A Parents' Guide to Drugs
You can use the hard-learned lessons of 3 men to help your kids grow up drug-free

The three Central Florida men who grew up in radically different social circles now have at least two things in common: They are addicted to drugs and they are serving time at the Osceola County Jail because of substance abuse.

Drugs rip through people's lives like a tornado -- no matter what neighborhood they live in or how much money their parents earn, says the drug counselor who directs the weekly sessions this unlikely trio attends every Thursday at the jail. The myths and truths about substance abuse revealed in their stories can help parents keep their children straight.

"My parents were always working," said Martinez, 19. "When I played on the basketball team in middle school, I made the all-star team. My parents couldn't make it to one game. It bothered me."

By the time he was a freshman at Gateway High School in Osceola County, Martinez was expelled for fighting.

"My father was from Guatemala," Martinez said. "When he was 17, he went to Rhode Island with 8 cents in his pocket. That's where he met my mother. He got his life together. He had to work hard to support his mother and brothers. He was always trying to make me like him, which I didn't want to be.

"When I'd get caught stealing something he'd tell me I was ruining his image. Everything he got, he earned. Now I'd like to change places with him. Have a nice house with money in the bank."

But don't make the mistake of equating low-income families with drug use.

"As kids, we never wanted for money," said Neal with a polite twang. He still wears his sideburns long and dots his conversations with "yes ma'ams" and "yes, sirs."

"We were raised in church, and we didn't play in the streets. Most of the time I was workin' cows, breakin' horses and competing in rodeos on the weekends."

In 1986, Neal won the coveted Florida Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association champion bareback bronc rider of the year award. The next year, he was first runner up. His huge hands still look like they can grip a rope like a bulldog's jaws. What he remembers most vividly, however, was his trip to the 1985 competition.

"I had to borrow some money just to get there," said Neal, 41. "When I got there I met up with some old friends. We bought some drugs and before I knew it, the rodeo was over and I never even competed."

"I pretty much had them fooled," said Nunn, 38, who supported his habit mostly through breaking into businesses. "Whenever they got suspicious, I'd blow it off on something else."

A self-described rebel with steely blue eyes that have softened with age and misfortune, Nunn wore his wavy locks down to his shoulders. His drug use started in his early teen years. When his mother questioned a wave of giggles after he and a friend had smoked pot, he said he was just in a good mood and changed the subject. When she asked if he did his homework, he said yes and went upstairs and listened to music with his headphones on.

When she asked why his eyes were so red, Nunn said it was from driving his motorcycle without goggles. When his stepfather found 4 ounces of marijuana in one of his cowboy boots, Nunn was spanked and restricted to the house for one week. He recalls no follow up after that.

Martinez, wide-eyed and wiry, said he became a master at manipulating his parents into believing that to establish any rules for him was impossible.

"When I knew they were going to confront me, I wouldn't come home till late," he said. "They'd come and wake me up before they went to work to ask me if I stole their VCR, and I'd tell them: 'Hey, why is it always me? Maybe it was your daughter.' "

When he was caught in a lie, Martinez said he'd cry and beg for forgiveness. A reaction that always evoked pity and a fear that if they called the police it would only result in getting him into more trouble.

"They never had rules, because I'd break them," he said. "And there was nothing they could do about it."

No rules equals no peace, experts say.

"The biggest issue in recovery with adolescents is understanding that parents have the right to make rules," said Valerie Gay, a supervising counselor at the Center for Drug Free Living, a state-funded drug treatment and assessment center in Orlando. "Kids need curfews, direction on what friends they can associate with, house chores, and rules about homework. Many of the parents we see have lost their authority to enforce rules. They feel out of control."

The center is home for 25 male and female teens for 90 days of evaluation and treatment. They range in age from 14 to 17, occasionally younger. Some volunteer to attend, others are referred through the Addiction Recovery Facility in downtown Orlando, outpatient clinics such as the New Horizons program, or through court-ordered treatment. Counselors emphasize family involvement in establishing "behavior contracts" in which parents and children agree to rules before they become an issue.

"The more committed a family is to solving the problem," Gay said, "the greater the chances of recovery."

Counselors say they encounter three general types of parents:

* Former and present drug abusers from the '60s, who believe casual drug abuse is more a stage of growing up than a serious problem.

* Parents who just don't recognize the symptoms of drug abuse.

* Parents who see the signs but choose to ignore them.

"I see a lot of abusers with parents who are baby boomers who used drugs," said counselor John Guyder. "Instead of being honest about their own drug use, they deny it, which is more dangerous because the kids know they're lying. If the parents are waiting for the kids to go to bed to smoke some pot, the kids are going to know it.

"You have to be up front and available to discuss their problems or they'll fall in with other dysfunctional kids who'll listen. That's how parents usually lose their communication with their kids."

Many teen drug abusers inherit poor self-esteem from parents who were substance abusers themselves, Guyder said.

"If a parent keeps telling their kid from the time he's 6 that he's stupid, he'll believe it and it'll roll into adolescence and his teens. Kids form the majority of their belief systems between the ages of 6 months and 6 years. If they see Mom and Dad drinking beer every weekend to relax, the message is: the only way to relax is through substance abuse."

Guyder himself learned the hard way: he said he is a former heroin addict whose father, an alcoholic, moved out when was an infant.

Preventing drug abuse in your child is as easy as it is complex, counselors say.

"You've got to make time to spend with them," Guyder said.

"Take them to the park, the beach, a movie, and encourage them to communicate with you."

"Love, time and attention are the key," Gay said. "Most kids don't have enough discipline to do their own homework, so parents have to help provide the guidance and structure to help them along."

Single parents, especially women raising sons alone, are especially vulnerable to raising drug-abusing sons, counselors say.

"Many single moms get dependent on their sons," Gay said. "They give them too much responsibility too quickly. Pretty soon the boundaries are blurred and he thinks he can do whatever he wants to."

The physical and emotional changes associated with adolescence also make kids vulnerable.

"It's such a transitional period," said Adam McCracken, a counselor who works with Gay. "Their hormones are raging. They're looking for their own values and seeing if they are the same as their parents. If there's no communication, it's easy to drift."

School-based programs, such as the federally funded, law enforcement program D.A.R.E. (Drug Abuse Resistance Education), can help, but a consistent follow up message needs to be given as well.

"In order for programs like D.A.R.E. to be effective they should really be taught throughout elementary, middle school and high school. Once is not enough," Martinez says.

"What they should do is keep programs about drugs but spread them out over the years to remind you. When I was 15 or 16 I might have seen one speaker. I never went to a school counselor.

"It's hard to talk to adults in that situation because you're always afraid of them telling your parents."

"I was about 11 or 12, in elementary school going into middle school, when I took the course. At that age, I just said, 'I'm not going to do drugs.' Six months later I started smoking cigarettes. Then my friends were smoking weed. They said try it. It was a peer pressure thing, so I did it.

"When you actually face the situation there's not much to decide. You either do it or not. Then you do it more and more. Then you're hooked but can't face it."

Most who become addicts realize too late that fooling their family and friends buys only a one-way ticket to loneliness, Guyder said.

"Most of their parents couldn't communicate with them and never explained the consequences of drugs," said Guyder, "The loss of respect, the loss of family, jobs, friends and goals."

Neal spent a dozen years drifting in and out of a drug addicted haze. Unlike most drug abusers who begin in their teens, his began in his 20s. When a horse fell on his leg, breaking it, he was introduced to painkillers. Slowly, casual marijuana use progressed to a $100-a-day cocaine habit. Smoking powdered cocaine destroyed Neal's family and social support network. "I found myself staying up all night and trying to hide it," he said. "My attitude toward my parents changed. I wanted more money to be able to satisfy my addiction."

Friends also began to distrust him.

"I'd be the first guy people would call if they needed help," Neal said. "But after being with drugs they didn't call anymore. My only responsibility was trying to figure out how to get enough money for drugs. I thought I was only bruising people with the ways I got it, but I was really scarring them."

While on probation last year, an old rodeo friend asked Neal to serve as a stunt man in the movie Rosewood. Doubling for actor Ving Rhames on dangerous stunts, including jumping from a train onto a horse, Neal said he earned more than $30,000 in three months of filming. Most of it was wasted on drugs. After the movie, he failed a drug test and was sent back to jail.

Successive terms for possession and sale of cocaine finally caught up with him. The two elliptical scars on his forehead and cheek resulted from falling asleep at the wheel of his pickup before a near-fatal accident. He had been awake for three days.

"It's easy to say you're going to quit when you're confined in a place like this," he said. "But lately I've been asking myself: 'Do you want to ride or keep walkin'?' "

Edwin Martinez has a plan to deal with the subject of drugs with his 2-month-old daughter when she grows up.

"I'm going to be straight up with her. I'll tell her the bad experiences I've had with drugs and I won't ever talk about drugs like it's a cool thing to do.

"If I ever find drugs in her room or whatever, first I'd sit her down and talk to her, try to find a way to stop it or put her in a program where she can get help," he says. "Eventually, it would work out. Those kinds of decisions are made through the love of your parents. You see how it hurts them and you want to change. So you take that step.

"Am I worried? Yes, because the environment now is that kids are around drugs all the time. If she needs my help, I'm going to be there for her and show her that no matter what happens, she's never going to lose my love."

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