ethics and home lives.

There seemed to be little middle ground, no compromise between critics and fans of Freeway. Take it or leave it, love it or hate it.

Even those parents who acknowledged that their children’s behavior was less than socially acceptable said in the next breath that it was a small price to pay for sobriety.

“When my son came home (from Freeway meetings) looking worse, not better, swearing like a mule skinner and chain-smoking cigarettes, it was hard to handle,” said Mike Barney, whose stepson was enrolled in Freeway.

“But those were his choices--and as long as it’s his choice also to remain drug-free, I can love him despite the other things,” he said. “I’m even going to the store to buy him cigarettes, even though I don’t smoke.”

An inside look into Freeway’s philosophy on exchanging drugs and alcohol for “fun sobriety” is offered by Tammy Shuman, a 24-year-old counselor in the organization who quit March 7 after, she said, she grew tired of “deceiving parents about what was going on.”

“We as counselors encouraged the fun felonies. We figured that the more trouble they could get into--and get away with--that was illegal or irresponsible, the easier we could get them to see that they could have more fun being sober. We made it look attractive,” Shuman said. “If the parents came in, concerned about what was going on, I’d say, ‘Hey, look, would you rather have them high?’ They were so afraid of that, they’d back off. I can’t believe how much power I had over 100 parents.

“Some of the parents knew what was going on and that it was wrong, but when you have a good product to sell--sobriety--some people are willing to accept just about anything else to have it.”

Freeway’s demise came Thursday night at a special meeting of its board of directors, called in the wake of mounting pressure from former Freeway participants who said the organization was misguided and should be shut down.

Leading Freeway’s downfall was private consumer advocate Captain Sticky, perhaps as much of an enigma as Meehan as he promotes himself as America’s “only practicing caped crusader and destroyer of evil,” using the title as his official name, even on his driver’s license.

Despite--or because of--the fantasy caricature, Freeway critics turned to Sticky to organize their campaign to unravel the organization. Sticky focused media attention on the Freeway critics and on Thursday night succeeded in shutting it down.

“I see no victory in this, because this was a situation where everyone lost, lost, lost. The main objective now is to get the kids out of their programmed states and get them help,” Sticky said.

“And I, like the Easter pig, will hippity hop out the door, leaving behind my bag of truth, and go on to other crusades,” he said.

Meehan--who promotes his program as America’s most successful in getting teen-agers off drugs and alcohol, and who received national prominence in 1979 for his successful treatment of entertainer Carol Burnett’s daughter--could not be reached for comment Friday.

Fred Williams, an attorney and chairman of Freeway’s nine-member board of trustees, said the board voted to terminate the organization as of 5 p.m. Friday because it had run out of money.

He would not comment on whether Sticky’s campaign played a role in the decision except to say, “When people call me and make allegations--yes, there was pressure.”

He said the board considered--and dismissed--the idea of a fund-raising effort to save the organization, which operated on an annual budget of about $250,000.

“I assume that (negative publicity about Freeway) was a part of the problem,” he said.

“There has been a tremendous amount of allegations and accusations over the last two weeks. The board has not been able to investigate completely any of the allegations or had the opportunity to make our own investigation,” he said.

At the time it closed Friday, Freeway had about 10 paid full-time counselors with a client roster of about 500 families, officials said.

Later Friday night, about 200 former Freeway supporters, mostly parents, met at the El Cortez Hotel to discuss not only the pitfalls of the program but to hear what other drug and alcohol recovery programs are available in the community to help teen-agers.

Freeway’s forerunner was a Meehan-developed program in Houston called the Palmer Drug Abuse Program, which began in 1972 and spread to several other cities in Texas with branch operations. Meehan said he, better than anyone, could treat teen-agers for drug and alcohol abuse because he is a former addict, con man and convict who could relate to the reality of teen-agers on drugs. His success stories won him the endorsements of Carol Burnett and Tim Conway, among others, along with national and generally positive media exposure.

In 1981, Meehan came to San Diego and established first Freeway and then SLIC (for Sober Live-In Center) Ranch, near Lake Wohlford east of Escondido. It operated without a state license because of Meehan’s contention that it was only a room-and-board facility with rehabilitation counseling occurring in private homes around the county.

Parents were charged $5,000 and more a month for their children’s stay at SLIC Ranch.

Freeway was promoted as a peer support group for teen-agers to get off drugs and alcohol; “satellite offices” were located in borrowed church buildings around San Diego County where teens trying to go straight could spend the day with peers trying to do the same, for mutual support.

While parents were led to expect that their children would change their life styles for the better and graduate out of Freeway within months, “some of the kids have become so dependent on Freeway that they’ve been coming to the satellite offices day in and day out for years,” Shuman said. “They don’t go to school, they don’t hold jobs and they’re not moving forward with their lives.”

She said one of her jobs as an intake counselor at Freeway was to identify which parents could afford to send their children to SLIC Ranch for a month or longer, whether the children needed more concentrated counseling or not.

Freeway counselors encouraged students to drop out of school and to spend their days at the satellite offices, arguing that the school environment was unhealthy because of the presence of drugs on campuses.

“When a kid came into the office with his parent for the first time, we’d meet first with the kid,” she said. “We’d smoke cigarettes and cuss and they’d open up. I’d say, ‘Hey, do you want to smoke?’ and he’d say, ‘I don’t want my parents to know,’ and I’d say, ‘Don’t worry about that. Your parents will see me as the drug expert and they’ll do what I tell them. You can have a carton a week around here.’ It’s easier to get kids off drugs if you give them another dependency to hang onto.”

In addition to the daily regimen at the satellite offices in which the youngsters would just “hang out” together, teens and parents would meet separately once a week or more frequently, as support groups. Newcomer parents would share war stories of their children on drugs, sharing suggestions on how to deal with their addicted children, and hear veteran Freeway parents tell success stories of children gone straight.

“Freeway has been nothing short of absolutely valuable for our family,” said Rose Laski of Carlsbad, who has two teen-age boys in the Freeway program.

“They were both headed in pretty destructive ways as far as their behavior in school and home. They had no self-motivation and real low self-esteem. But thanks to Freeway, everything has turned around. They’re doing their school work, they’re dressing real neat, they’ve dropped their heavy-metal T-shirts.

“You won’t find a program that pleases 100% of the people, but we have proof in our families that Freeway works. I now experience a calmness and a peace in my family.”

About the so-called “fun felonies,” she remarked, “Before they became involved with Freeway, they had problems with law enforcement that were a lot more difficult than what I hear about with ‘fun felonies.’ Prior to Freeway, they had arrest records; nothing like that has happened since. I think a drug-using teen-ager is more dangerous than a kid who gets a little wild and wants to have a fun time.”

Nancy Swickard of Solana Beach credits Freeway for getting her 16-year-old daughter off cocaine and marijuana. “Her dignity, her self-esteem, her goals in life and, most of all, her relationship with her dad and I have been fully restored,” she said.

“There may have been a few things wrong with Freeway--I’m willing to accept that--but you don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater,” she said.

Fourteen-year-old Shane Tackett of Tierrasanta said that, until Friday, he had been going to satellite offices daily for 11 months when he first joined Freeway. He said he pursues his school studies with a home-study program.

“If I went back to school, I wouldn’t be able to stay sober because of all my old friends and the negative peer pressure and drugs that are at school,” he said.

Tackett, like many other Freeway members, said he lived for about a month at the home of another Freeway parent.

“It taught me how much I needed my parents and that I hadn’t been treating them right,” he said, “and that I was just a punk who was using them--and that is why they were fed up with me, too. Now that I’ve come back home, things have been going really smoothly.”

A different picture, however, is painted by attorney Donald Ceplenski, who became disenchanted with Freeway three years ago while two daughters were involved in the program after also spending time at SLIC Ranch.

His oldest daughter is still involved in Freeway; the younger one, Tracy, dropped out.

“Tracy was a 100% Freeway person but she was living at home and they didn’t like that. I overheard a young man in our home one day telling her how Freeway was love and happiness and the only place she could be that happy and have all this love was to leave home. That wasn’t easy for me to deal with,” Ceplenski said.

“When I started questioning Meehan about Freeway, people turned against us by saying I was an alcoholic, a drug addict and a child abuser.

“Some parents still won’t believe any of this about Freeway because they had gone through a nightmare with their kids on drugs, and they got serenity back in their lives after they turned control over to Meehan and the counselors at Freeway. They blindly followed him, and did not open their eyes to what was really happening.

“There was almost a cult among the parents.”

Scott Tucker, who enrolled in Freeway as a drug abuser and became one of its counselors, said Meehan encouraged teen-agers to stick with the program “by telling them, ‘If you stay with me, you’ll be OK, but if you leave, you’ll be a failure.’ He set them up to fail, and some of them did.”

He said that, as a newcomer to the program, he was told not to look for employment “but to make sobriety my first-time job and to let my parents take care of me.”

His mother, Glenda Tucker, said: “I was off-the-wall ecstatic because my 18-year-old son was getting off drugs. I fell in love with the guy (Meehan). But they’d take advantage of us because they saw how vulnerable we as parents were. They advised us to buy Scott a new car in order to keep him from going back on drugs and, hey, our wallets just flew open.”

Glenda Tucker became an active supporter of Freeway, emerging as its chief fund-raiser while singing its praises. Scott, meanwhile, saw his life changing and he wasn’t sure it was for the better.

“They told me I could no longer see (a girlfriend), that I had to stop going to church and that if I wanted to get close to God, then I had to get close to people and I could do that by getting close to Freeway,” he said.

Glenda Tucker said she withdrew from Freeway because “even though Meehan can get kids sober better than anyone else I know, he does it so drastically that they can’t function in society.”

Paul Britton is a former executive director of Freeway who left the program because, he admitted, he returned to using drugs.

“We were telling so many lies to so many people that I thought, if I’m going to con the world, I might as well get some of the benefits, so I started using drugs again,” Britton said.

“I didn’t approve of fun felonies because of the public-relations backfire, but he said kids should be allowed to do them because he wanted to make his program more attractive to young people than any other program.”

Dick Hoffman, the current executive director of Freeway, called the pranks “youthful misdemeanors” but he said Freeway counselors did not encourage or condone them. “These children are not supervised 24 hours a day; that’s up to their parents,” he said.

Both supporters and critics of Freeway said Friday they would look for alternatives to the disbanded program.

“I’m not angry,” said Rose Laski. “Freeway was valuable and gave my children the support they needed. But for everything there is a purpose and a time. They know that the end of Freeway doesn’t give them cause to give up their sobriety. They’ll find another support group for the maintenance of their sobriety.”