After a Park Ridge teen’s alcohol and drug use led to repeated arrests and chaotic relationships with his parents and siblings, he got into a 12-step recovery program when he was 22.
He stayed sober for more than a year, but on one weekend night at about 1 a.m., the loneliness of not seeing his old friends got the better of the young man, who provided only his first name, Brendan, because the policy of 12-step programs such as Alcoholics Anonymous is to not use last names. With texts from his friends flying back and forth that night, Brendan went out with them and relapsed.
Because challenges like this are a real stumbling block to 18- to 32-year-olds, Maine Township is starting the Recovery Connection program to support them and provide sober social activities as an alternative to bars. It will meet on Friday nights, starting May 1, in Niles.
“This is a life or death situation for many of these kids,” said Marty Cook, who does community outreach for Maine Township. He has been in recovery for many years, and generated the idea for the program.
“Often for people who don’t stay sober, the end result is incarceration or death. This is a way to stop it now.”
Three of the eight young patients in rehab at Holy Family Hospital in Des Plaines are set to go to jail for serious offenses related to drug use, such as theft and burglary, Cook said. Also, heroin-related deaths in DuPage County, which has similar demographics to Maine Township, inch up annually and have reached the 30 to 40 per year mark.
Brendan, who’s now 26, said he wishes there had been a program like this when he first went into recovery four years ago.
“My biggest challenges early on were meeting people my age who were sober,” he said. “People this age go out to bars, and on a Friday or Saturday night, I wanted to be with people my own age.”
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For that reason, Recovery Connection will meet on Friday nights, and Cook hopes to eventually do some social outings, such as seeing comedy shows or going to restaurants.
“I wanted to have young people in recovery to walk in on Friday nights and see that others are staying sober,” Cook said. “Hopefully, they build relationships. We also want to help them find community resources, such as help with finding jobs or going back to school.”
Oakton Community College is partnering with Maine Township for this program. Other partners include the Niles Park District, which is providing space for the recovery meetings on Fridays, the Keys to Recovery program at Presence Holy Family Hospital, Maine Center, the Park Ridge and Niles police departments, Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation, Peer Services and Yellowbrick.
Cook said insurance pays for only short treatment stays these days, so most people do the work of healing in recovery programs, making them important parts of a community’s well-being.
Maine Township Supervisor Carol Teschky said the township has budgeted $20,000 for the program for the 2015-16 fiscal year, including an assistant for Cook, though the budget will not be officially passed until the last week of April.
“They’re also talking about community education projects, workshops, and maybe taking trips where they would charter a bus,” she said.
They aim to help young people and their families avoid the struggles Brendan and his family went through.
“In high school I started to experiment with drugs and alcohol,” he said. His reputation as a partier cost him an athletic scholarship to college, and he spent about four years bouncing from job to job and having frequent run-ins with the law for fighting and for stealing from his parents and siblings.
“Your parents and friends are always mad at you,” he said. “These are all the things that come with a drinking and drug habit.”
Not that he acknowledged it.
“I would try to distance myself from my family and hide my drinking and drug use, but I really wasn’t,” Brendan said.
Eventually, his parents said he had to either go to rehab or be kicked out of the house. He chose rehab.
Today, he has a job and an apartment and has mended his relationships with his family, so much so that he’s the one they come to if they need a hand. He has also learned to create a social life that doesn’t revolve around drinking or drug use.
“I think I’ve been to more concerts in sobriety than I ever did drinking,” Brendan said. “I’ve gone to sporting events, the beach, I’ve been on a couple vacations and we’ve started a softball team and golf tournaments.”
He said he’s excited about Recovery Connection’s potential to make sobriety easier for young people.
“The demand for this has been present long before I got sober,” he said. “I see more young people getting sober now than before.”
Pam DeFiglio is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.