Growing Problem : The Parent as a Drug Supplier

SAN DIEGO — Bob is 41. His daughter, Melissa, is 16. They first “did drugs together” when she was 11. The basic high? Marijuana.

“I never considered marijuana a drug,” he said. “I thought it a sacrament--a religious experience. I actually quit drinking before I quit using marijuana.”

Melissa says that her mother, Doris, 39, also used drugs. By the time she was 15, Melissa was smoking marijuana, drinking, “doing crystal and coke, LSD, mushrooms. . . . The way I got into drugs was totally through the family,” she said. “They were so (screwed) up, I had to start using, just to fit in.”

Once, in front of friends at a birthday party, Melissa was given a “giant joint” (marijuana) tied with a bow and ribbon--Mom’s gift to her.

‘So Cool’

“She thought it was so cool,” Melissa said. “I think back on it now and realize how bizarre it really was.”

Today, Bob and family appear to be normal middle-class Americans, living in the San Diego suburb of Chula Vista. They agreed to be interviewed as long as their real names were not used. They are “recovering drug addicts and alcoholics,” under the care of Next Step, a program for the children of alcoholics in San Diego.

They elected to share their story, hoping it might lend insight to parents giving drugs to children--which they call a chronic problem. The claim is supported by law enforcement and mental health professionals.

Father Looks Back

“One thing I’m not real proud of,” Bob said, “is showing my daughter a pathway to drugs. My real feeling was, I didn’t want her using. But I felt the worst I could be was a hypocrite. I know so many parents who say that--they don’t want to be a hypocrite.

“I never felt I pushed drugs on (Melissa), but the result was, I did. That’s the paradox of this whole disease--I did something I didn’t want to do. And look what happened. I almost lost her.”

He glanced at the floor, then at his daughter’s face.

“Wow,” he said. “I could have killed her.”

How often are such scenarios happening?

No one knows exactly, but the issue of children obtaining drugs from their parents is coming under increasing study and is a matter of growing concern among drug experts.

“It happens, and it isn’t rare,” asserted Virginia Newell, head of the Outpatient Institute, a San Diego treatment center.

Newell and more than a dozen experts interviewed say the problem of drug use in the United States is pervasive and often sponsored by parents. Thousands, maybe millions of American parents are exposing their children to a drug-filled environment--and in some cases, experts say, “turning them on.”

Bill Beacham is director of IMPACT, a drug and alcohol education program serving Los Angeles and Orange counties. He also works with the Los Angeles Police Department and the Major League Baseball Players Assn. in trying to educate first- through sixth-graders on the perils of drug abuse.

In his work, Beacham often cites studies by the University of Michigan and UCLA. A major finding in the Michigan study is that one out of three children in the United States comes from a home in which one person--usually a parent--is addicted to drugs or alcohol, legal or otherwise.

The findings don’t include the nicotine from cigarettes, Beacham said. However, they do include “the 7 million women in this country who take regular doses of Valium.”

“The survey shows,” he said, “how children are the recipients of all the dynamics that come into play when someone in the family . . . gets hooked.

Grew Up With Drugs

“We’re looking at a whole generation of parents whose views in this area are radically different from those of their parents,” Beacham said. “A whole group of 30- to 40-year-olds grew up in an era when drug use was quite common. They’ve continued their use, but now the spectrum of drugs is just incredible--PCP, Quaaludes. . . . After a while nothing matters but the use of these drugs. Three- and 4-year-olds raised in this environment don’t have a clue.”

The UCLA study, conducted in 1983, focused on secondary-school students in Orange County. Polled were more than 7,000 seventh-, eighth- and ninth-graders whose ages ranged between 12 and 16. In the 12-year-old range, 64% said they had drunk beer in the three months before being questioned; 15% had drunk liquor in the previous week; 13% had used marijuana and 5% had used cocaine in the previous six weeks.

Among ninth-graders, 67% had used alcohol in the previous three months; in the same time period, 31% had used marijuana and 6.7% had used cocaine.

Among 11th-graders, 75% had drunk beer, 58% had drunk liquor, 41% had used marijuana and 19% had used cocaine in the previous three months.

“Needless to say,” Beacham said, “this is much too high.”

Ventura Findings

The UCLA study was commissioned by various Orange County school systems. A second study, with similar findings, was completed in 1985 for Ventura County. Drug use in its schools, authors say, was 2% higher than Orange County.

Rodney Skager, associate dean of the UCLA Graduate School of Education, conducted the study with co-author Ebrahim Maddahian. Skager noted that in the Ventura survey, students were asked how many adults they knew who used drugs. An adult could be “a 19-year-old sibling,” he said, but most often was a parent. Skager wanted to ask directly how many parents used drugs, but school officials balked at permitting that question, even though the survey was anonymous.

“I guess they felt the parents would get irritated,” he said.

In the 11th grade in Ventura County, 95% said they knew adults who used alcohol; 59% knew adults who used marijuana; 44% knew adults who used cocaine, and 50% knew adults who used pills.

“Forty-four percent who know coke users is real high,” Skager said. “It’s an expensive drug, but the data indicates the price is coming down--way down in some cases.”

Ninth-Grade Poll

Among ninth-graders, 92% knew adults who used alcohol; 54% knew adults who used marijuana; 31% knew adults who used cocaine, and 49% knew adults who used pills.

Among seventh-graders, 87% knew adults who used alcohol; 34% knew adults who used marijuana; 17% knew adults who used cocaine, and 36% knew adults who used pills.

Skager has been commissioned by Atty. Gen. John Van de Kamp to conduct the survey statewide. He said parents exposing their children to drugs--through environment or “direct intervention”--is no longer surprising.

“We hear lots of stories about drugs in the home,” he said. “Drugs, that is, provided by parents. We hear it clinically and in surveys. I can’t tell you the full extent; we just don’t have the data--yet.”

Debbie, 16, is a client of Peter Sterman, a clinical psychologist with a practice in Los Angeles and San Diego, a member of the same program. (She asked that the name of the program also be kept confidential.) From the time she was barely old enough to watch “Sesame Street” on television, she was given vodka by an alcoholic aunt. Debbie’s father consistently brought home shopping bags full of marijuana. Her job was to roll the marijuana into cigarettes--a task she mastered at age 6. She entered the program several months ago without the knowledge of her parents.

Mark, another client of Sterman, has bought and sold illicit drugs. His parents, now divorced, remain, as far as he knows, addicted to cocaine. His mother used to rely on Mark to buy cocaine. She was fearful of dealers, a concern apparently not felt for an adolescent son.

All Walks of Life

Sterman said children like Mark and Debbie come from all walks of life. He has treated the sons of auto mechanics, the daughters of Hollywood celebrities. Many share the trait of having a parent who introduced them to drugs.

He is stunned, he said, by the growing numbers of parents giving drugs to children, or kids saying, “It was Mommy and Daddy who first turned me on.”

He talks of homes that have cEased to be child-centered and are now drug- and alcohol-centered (or always were). He said a parent’s “okey-doke philosophy” often starts with marijuana, giving kids the message that “if one drug’s OK, maybe others are.” At the very least, kids get the mixed message, “Dad smokes pot and says, ‘Don’t you dare!’ ” Or the parents fall prey to “drug logic,” believing that if “the right drugs” are shared at home, kids won’t be inclined to turn to the streets.”

Regaining Control

“The parents I see are real scared, because the kid’s already in trouble,” said Newell of San Diego’s Outpatient Clinic. “They have to re-teach them to get back the control they gave away a long time ago. Sixties’ parents have unique reasons for tolerating drug use. They say: ‘I don’t want to stifle creativity. I don’t want to take their freedom away. I’m not sure drugs are wrong. They weren’t wrong for me.’

“They didn’t start using (in) puberty or pre-puberty. ThEy were more like teens or adults. Today, we’re seeing children--12, 11, 9--smoking marijuana that’s dramatically stronger than what Mommy and Daddy used to smoke.

“Kids get addicted real fast--adults don’t. No one knows for sure why. It just happens. For one, there’s the immature central nervous system. The hormones, the intellect are all weakly developed. It’s like giving a baby drugs.”

Babies Given Drugs

In some cases, that’s happening too, she said. Teen-age baby sitters in her counsel have admitted giving drugs to infants. “They do it to get ‘em to sleep,” she said angrily, “or because they thought it was fun--fun to watch their reaction.”

Lt. W. B. Campbell of the drug enforcement division of the San Diego Police Department cited a recent case in which a mother sent a 12-year-old boy on his bicycle to make a pickup of PCP. The mother was charged with child abuse.

“You have to start thinking child abuse,” said Cathleen Brooks, executive director of Next Step, the San Diego program for the children of alcoholics. “These (addicted parents of addicted children) are overlooking a fatal disease. Or they’re winking at it. The reason they wink at it is, they have it, too. That’s when outsiders have to step in.”

Brooks, herself a recovering alcoholic, said she was “horrified” to discover parents who have introduced or exposed children to illicit drugs. “I really thought they were just unusual people,” she said. “Sorry--it’s happening all too often.

“For many, chemical dependency outweighs all other aspects of life, even the rearing of one’s child. With the dependency comes a complete social, psychological system. Everything revolves around that drug, that glass of liquor.”

Fits the Description

Bob, the 41-year-old father who sought treatment through Brooks’ Next Step, said such a description fit his own pathology perfectly.

“I can’t smoke one joint. I can’t drink one beer,” he said. “If I do, I lose my entire sobriety. My chief symptom was denial--even to giving drugs to a kid. Denial is what keeps you going. It can keep you going for a very long time.”

Debbie, the 16-year-old daughter of parents who continue to abuse drugs, has heard talk about the horrible influence of peers, school and MTV (the rock video channel on cable television) in the teen-age drug problem. She disputes it with a shake of her blonde hair.

“MTV wasn’t my problem,” she said with a thin smile. “My dad was my problem. He’s the one who first . . . gave me drugs.”