Sober N Clean

Adults who supply booze to other people's children without parental consent will soon be liable for a hefty fine.

Police Minister Jim Cox yesterday announced the crackdown to prevent the "horrific, unpleasant and sad" effects of underage binge drinking at private parties.

The law changes were prompted, in part, by the case of Penguin boy Taylor Forward who was supplied with vodka and fell into a campfire at a friend's party in 2005.

"Too often we hear and see the effects of young people being supplied with alcohol and left unsupervised," Mr Cox said.

"Not only can this result in direct harm from excessive alcohol consumption, it also means young people are at risk of forming binge-drinking behaviours and not learning responsible drinking."

The change means the adult supervisor at the party would take full legal responsibility for the actions of underage drinkers at the event.

That could create a scenario where invitations to underage parties could go out with parental consent forms granting children permission to drink.

"I think if invitations went out and parents were prepared to take responsibility for other under 18s, and a permission slip was put in there, that would be a great idea."

Mr Cox rejected suggestions the laws would have the effect of normalising underage drinking, but would allow parents to introduce their children to alcohol in a controlled way.

Assistant Commissioner Phil Wilkinson was confident the new legislation could be policed.

"As it stands at the moment, on private premises it is legal for underage people to drink, so this extends it and gives parents an additional level of control over what their children do," Assistant Commissioner Wilkinson said.

Taylor Forward's mother Vicki welcomed the move, which follows a 3 1/2-year fight for legislative change.

"This is not to stop everyone drinking when they are under 18 but it is about having more control and accountability to protect kids," Mrs Forward said.

State Schools Parents and Friends Associations president Jenny Branch said underage parties were still a big problem.

In 2007 the National Drug Strategy household survey found 22 per cent of teenagers over the age of 14 drank alcohol on a weekly basis.

"I have heard of cases where kids go out every weekend -- parents feel like they are losing kids to places they don't want them to be and a life they don't want their children to be in," Ms Branch said.

"Hopefully these new laws will give children and parents the opportunity to negotiate what is responsible and what is not."

Australian Hotels Association state manager Steve Old lauded the proposed crackdown.
_______________
source: The Mercury

Kids from drug-infested homes often start their lives in the bottom of the ninth, down by five runs and with two strikes against them.

Their odds aren't good.

We've gotten a glimpse into that world in recent days, most graphically in the story of Jessica Kasten -- the Wausau woman convicted of letting one of her children die of suffocation as she slept off a methamphetamine bender.

Her parents, who spoke at length with a Gannett Wisconsin Media reporter, said Kasten's own upbringing in a home rife with drugs and alcohol didn't give her a good start in life.

Kasten's story has been revealing to many of us. But it comes as no surprise to police and social workers, who see such tragedies unfolding all the time.

They've had enough, and they're trying to do something about it.

Until recently, authorities had no standard procedure for dealing with kids from drug homes. The dwellings they would encounter were squalid or, even worse, toxic with residue of chemicals used to make drugs.

Police would show up and take parents to jail for dealing or using drugs. Children would be sent off to a relative's house, and everyone would get back to work -- until the next bust, when the same cycle would begin all over again.

Now, an encounter with a drug home automatically kicks a special procedure into gear.

The Drug Endangered Children Program, developed by the Marathon County Sheriff's Department, ties together 15 area police agencies, social workers and two hospitals, all dedicated with giving kids from drug homes a chance.

As soon as police know children are involved in a drug home, they begin building two cases -- one to prosecute the parents and another to help the children.

"Officers are trained to look for how close chemicals are to where kids eat and sleep, to test clothing for chemicals for child neglect and abuse charges," Marathon County Sheriff's Department Capt. Tom Kujawa said. "When the kids get to the hospital, doctors are trained to look for chemicals on their skin and in their systems. A lot of times, you would put kids with a brother or grandparent or whatever, and it would turn out they were cooking drugs, too. So now, we have a whole checklist we go through to make sure we get them to a safe environment."

Often, Kujawa said, children must leave behind everything they own because it's all contaminated with drugs. So police give them backpacks of clothing, toiletries and blankets that are knitted by church groups and -- of all people -- male prison inmates.

The Sheriff's Department started the Drug Endangered Children program about three years ago, when methamphetamine first started appearing.

Now, it's being adopted around the state -- and being put to more use than ever.

In May, authorities used the system when they raided a Wausau-area meth house and removed three children, ages 5, 7 an 14.

"Without intervention, they have zero chance," said Kujawa, who was leader of the county's drug enforcement unit when the program began.

"Kids need an opportunity to be kids, and we cheat them out of life," Kujawa said. "Some of these kids, 5, 6, 7 years old, the kids are raising the parents because of the addiction. It's just sad."

It is sad. But thanks to this program -- the first of its kind in Wisconsin -- some of these children are getting a new chance at life.
___________
source: Wisconsin Info, http://www.wisinfo.com

ALBANY — Members of a new panel tackling how to handle the growing underage-drinking problem said today that one priority should be making sure parents understand the risks of letting their children consume alcohol, particularly in the home.

Alcohol is the No. 1 drug of choice for youth in America, and more than 75 percent of high-school students have had alcohol by the time they graduate, according to officials with the state Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services. More than half of 12th graders and a fifth of eighth graders have been drunk at least once. About 823,000 New Yorkers under 21 drink each year.

"We know that 50 percent of the kids in grades 7 through 12 had a drink last month. For some of them -- their one and only drink. For others, the start of their drinking, the start of their drugging, the start of the addiction," said Karen Carpenter-Palumbo, commissioner of alcoholism and substance abuse services.

Underage drinking costs more than $3 billion a year in New York -- in youth injuries, deaths, crashes, fetal-alcohol syndrome, fights, poisonings, property crime, rapes and other areas, she said.

One of the 21-member panel's charges will be to look at social-host legislation that was proposed by the Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services, Carpenter-Palumbo said. The bill would prohibit anyone 18 or older who owns, rents or controls a private residence from allowing underage drinking on their property. The penalties would be $250 for the first offense, $500 for the second, and $1,000 and/or up to a year in prison the third time. The legislation, which passed in the Senate but died in the Assembly this year, would not affect local social-host laws, which have been considered around the state.

A study by the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration concluded that more than 40 percent of the country's estimated 10.8 million current underage drinkers (youth between 12 and 20 who drank in the past month) were provided free alcohol by adults 21 or older. The report also found that one in 16 underage drinkers (650,000) was given alcohol by a parent in the past month.

New York should pass a social-host law not only because of the number of underage youth who consume alcohol in their homes, but also the aftermath of their drinking, said Assemblyman Felix Ortiz, D-Brooklyn, who is sponsoring legislation on the issue. Ortiz said he has heard the argument that parents should be able to allow drinking in their own homes, but the stakes are too high not to strengthen penalties for doing that.

"I respect parents who say that but I think parents have to also understand that we have a job to do and if they don't know how to take the responsibility, government will," he said.

Council member Frank V. Ciaccia, assistant county manager and the Stop-DWI coordinator in Genesee County, said it's important to focus on parents because they have such influence over the behavior of their children.

Genesee County has an underage-drinking tip line to notify police about parties that are underway or being planned. Members of the panel discussed whether there should be just one hotline statewide, since many communities don't have their own, but Ciaccia said local hotlines should continue. People feel more comfortable talking to a law-enforcement official familiar with the address.

The State Police have a hotline to report illegal purchase or consumption of alcohol by underage drinkers. The number is 866-UNDER21, and calls are referred to law-enforcement agencies around the state.

Stefan Kalogridis, president of the Eastern New York Liquor Stores Association, said his group supports the state's efforts to curb children's access to alcohol. The state's liquor retailers are often faced with people using or trying to use fake IDs and buyers who purchase alcohol and give it to minors.

The association is hoping to launch a program this fall that would provide owners of liquor stores with discounts on scanners. Many are small mom-and-pop businesses that may not have the ability to buy the equipment at full price, Kalogridis said.
_________
source: http://www.pressconnects.com/

As the government tries to tackle anti-social drinking by targeting parents, the BBC's Jon Kelly speaks to a couple who say they are powerless to prevent their son abusing alcohol. All names have been changed.

Luke Thomson had always been a model son - caring, sensible and hard-working.

But after falling in with a group of friends whose lives revolved around heavy drinking, his parents soon witnessed an ugly transformation.

As a result of his bingeing, Luke would become aggressive, abusive and suicidal. His work suffered, he spiralled into debt and lost his driving licence.

Horrified at the changes in their son, mother Amanda, 53, and father Andrew, 55, have battled to help him, but Luke - now 21 - remains beyond their reach.

From being a sensitive young man, he turned into someone with a split personality
Andrew, father

"It's heartbreaking to watch this happening to a boy that I love," says Amanda.

"But however much we try to help him, it's his friends he listens to - not his parents. That's what the government don't understand."

Downward spiral

Like Andrew, she is deeply sceptical of the home secretary's plans to prosecute adults whose children are caught boozing in public.

For three years they have tried everything to curb Luke's drink problem, to little effect. Stripping the house of alcohol has failed, as have attempts to keep him away from the friends whose influence they believe has had such a pernicious effect.

And as a professional couple from the rural south of England, Andrew and Amanda warn that their situation could happen to anyone.

Luke had been a well-behaved and considerate teenager, but his downward spiral began on his 18th birthday when the new group of friends thought it would be funny to get him hopelessly drunk.

After staying up with his son all night as the teenager experienced his first dose of alcohol poisoning, Andrew hoped it would at least put his son off booze for life. But he was to be proved wrong.

"We'd never had any problems with him growing up, and I'd always been quite anti-alcohol," Andrew recalls.

"But from being a sensitive young man, he turned into someone with a split personality."

As they grew more and more concerned about Luke's increasingly heavy alcohol intake, his parents found they were powerless to help.

He moved into a flat with his new friends, who were used to spending the entirety of each morning sleeping off their hangovers.

Andrew and Amanda believed the group were taking advantage of their son, who had saved carefully as a teenager to buy his own car.

But every time his parents tried to reach out to him, Luke pushed them further away.

"I'd tell him his drinking was out of control, and he'd say, 'I'm too old for you to tell me what to do,'" remembers Amanda.

"Eventually I was so concerned that I spoke to one of the girls he lived with that I thought Luke was becoming an alcoholic.

"So she went and said to him that all I wanted to do was interfere and he should keep away."

'Real problem'

Luke's drinking came to a head when, after a drunken row with his friends, he sat alone at the wheel of his car.

He had kept the engine switched off, but when the police spotted him he was charged and eventually given a 20-month ban.

Until he admits he has a problem and gets help, there's no way out
Amanda, mother

Unable to drive, his prospects at work as an estate agent suffered and his confidence plummeted further.

Two months later, addled with debt, he moved back home. But Andrew and Amanda were still unable to stop his binges.

His mother believes that a girlfriend might help Luke find the self-assurance and maturity he needs to break out of his self-destructive lifestyle, but a vicious cycle keeps him trapped.

"Because he's always drunk he finds it difficult to meet girls. And that makes things worse, because it means his confidence is hit even harder," she says.

"Until he admits he has a problem and gets help, there's no way out for him."

Andrew says his family's experience shows that parents cannot always control the anti-social drinking of children - grown-up or under age.

"The real problem is how cheaply alcohol is sold in shops and supermarkets, and how it is portrayed in the media - soap opera characters turning to it at the slightest problem.

"Punishing parents is not the solution. We are already the ones who suffer the most."
_________
source: © BBC MMVIII

Most of us know someone at work whom we believe drinks a bit too much.

It can be the co-worker who puts away a couple of six-packs of beer after work, or the colleague who imbibes too much wine at various gatherings or even the boss who smells like alcohol after lunch, despite the breath mints.

It's not that we think they're alcoholics, but we are aware that there could be a problem. And that's where a little education can go a long way to making sure these little problems don't become full-scale disasters that ruin professional and personal lives, says one expert.

Eric Goplerud, a Ph.D. and the director of Ensuring Solutions to Alcohol Problems at the George Washington University Medical Center (www.ensuringsolutions.org), says that while workers' alcohol problems cost employers millions of dollars each year and contribute to skyrocketing health insurance costs, the problem often is not effectively dealt with in the workplace.

"I think one of the reasons that more employers have not addressed this issue is because it's perceived as a private issue in the life of an employee," he says. "We're hoping that people will see there are several things they can do that are relatively easy."

The goal, he says, is getting more employees to talk to those who drink too much, in a program called AIM - aim, inform and motivate.

"You go to someone and you say, 'You know, you seem to be drinking more - how much are you drinking?' Then, you inform them that what they're drinking seems like an awful lot. Finally, you motivate them to get help, by expressing your concern and saying: 'Have you thought about changing?' "

Goplerud also explains that just as an unhealthy lifestyle can lead to more serious issues such as diabetes, drinking too much can really impact someone's health and possibly lead to alcoholism.

source: Cincinnati Enquirer

College is a time of great pride and happiness for most kids and parents. Parents are excited that their children have gotten into a university and the teens are excited to embark on their first adventure away from the nest. College gives teens the freedom they have been craving and gives parents that sense of self satisfaction that they raised a child on the path to success. The four glorious years of college are supposed to mold our children to become the future of our country. But not one cocktail at a time!

Nationally, college has come to symbolize frat parties and underage drinking. After many recent deaths from alcohol poisoning at several universities, Minnesota is the first state to ban limitless drinking at college bars. The state may be the pioneer we need to prevent our children from drinking themselves into destruction.

Move over “land of 10,000 lakes,” because Minnesota’s new nickname is going to be a lot dryer than that! A new law, which went into effect January 1 of this year, has effectively eliminated all “bottomless drinking” specials at bars, as well as all drinking specials after 11 p.m. That means that no longer can bars offer $20 all you can drink for the entire night, encouraging kids to drink. After the deaths of three college students linked to alcohol in the past four months, Minnesota has put its collective foot down. Minnesota Congressman Lanning said, “All kinds of bad things happen to students as a result of binge drinking.” Duh!

Bar owners disagree with this policy — not a shock-tail considering the business they have to lose. They responded by saying the ban is actually a bad thing. “You’re just going to be pushing them to the house parties, the “keggers,” to a totally unsupervised area,” stated a Minnesota bar owner. While they do have a point, this mother of two still thinks their financial interests may outweigh their true concern for our childrens’ safety.

But don’t worry folks, bar owners have found ways around the bottomless drinking ban. Bars now simply offer $1 beers or $2 mixed drinks before 11 p.m. — effectively allowing students on a short budget to still drink like fish. Many are even worried that these restrictions may even encourage MORE drinking, in part because students are going to want to drink as much as they can before the deals end. So, is there a solution to our children’s binge drinking problem? It doesn’t look like frat parties will be serving Shirley Temples anytime soon.

You may be surprised to hear about a new study showed that Minnesota is home to more binge drinkers than almost anywhere in the nation, other states are not far behind. Nationally, a Harvard School of Public Health study found that 44 percent of collegians binge drink. The study also found that college may be the catalyst in these children’s chain reaction into drinking so heavily. The college graduation age, 21, has even been found to be the peak age for binge drinking across the country. To show how startling the college binge drinking epidemic is, would you be surprised to learn that 12,000,000 undergraduates drink four billion cans of beer every year? I sure was!

The long term risks of alcohol include everything from liver damage, to pancreatitis, to certain cancers, and even literal shrinkage of the brain. Not to mention the short term effects, alcohol poisoning and immediate death! Three Minnesota college students found out the hard way. In a $115 billion industry in the United States alone, it’s not unusual for us parents to feel like its David vs. Goliath. Don’t panic though, because we can help!

Although parents cannot physically be there every time our child is offered a drink, we can help to shape their decision making process. Parents are responsible for their children’s upbringing up until they are 18, or go to college. The pressures to binge drinking can be avoided somewhat if we educate our children. Actively educating our children on the detrimental effects of alcohol could lead to a healthier, and hopefully dryer, solution.

And alcohol should not be some secret, mysterious thing that adults get to do! Something we don’t talk about. Parents, your teens (even the honor students) have probably at least had an opportunity to try alcohol. Teaching kids about sex educates them about the consequences — alcohol-Ed if you will — should eliminate the mystery of drinking, and teach them the consequences of that choice.

Explaining to our children the dangers of alcohol in an accurate, caring, and unbiased way, could alleviate at least some of our worries. So, when talking to your kids be honest, be informative, and be straightforward. After all, binge drinking and college are not a good mix.

source: FOX News

Alcohol addiction is simply defined as a compulsive need for an intoxicating liquid that is obtained from fermented grain or fruit. These liquids include beer, wine, and other hard liquors. Alcoholism can lead people into serious trouble, and can be physically and mentally destructive. Currently alcohol use is involved in half of all crimes, murders, accidental deaths, and suicides. There are also many health problems associated with alcohol use such as brain damage, cancer, heart disease, and diseases of the liver. Alcoholics who do not stop drinking reduce life expectancy by 10 to 15 years.

When a person drinks alcohol, the alcohol is absorbed by the stomach, enters the bloodstream, and goes to all the tissues. The effects of alcohol are dependent on a variety of factors, including a person's size, weight, age, and sex, as well as the amount of food and alcohol consumed. The disinhibiting effect of alcohol is one of the main reasons it is used in so many social situations. Other effects of moderate alcohol intake include dizziness and talkativeness; the immediate effects of a larger amount of alcohol include slurred speech, disturbed sleep, nausea, and vomiting.

Alcohol addiction often has a familial pattern, and at least some of the transmission can be traced to genetic factors. The risk for alcohol addiction is three to four times higher in close relatives of people with alcohol addiction.* Family members and significant others are severely affected and hurt by alcohol addiction.

Alcohol & Drug Addiction Treatment Resource Center offers a no cost, viable alternative for people looking for addiction treatment answers and assistance. The alcohol and drug addiction treatment hotline is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Our experienced, friendly staff knows all about alcohol and drug addiction treatment problems. And we understand people need the best information possible. Our staff knows the emotional turmoil and personal consequences of alcohol and drug addiction treatment.

People who are alcohol dependent are caught in the compelling grip of an uncontrollable need for alcohol that takes priority over their ability to stop drinking. Indeed, this need to drink for the alcoholic can be as strong as his or her need for food or water. In short, and unlike most people, the alcoholic is controlled by "alcohol and addiction" rather than being in control of his or her life.

Alcohol, even at low doses, significantly impairs the judgment and coordination required to drive a car safely. Low to moderate doses of alcohol can also increase the incidence of a variety of aggressive acts, including domestic violence and child abuse. Hangovers are another possible effect after large amounts of alcohol are consumed; a hangover consists of headache, nausea, thirst, dizziness, and fatigue.

Drug addiction and alcohol abuse are complex, life-threatening issues. Our goal is to help the family, friends and those who suffer, get the help they deserve. We understand how confusing this process can be and the impact it has on the family. The vast majority of people are unfamiliar with chemical dependency, drug addiction and/or alcoholism. As a result, they end up making improper choices and not getting the best help possible or worse yet, not getting any help at all. Detox is the first step in the rehab process.

The disease of addiction involves permanent changes in the human brain that result from the repeated exposure to alcohol or addicting drugs. As the brain becomes accustomed to the presence of the addicting substance, the chemistry of the brain changes, becoming dependent on that substance.

source: Los Angeles Chronicle

This is why you should care about Carlene Carter: She puts her whole life into her music in a way few artists dare or accomplish. Not just snippets of a diary. I mean her life experience, her guts and her whole psyche. It goes in there. It's not always a pretty recipe. But the results are often gems of music.

Her work continues to illuminate the peculiar strength -- and the weakness -- of the whole Cash-Carter legacy, which is a musical edifice that is going to endure for a long, long time. And Carter's latest album, Stronger, coming some 13 years since her last studio effort, amply demonstrates that. It reflects the toll taken on her by wrong roads taken and unavoidable tragedies. In Carlene's case, she's had career triumphs and backslides, three marriages and numerous personal losses.

As her stepfather Johnny Cash once famously said, "Drugs run through this family like crap through a goose." And Carlene was no exception. She experienced a harrowing heroin bust when she took the fall for her late amour, Howie Epstein of Tom Petty's Heartbreakers, and she's had her own years of heroin addiction and alcohol abuse. Fortunately for her, she came out of it all with tales to tell of falling and getting back up again.

Me-centered music lives and dies by the strength of its compositions. Strong songs celebrate the worth of their creator. Lesser works invite attack, ridicule or -- worse -- no attention at all. From the Carter Family on to Johnny Cash, June Carter Cash, Rosanne Cash, Carlene Carter and others, they have risen and fallen on the strengths and frailties of their own labors.

And if there is one consistent thread running through the lives and careers of the many writing and performing Carters and Cashes, it is one of stubborn independence. That's probably the only reason Johnny lasted as long as he did, and it certainly seems to have been Carlene's key to survival -- both in a mortal sense, as well as artistically.

Her few albums over the years sometimes only hinted at the talents lying underneath. They trace, though, her route as a musical pioneer, from her California country-rock days through her Brit-pop era with her then-husband Nick Lowe back to a country amalgam she forges herself. After her strong 1978 self-titled debut album, the all-but-hidden UK album Blue Nun remains a rarity -- perhaps rightfully so. C'est Si Bon and Two Sides to Every Woman were very uneven. But her musical triumphs have been glorious. 1980's Musical Shapes, 1990's I Fell in Love and 1993's Little Love Letters remain joys to hear. She's singing with total confidence, and the songs fit her like those little mini-skirts she used to wear so well. Her last studio album, 1995's Little Acts of Treason, was not completely on a par with those works.

Stronger is very much Carter's own creation. She wrote all but one of the 12 cuts and called on old friend John McFee of the Doobie Brothers to produce. The result may be her strongest work to date. Strong, as in mature.

Especially moving is her rendition of her composition "It Takes One to Know Me," which her stepfather Johnny Cash recorded before his death and which appears on both his Johnny Cash: The Legend album and on his CD of duets with June.

In "Judgement Day," about losing Epstein to an OD, she laments the loss of her "bittersweet wasted youth" and sings: "I'll hold on for dear life till it comes judgement day/True love never dies/It just walks away."

The title song, "Stronger" (as in "what doesn't kill me makes me stronger"), which was spurred by the tragic, early death of her sister Rosie, is both a heartrending lamentation and a celebration of and return to life itself. "Now there's rest for the weary," she sings, "and there's peace in the night/There's grace in forgiveness for angels in flight."

From the Musical Shapes album, Carlene reprises her song "I'm So Cool." Whereas the original recording of "I'm So Cool" sounded jaunty and cocky and looking forward to life's experiences, her 2008 "Cool" is mature and even a little world-weary as she reflects on those experiences. "Hangin' out with the boys is where it's at," she sings, "'Cause they got the balls and I got the bat/Yeah, I got the bat."

Carter has obviously come back from a perilous and disastrous odyssey to find her rightful place at her musical home. Stronger is a triumphant album, a buoyant if bittersweet reclamation of her own personal spot in the Cash-Carter enduring legacy of musical creativity. Carlene has not been regarded in the past as a role model for young women artists, but now she has something to say to them.

source: http://www.cmt.com/news/nashville-skyline

Sandra was part of the damaged goods when her mother's drinking fractured home life, but she found strength and focus in fellowship. She tells that Alateen can help young people regain life.

Sandra grew up in a very middle-class alcohol-affected family.

As much as it appeared very normal, things were very wrong.

``The house was still running, jobs were still going, everything was fine on the outside,'' she said.

``But you walked on eggshells inside.''

Inside, that's where the secrets burned, where the shouting and arguments behind closed doors confused and isolated a young teenaged girl.

It's where a gloom hung in the air, it's where Sandra didn't want to be.

Her mum was the drinker.

She worked two jobs but drank in the closet, always secreted it away, but eventually her illness became the elephant sitting in the middle of the lounge room that no one was willing to talk about.

Sandra, not her real name, was not subjected to violence or abuse but was emotionally deprived and felt intensely lonely and had little self-esteem.

``I had feelings of not depression but I was always searching for something to make me feel better,'' she said.

She reacted in a teenage way, spent as much time away from home as possible, out with friends.

``I did everything early, I rebelled,'' she said.

She evaded the genetic trap of alcoholism herself but in her way was cruelled by the disease.

She needed support independent from her family and once her mother had hit the bottom and met realisation that she needed to act they both found shafts of light.

Sandra was 16 when her mother started attending Alcoholics Anonymous.

Her mum liked the life, AA helped her recover and thought her daughter might be able to experience some of the same.

So it was that Sandra started attending Alateen and her life started returning from muted to vibrant colours.

Alcoholics Anonymous offers help for the drinker, Al-Anon offers help and hope to their families and friends. Alateen offers strength, learning and tools for life for young relatives and friends of alcoholics.

``It probably helped me stay in school and get through school,'' Sandra said.

``It gives you tools to help with what you're dealing with and it's very much about it not being your fault.

``You learn that you didn't cause it, you can't control it and you can't cure it.

``But you can start to enjoy your own life regardless of what's going on at home.''

Sandra would take an Alateen survival book to school with her for quick looks in the privacy of her bag when she needed strength.

She'd cut up Al-Anon slogans on slips of paper to keep in her pocket _ one day at a time, easy does it, first things first, how important is it?

They helped her maintain perspective, and the fellowship at weekly Alateen meetings helped her escape.

Her mum stayed sober but for a while the road was emotionally rocky. She and her husband divorced.

Alateen helped Sandra complete year 12. She became a Bachelor of Arts and gained post-graduate qualification in education.

She left Alateen but couldn't do anything else but return to it as a sponsor for other young people. She became Australian Alateen chairperson.

Her mum has stayed sober for 16 years. Sandra says their relationship has grown through the fellowship of AA.

And the daughter, now a radiant mother, is certain of what Alateen gave her.

``Hope,'' she says without hesitation.

``Hope.''

source: Alcoholics Anonymous Reviews