Addiction, Treatment and Recovery

On a Thursday morning in mid-May, Jenny Gomez of the Betty Ford Center Children’s Program in Dallas went to work especially early, at 4:30 a.m.

Jenny joined 80 law enforcement officers from four different agencies as they gathered for a briefing prior to serving arrest warrants on 40 individuals suspected of operating methamphetamine labs.

The 80 officers split into 10 groups. Jenny went with a Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) team, because the location they were targeting was known to have children living on the premises.

Jenny watched from a safe distance as the agents, dressed in full protective gear, walked in formation up to the house, and broke through the front door. Once they secured the house, Jenny was called in to help with the two children, age seven and five.

“The four adults in the house were handcuffed, and the children looked bewildered,” Jenny says. “They came right to us, and didn’t shed a tear. They were so detached from the reality of the situation and totally disconnected from their family. It was amazing.”

Jenny, accompanied by DEA agents, took the children to a local hospital for evaluation. They were drug tested and the results were, says Jenny, “incredibly disturbing.” The testing limit is set at 150 nanograms. The children tested in excess of 1,000. A local pediatrician suggested the children must have directly ingested a crack rock.

Children’s Services eventually took custody of the children; they are now in foster care.

“I can only hope these children will end up in a safe and nurturing home,” says Jenny Gomez, “and that they get some kind of effective treatment to help them cope with what they’ve been through.”

Why was the Betty Ford Center’s Jenny Gomez involved in this high-risk activity?

Because she’s part of a fast-growing organization called the National Alliance for Drug Endangered Children (DEC). The alliance was formed in October, 2003. It provides multi-disciplinary training for communities interested in starting or expanding DEC programs.

Why the relatively recent growth of DEC programs?

Because of the explosive growth of police raids on meth labs, and because we now know that about one-third of those labs are located where children are present.

Once limited almost exclusively to the western and southwestern U.S., methamphetamine production and use has now become a national epidemic. And the effects on the innocent victims – children – are devastating.

In the U.S. in 1998 there were 3,800 meth lab raids. In 2003 there were more than 10,000. The number of children found in those locations has jumped from 1,200 in 2000 to nearly 3,500 in 2003. Final figures for 2004 haven’t yet been tabulated, but the U.S. Attorney’s Office in San Diego estimates the number of children rescued could double in 2004.

Officials in Kentucky estimate 30,000 children there are exposed to the toxic effects of meth production. In Montana, Idaho, Colorado and Washington, state officials say as many as 25 percent of children entering the care of protective services are children of meth users. In Riverside County, California (where the Betty Ford Center is located), children’s services workers say roughly half the young people they care for are there as a result of their parents’ involvement with meth.

The volatile and flammable chemicals used in methamphetamine production work their way into the human body, leading to both short- and long-term damage to vital organs, including the brain. According to Dr. John Martyny, principal investigator of a landmark 2003 study on the effects on children of exposure to meth, “Children living in those labs might as well be taking the drug directly.”

But the damage done to these kids is not just physical.

As a U.S. Department of Justice paper recently pointed out, “Living in such an unstable environment, children can suffer from stress and trauma. They may have low self-esteem, are unable to function well in social environments with other children or with adults, or are unable to trust people or form healthy relationships.”

“The key to helping and possibly protecting the children is through a multidisciplinary approach among law enforcement officials, the medical community, social services and prosecution.”

The simple fact is that if “rescued” drug-endangered children are ignored or left unmonitored, those children will continue to be caught in a cycle of drug use and abuse.

The National DEC Alliance helps communities form collaborative multi-disciplinary teams to provide coordinated services and support to the victims. These teams include first responders, child protective services, law enforcement, medical and mental health professionals, prosecutors and treatment providers – especially treatment providers who specialize in care for children.

That’s where the Betty Ford Center enters the picture. The Betty Ford Center Children’s Program, under the acclaimed leadership of national director Jerry Moe, is the acknowledged leader in working with young people age 7-12 who live in family environments where the debilitating disease of drug addiction is “the elephant in the living room.” These young people are not themselves addicted to drugs and/or other drugs, but they are directly exposed to the deleterious effects of the disease.

One of the key goals of the Children’s Program – which operates at both the main Rancho Mirage BFC campus and the Dallas BFC Children’s Program home – is to break the cycle of addiction, to try to ensure that young people who are raised in an addictive environment will not succumb to the hereditary disease later in life.

During the past year, Jenny Gomez of the Dallas office has participated in many DEC Team training programs – in nine states.

But helping to educate professionals in the field isn’t the only way the Betty Ford Center is involved with drug-endangered children.

There’s an even more direct link.

The Center works with half-way houses (including San Diego’s Providence Place) where in-recovery mothers (many of them ex-methamphetamine addicts) and their children reside and recover from the trauma of addiction.

The mothers and their children board buses for the trip to Rancho Mirage and the Betty Ford Center Children’s Program. They stay in a local motel and attend the four-day-long Children’s Program to, in the words of national director Jerry Moe, “deepen their recovery.”

“Parents need help during their recovery, “says Moe. “And so do their children. We’re here for these innocent victims, and in the face of the national epidemic of methamphetamine manufacture and use, we’re pleased to be helping, both educationally and one-on-one.”

Related posts:

1. BFC Children’s Program Evaluated in First-Ever Scientific Study