Sober Truths: Life as Teen-Agers--and Former Addicts

Five years ago, Burbank teen-ager Joe Metz was more interested in breaking the law than enforcing it. “I’ve tried almost every drug you can think of,” he said.

Today, Metz has been clean for more than three years, and he is thinking about a career in law enforcement. “I’m kind of interested in SWAT,” the 17-year-old said. “I want to get a career going before I start a family.”

Family used to be something to escape. At age 12, Metz became addicted to drugs. “I started dealing drugs, got into gangs, stopped going to school in the seventh grade and didn’t go for about three years. I used to rob houses, and I’d hit my mom and brother. I was very violent. I wanted to hurt people,” he said.

Metz went straight Feb. 22, 1986. He’s now a full-time 11th-grade student at Burbank High School, and is trying to catch up in a few subjects from his three-year absence. He’s close again to his mother and brother, although he still misses his father, who died 10 years ago in a sky-diving accident.

“I feel more in control now,” he reflected. “I can remember what happened yesterday. I think of myself in a more positive way.”

The number of teen-agers who have beaten an alcohol or drug problem is increasing. “I see a lot more kids wanting to get straight these days than I did three years ago,” said Cary Quashen, a former addict and alcoholic who has been clean for eight years. He manages the teen-agers’ program of the 25 Tough Love groups in Southern California, and he is also senior counselor at the ASAP drug rehabilitation unit at St. Luke’s Hospital in Pasadena.

“It’s not just parents trying to get their kids straight,” Quashen said. “A lot of kids decide on their own they want to get straight because they’re sick and tired of doing drugs. At our Burbank High School Tough Love meetings, for example, we used to have about 15 teens attending each week, and now we have about 78. And there are definitely more families trying to get help at the ASAP unit.”

Metz, Crista Gonzales, and Barbara Vickers are three Valley teen-agers who have gone straight. Their stories are fairly typical of many recovering teen-agers.

Several nights a week, Joe Metz attends meetings such as Tough Love or an alumni-association meeting of other teen-agers who, like Metz, were once locked up in the ASAP drug-rehabilitation unit at St. Luke’s. Metz became an ex-gang member while giving up drugs, and he has made many new friends. These are the people he leans on when he suffers an occasional urge to indulge again.

“I still get urges to use, but the difference between people who are serious about staying sober and people who aren’t is that those who want to stay sober will tell someone else if they have an urge to do something. They’ll talk about it with another person to help them get over it. People who aren’t serious about staying sober will just act on it,” he said.

According to counselor Quashen, “The hardest part for recovering teens is giving up their old friends. User friends are going to pressure them to use again, because sobriety is threatening to them.

“If a kid gets loaded again after being sober, it’s because he was lonely and called up his old friends instead of his new ones,” Quashen said.

Going regularly to sobriety meetings and staying in touch with other sober kids is known as “working a program.” As Quashen repeatedly tells these teens, “The program works if you work the program.”

Metz attends from two to seven evening meetings each week, where he discusses his own problems and helps newly sober youngsters with theirs--problems with family, school, friends and themselves.

“It reminds me of how I used to be,” he said. “Sometimes you need to think back on that, but I’m much happier now. The kids who are working to get off drugs look to me as a sort of role model, because I’ve been clean for three years, and I’ve changed so much.”

His relationship with his mother is much improved. “I’m her son now, not a stranger. We talk more. When I was using, I didn’t even like to spend holidays with her. I always was in a hurry to leave so I could go out with my friends. But now I really enjoy myself. My family has become more important to me,” he said.

Said his mother, Carol, who is a single working parent: “I’ve got my son back, although I had to change too. Like Joe, I didn’t know how to communicate. Now we have informal family meetings about once a week.”

On Sundays, Metz does something special--such as playing basketball or football or going to the movies--with the younger brother he used to hit or throw things at.

Like many recovering teen-agers, Metz is candid about his past. He and his mother have been guest speakers at PTA and teacher meetings, talking about their own experiences and how they worked out their problems. “Basically we’re telling them how the support groups--like Tough Love--have helped us,” Carol said.

To Crista Gonzales of Burbank, one of sobriety’s biggest surprises was that sobriety is not dull.

“Most people think if you don’t do drugs you’re a nerd or a queer or a jerk, like ‘Oh my God, she’s straight! She’s a bookworm!’ but that’s not true at all,” 17-year-old Gonzales said. She was in and out of five rehabilitation programs before she made a serious commitment to sobriety more than a year ago. Her favorite high was to sniff inhalants, such as the lacquer used to finish ceramics.

“I love to have fun,” she said. “I like cruising Hollywood, but the drugs aren’t there anymore, and that’s what makes it fun. Now I can remember what I did the night before, and I don’t have to worry about whether someone stole something from me.”

New Friends Crucial

She prefers her new friends over her old drug friends. “I can trust these friends with anything. They really do care about me, and they love me--not my drugs. I don’t have to worry if they’re going to stab me in the back or turn on me. My new friends are an important part of my recovery,” she said.

Gonzales is also candid about her past. It seems to give her strength. “I let people know that I’m an alcoholic and that I’m in AA,” the Monterey High School teen-ager says. “Some people at school tease me a lot and make jokes. Like this one guy at school who uses drugs is always joking about going to AA meetings with me. But at least people know where I’m at and what I do.”

There are times when she notices someone in one of her classes who’s high, and it bothers her. “I’ll wish I could do that. I want to be able to do it just one time and then leave it alone, but one is not enough for me. I’ll want more and more and more.

“When it gets to the point where I even think about drinking or doing drugs, though, that’s when I call my friends or talk to my mom,” said Gonzales, who is also considering a career in law enforcement.

Diane Sanchez, Gonzales’ mother, is bowled over by her daughter’s change. “I’ve heard other mothers say that when their kids were using, they loved their kids, but they didn’t like them. But I don’t think I loved or liked my daughter. I hated her.

“Now, though, I’m amazed with her. When I see her recovery, I want to tell everybody that it is possible. She’s probably changed 150%. There was a time I thought she was going to die because she was very much into the gang scene as well as drugs,” Sanchez said.

These days Gonzales is more likely to socialize on Saturday nights at the “clean and sober” dances held at the rented Elks Lodge in Van Nuys for people who prefer the company of other straight people. “I love to dance, and they play all kinds of music there--rap music, Bon Jovi, Poison,” she said.

She spends a lot more time on the phone these days talking to friends, because now she’s talking about deeper subjects. “I talk about real things--my feelings,” she said. “Before it was just quick, superficial stuff.”

Gonzales has been clean since Feb. 4, 1988, and said she knows that this time it’s for good. “I want to stay away from my old friends real bad,” she said. “It’s hard sometimes when I run into them and they want me to go out, and I have to tell them no. I can’t avoid them all my life, though, because we live in the same town. So I stay with my sober friends, and it’s a lot easier because they don’t pressure me.”

‘You Can Tell’

Counselor Quashen contends that it’s possible to tell who’s clean for good and who’s merely trying to convince themselves they’re clean. “It comes from deep within them, and you can observe that by how willing they are, how humble they get, how many questions they have rather than answers. You can notice big changes in behavior,” he explained. “There are times when kids tell me they’re clean, and I know they’re not. You can tell by their attitude and their actions.”

Even Gonzales’ appearance reflects her new confidence. She’s given up the heavy eye makeup, the brown lipstick, the black clothes, the “gross” hair. She used to carve on herself, tattoo herself and put cigarettes out on her hand. “Now I can get away with not wearing any makeup,” she said. “When I look back at old pictures of myself I laugh because I can’t believe it’s me. I go ‘Wow! That’s nasty!’ ”

Barbara Vickers, 17, of Glendale gave up cocaine and alcohol Nov. 1, 1988. “Working my program is my top priority,” she said. She goes to sobriety meetings six or seven nights a week--to various Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, as well as Tough Love and ASAP alumni-association meetings.

Sometimes she goes to meetings with her 22-year-old boyfriend. They decided to go straight at the same time. Unlike most other relationships between teen-agers on drugs, theirs has survived the change to sobriety. “And my folks like him a lot!” she said.

At these meetings, she also met other recovering teen-agers who attend her school, Crescenta Valley High. “Surprisingly, there are a lot of them, but not as many as there should be or as I’d like there to be,” she said.

Occasionally someone at school approaches her about going straight. “I’ve helped out a few people at school. There was this one day when I hated school and I was wondering why I was there, but then this user girl came up to me and asked for help. And it gave me a reason for being there.

“But you can’t go out and preach sobriety. People have to come to it on their own, and you have to be there for them when they’re ready,” she said.

Vickers credits her recent academic improvement to her sobriety. “I’m getting all A’s and B’s in my classes now,” she marvels. “This is my last semester of high school, and I’m finding out that I’m actually smart!”

Part-Time Job

Recently, Vickers took an after-school job as a secretary. After graduating, she hopes to work full time and go to junior college a few nights a week to study business. When she turns 18 this summer, she plans on moving out of her parents’ house. “I’m not moving out because I don’t love my parents,” she quickly added. “I love them, but I want to be independent.”

She gets along better with both of her older brothers now because, as she says, “I’m around a lot more. We do family things together.”

Along with all the big changes, being locked up in the ASAP drug rehabilitation unit brought about a small change. “Staring at trees and mountains through a glass window for a couple of months made me appreciate the outdoors. I really look at the beauty of nature now instead of taking it for granted,” she said.

Vickers’ occasional thoughts of suicide have vanished with her sobriety. “Things aren’t totally terrific still, but I can live with it now. I don’t have to turn to drugs as the solution. I can deal with life on life’s terms. It’s pretty nice being sober,” she said.