Articles

By David Palmer

It was close to midnight on April 10, 2002 when Erin, an attractive 22-year-old, left a tavern in West Little Rock, hopped into her bright red Saturn, buckled her seatbelt and headed west on Highway 10. During the evening, Erin had three glasses of wine, not much by her standards, but the night before she had partied hard on drugs and alcohol.

Six miles down the highway, Erin lost control of her car, careened into a ditch, rolled the car two or three times and landed upside down. The car roof was crushed and so was her  spine. She was conscious and in a lot of pain, but from the waist down she felt nothing. She was paralyzed. She could have been dead, but the one thing she did right was fasten her seatbelt.

The first paramedic to reach the scene said, “Don’t worry, Erin. We’ll get you out.” And they did, but it took two hours of cutting, while she drifted in and out of consciousness.

Later they found that Erin had a blood alcohol content of .216, more than twice the legal limit, and she was later convicted of Driving under the Influence and heavily fined. Because of the alcohol in her system, doctors were afraid to add painkillers to the mix when she got to the hospital which meant she would have to suffer excruciating pain without sedation.

For more than 60 years, the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous have worked for many people with alcohol and other drug problems. Today, the therapeutic value of the steps extends far beyond the field of addiction.

Physicians, therapists and other health care professionals are finding that the steps can help people with other chronic illnesses (eg, cancer, heart disease, diabetes and mental illness) find hope and healing. There is increased recognition that a spiritual component, such as the Twelve Steps, is important in addressing mental and physical illness.

First Installment

Nobody likes to look for work, but everybody has to do it.  Getting a job takes time, effort and patience. You look for opportunities, send out resumes and then you have to ace the interview. Whew!  Sounds like it’s time consuming, takes commitment and dedication and just plain hard work.  It is!  So to help you get started, One Day at a Time (ODAT for short) is happy to provide you with our ODAT’s “Job Hunting Guide!” We begin today with the first two installments.

Due to the economy jobs may be scarce right now and money tight, but don’t get discouraged.  In a healthy economy the rule of thumb is that for every $10,000 you make it will take you a month to find a good job.  For example, if you wish to get a job making $60,000, presumably it will take you 6 months to find that job.  So understand that in a down economy it make take you a bit longer to find your ideal job.  Here are some suggestions to help you:

Recovery from our addictions, whatever they are, is not an event but rather a transformation — a new way of living —  experienced over time.

At least that has been my experience over the 31 years of my recovery from alcoholism, and that is the way Dr. Kitty Harris at Texas Tech puts it in her column in this issue.

We, at One Day at a Time, have a special interest in addressing the problem of teen substance abuse. Did you know that Arkansas is among states with the highest rates of non-medical use of pain relievers among 12- to 25-year-olds. (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services).

22 percent of Arkansas high school students say they've abused prescription drugs by the time they're seniors. (Arkansas Present Needs Assessment, 2008).

Arkansas sixth-graders abuse more prescription drugs than any other substance except alcohol and cigarettes. (Arkansas Present Needs Assessment, 2008).

1 in 3 teens reports knowing someone who abuses prescription drugs. (Partnership for A Drug Free America)

62 percent of teens believe most teens get drugs from their parents' medicine cabinets, and 63 percent of teens believe drugs are easy to get from their parents' medicine cabinets, up from 56 percent last year. (2009 Partnership Attitude Tracking Study).

1 in 5 teens share their prescription drugs with friends. (Join Together, August).

33 percent of teens think "there's nothing wrong" with using prescription drugs every once in a while. (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration).

Girls are more likely than boys to intentionally misuse prescription medicine to get high. (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration).

It is in this spirit that I want to tell you about a new project we are developing with Argenta Academy in North Little Rock.

Working with the school administration, principal Charles Jones, creative writing teacher Cynthia Bell and school system drug counselor, Jan Kucula we are developing a curriculum which will begin to engage the students in the creative writing class. When students finish the course they will produce two pages of articles which will appear in editions of this newspaper.

It is intended to work on several levels. We get some great fresh material for the publication, they get experience they can use and the kids in the neighborhood get some information from what is for them a credible source.

At a deeper level, we are hoping the students will learn life lessons that will transform their lives.

If our program works at Argenta, as we expect it will, we plan to offer it to other schools. We’ve even given it a name “Teen ‘Zine.” (short for “magazine”) Many people call this publication—One Day at a Time—a magazine while it is in reality a tabloid newspaper, but “tabloid” doesn’t rhyme with “Teen.”

We have four short-term goals in undertaking this project:

1. To help our youth make healthier choices with regard to the use of alcohol and drugs.

2. To educate our youth about the role of effective communications in substance abuse awareness, understanding and prevention.

3. To offer teens an opportunity to make their voices heard, share their ideas, opinions and experiences and become “teen influencers” in substance abuse prevention, and

4. To serve as a community resource and partner in substance abuse education awareness and prevention.

I have a pretty good background in publishing.

Growing up back in the late 1930’s I used to hang out at my dad’s newspaper in Summit, N.J. and watch the linotype operator set type out of molten lead, a system not unlike what they used in the fifteenth century. Later on I owned newspapers in New Jersey (where I was a pioneer in the use of cold type), Missouri and New Mexico, and worked for papers in Northern Virginia, El Dorado and Little Rock (The Arkansas Gazette) and was a stringer for the Wall Street Journal.

I first presented the idea of a collaboration with the school at a general meeting of the students on a blustery rainy morning in late October. I told them about the class project and about my own recovery.

The occasion was red ribbon week, the oldest and largest drug prevention campaign in America, and we, at One Day at a Time had donated $200 to support some of the activities at the school.

I told them One Day at a Time would be teaching a creative writing class at the school about the role of communications in promoting awareness of both substance abuse and recovery.

We will be talking about professional writing, editing, and research techniques, and about understanding what makes a good story. And students will have an opportunity to write, edit and produce a section in One Day at a Time’s newspaper.

We believe that the combination of “teen to teen” communications and access to a creative outlet will produce some short and long-term results. In the short run we believe we will see:

• Improved understanding and ability to communicate to others the consequences of substance abuse as well as personal responsibility.

• Improved understanding of the influence of the media in reaching adolescents and young adults,

In the longer term we hope to see growth in emotional maturity and problem solving skills and a growing resistance to substance abuse.

We would hope to see this ultimately result in reduced classroom misbehavior and aggression; increased self-control; improvement in self-confidence and respect for others.

In the long term, we would like to sponsor a fine writing competition involving many schools which would encourage students to explore themes related to substance abuse and recovery.

As we contemplate recovery for our children it is heartening to see a change for the better developing in the treatment of all who suffer from addictions. Based on the acknowledgement that true recovery is transformational in nature rather than episodic. You will see it reflected in the Access To Recovery grant article in this issue of the paper.

The new model for recovery treatment is moving from acute care to chronic care.  An acute illness is sudden and severe requiring an immediate response, and doctors and other health care personnel quickly engage. Acute disease is episodic, relatively brief and often fatal. It is not meant to be long term.

Chronic illness, defined as disease or impairment lasting more than a year, is ongoing and rarely cured. It afflicts both young and old and varies in severity. The goals of treatment are to minimize symptoms, preserve body function, ensure the best quality of life possible and maximize a patient's independence. Chronic care requires fewer doctors, and many more hours of less skilled — and cheaper — health workers. Yet many sufferers end up in facilities better suited to acute care.

The good news is that the medical community is finally beginning to understand substance abuse as a chronic condition and is changing the treatment model accordingly.  Now our children will begin to get treatment that will work in tandem with 12-Step programs and other therapeutic strategies which are more responsive to their needs. We at One Day at a Time feel that we can contribute with Teen ‘Zine and other programs.

To close on a less serious literary note, I mourn the passing of a publication called the Weekly World News, a sleazy tabloid that covered events that seemed to occur in a parallel universe. Its headlines were always irresistible.

Here is a sampling of some of its most compelling headlines: “Dead rock stars return on a ghost plane,” “Crazed Dieter Mistakes Dwarf for Chicken,” “Florida Man Screams from the Grave, my Brain is missing” and last a very timely, “12 U.S. Senators are space Aliens.”