My children have played in the parks I played in. They are skiing at the ski hill I skied at when I was young. Hopefully they will have just as much fun growing up in this valley as I did. That reason alone is the main reason I live here. This is a wonderful place to be living and have fun.

As I grew up in this valley I learned all there is about the great outdoors. I also learned some things that weren't so good. I'm not alone in what I learned while growing up here and I know everyone has a tragic story to tell, but my high school class, the class of 1976, while not unique, did pay a heavy price for "recreational use" of alcohol and drugs. We lost many of our fellow classmates because of what was going on in Bozeman during that time.

I was blessed because of strong interventions from two sources. First of all I want to give a deep bow of thanks to a couple of policemen who trusted me enough to befriend me and tell me the truth. "Joe, you're in deep trouble. You need help to stop the alcohol and pot and you’’d better get it now before you end up in jail."

Then my family grabbed me, shook me, and told me the same thing. But they went a step further. They told me where I was going to go for help. Minneapolis. I was sent to an inpatient treatment center followed by a three month stay at a halfway house. Because of this, I was able to learn how to stay stopped from the addiction I had fallen into.
From that process I learned the importance that comes from early intervention. One of the much used ways to explain what early intervention does is this: "You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink, but you can tie that horse up and wait until it gets thirsty, then it will have to drink––sooner or later." The policemen began the process of tying me up until my family stepped in and took over, giving me a new start in my life.

What I learned from that was a simple. I encourage everyone that comes to me to take fast immediate action on the person they love. "Don't wait until the time is right, act now." I tell them. I'd rather get frustrated trying to help than stand over a grave wishing I'd tried something. After the halfway house I went on to become a counselor and worked in and around the field of addiction for over twenty years. I've been lucky and I've learned a lot about addiction in those years.

My oldest son who is ten already is paying a price that he never had a choice in. He was born with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. My wife and I took him after being told that his birth mother was using drugs and alcohol while he was in her womb. She even nursed him while using drugs and alcohol. He is one of the many innocent victims of the addiction process. At the time we said we'd take him we had no idea what we were facing but we love him as much as we love our own two children who did not have to suffer his fate.
First let's define some terms, Alcoholism and Drug Addiction have become almost interchangeable terms. For these articles and while reading these articles they are going to be interchangeable.

My first job after I finished going to St. Mary's College in Minneapolis, (now a part of St. Catherine's in St. Paul) and getting my Chemical Dependency degree, was teaching others about the disease of Alcoholism, Drug Addiction, intervention and recovery. To me then, and even more today, education is still the best way to battle the disease of Alcoholism and Addiction. I started working at one of the top treatment centers in the country at that time and I was taught really well by the staff there. Some of those people were the best there were in the field of addiction at that time. Along with education the Addict we always include educating their families. Along with educating people comes educating families. There is a terrible joke that makes the concept of Alcoholism and families clear.

 "Alcoholism is just like diarrhea it runs in the jeans." As gross as that joke is, it is true. The genetic predisposition to alcoholism has been well established. In the seventies and eighties it was common practice to treat families and not just the identified patient. When any counselor sat down with an addicted person and their family, they knew with certainty that they were dealing with a family problem not a single person issue. Treatment centers knew that they had to bring the family into recovery also.

In the Gallatin Valley during the eighties and nineties, these practices were proven techniques. The people running the TALK project were teaching the Family Concept of Alcoholism and Drug Addiction as well as the benefits of early intervention and recovery that included Abstinence from mood altering chemicals. The Chemical Dependency Center or the C.D.C that operated in Bozeman then was also teaching this same Family Concept. Our own Alcohol Services was known to work with families back then. Even today if you look at the web pages of some of the most famous treatment centers, they view the whole family approach as the only approach that can give the addicted person a chance at long lasting sobriety.

When I left my job in Minneapolis, I went down to Oklahoma City. There, along with some close friends of mine, helped to develop the beginning of an Education Program that is still working today. It's an education program that looks at all the facets of alcoholism, addiction, intervention and recovery. It dares a family, a community or even a company to look at itself and decide whether or not to face itself and deal with the problem. All problems dislike scrutiny. That's the power of Education. With Education comes awareness and with awareness the light of truth. As the truth creeps in, the problem has no where to go but out. In Oklahoma City, when the community decided to deal with it's problem they dove right in community leaders, Church leaders, Bankers, Businessmen, moms and dads all made the decision together. They all came aboard. Then, they, like us now, had been looking at a growing problem in their school system, their work force and in their own families. When all the people of the community decided something had to happen, they came together and began to work with each other to make their community a place where they embraced education, early intervention and recovery. Then the program took off.

The same thing happened in our community when the TALK project was working. Our community and the school administration were behind that project. The school system was encouraging and demanding involvement in that project. The C.D.C along with Alcohol Services were all working together to help solve the problem facing them at that time. The C.D.C. was famous for it's family weeks and interventions.

In Oklahoma City just like I hope to see in our Gallatin Valley, tolerance was low for behavior that involved alcohol and drugs in school and in the parent's homes. That meant they were no longer going to turn a blind eye to the problem. A really clear line was drawn and the price paid for crossing that line was swift and strong. In the schools in Oklahoma City they started sending kids who were caught with alcohol or drugs home and told their family to deal with the problem. Students and adults alike had to bring their family with them and together as a family they had to go through the education program.

The school system began to have a strong recovery group going in the school and along with that recovery group was a functioning parent/family support group. The support among the parents was significant and the information that was passing back and forth was terrific. Both the students and the parents had to complete the program as a family and then as a family they had to make a decision. If the person was caught again then they had to complete a different program, one that had stronger involvement from the family and the resources that the community thought appropriate.

Why look at Oklahoma City and try to compare it to ourselves? Because they did some deep searching and they spent time looking at all the different modalities that were available at that time. We don't need to re-invent the wheel. We need to look at a program that works like the one in Oklahoma City. Education, early intervention works, and it's still working really well in Oklahoma City as well as many other cities in the United States.

The TALK project stopped over ten years ago. The CDC center which had been sent to us by another Montana town, left town. Alcohol Services currently is drowning in its own intake system. DUI's and MIP's are going up each year. And each year our grade from the M.A.D.D. organization goes down. How low we go this year is yet to be decided, but it appears that we have done nothing to help ourselves. I know people will say, "but we had that wonderful 4 out of 5 campaign!" Yes we did have that campaign but I asked well over one hundred people and the common response was this. "Great! That means twenty percent of the people driving on the roads in that age bracket may have been drinking that night." That thought alone is quite scary.

We don't need to try another program that is experimenting with what is being called "Best Practices." Those things are great if you have laid down firm foundations and the ground work needed to support it. But if you don't have those things already in place Best Practices ideas just don't work. Why waste another large grant? Why not use that large grant for something that will work?

Around each school zone there is a sign that says that school is drug free zone. So what's the penalty if some one is caught with any type of drug? Alcohol is a drug just as much as any drug. What's the penalty? What should happen if a person is caught with alcohol or a drug? It concerns me that a community like ours is drifting away from proven techniques. The leaders of the schools need to understand Alcoholism. The leaders of our faith community need to understand Alcoholism. The leaders of our law enforcement need to understand Alcoholism. An alcoholic is not the person sleeping under the Rouse Avenue bridge or standing beside the soup kitchen van anymore.