For more than twenty years now, America has had inspired professionals doing research and writing about what can be done to stop the intergenerational transmission of alcoholism, addiction, abuse and other family dysfunction in future generations. Yet for twenty years, much public policy has been just the opposite of what's recommended! Now political and private sector leaders are getting together here in California to discuss "Substance Abuse in the 21st Century: Positioning the Nation for Progress," and these researchers aren't even represented in the dialogue!

Most Native Americans know we're raising children now who will affect the next seven generations. We find the same idea in the Bible. James Redfield, in the "new age" best seller The Celestine Prophesy, calls them the "link in the chain of all human evolution" to the future of the world. Yet little positive effort is being made nationwide to help or reeducate those who are growing up in alcoholic, addictive or abusive homes -- to the contrary, many schools and communities, arguably the Federal government, are now adding to their isolation and abuse.

Issue leaders like Tim Cermack, M.D. of California and Steve Wolin, M.D. of Washington DC have consistently called for building a support system for these children outside of the dysfunctional family system -- for involving them in healthy activities and mentorships at school and in the community -- even for intentionally keeping them OUT of the home to increase their resilience. Yet the politically conservative public policy of the past two decades, particularly as regards public education, has led to many schools doing the opposite: Kicking them out, isolating them, dropping education and treatment programs, involving addicted or alcoholic parents in denial in decisions about education and treatment programs, and encouraging over-controlling parents (a symptom of all alcoholic and addictive people) to further over-control and even abuse their children.

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It is occasionally said out here among us grassroots type folks out here that "Washington is out of touch." No where does that seem more true than among the anawim, the alcoholic, the addicted, the abusive families -- and we don't need geographical distance to be separate. For several years I lived in the same neighborhood as Bill Bennett, for example, and worked not far from Kurt Schmoke. Yet I lived, at the time, in an entirely different world -- and so did my children.

During some of that time, my children were living in an alcoholic and abusive home, and part of it they were in recovery with friends still living in alcoholic and abusive homes. These were wealthy homes filled with darkness, despair, disease, drug abuse and dysfunction. Many if not all were families with a long family history of addictions and compulsions for whom addictive thinking or codependent ideas had become entrenched as "family values." These were the kids who are most likely to use alcohol or other drugs improperly as adults --genetically, attitudinally, emotionally. Indeed, they were they kids who WERE using alcohol and other drugs improperly, already, by junior high, or earlier.

Is there anyone with common sense who believes that asking the parents of these kids to talk to them about drugs is a sane solution? Or thinks that kicking them out of school so they have no healthy options or role models is a promising harbinger for solving the problem in the 21st Century? Are there any intelligent adults who believe that it's adequate to tell these young people, who some experts say may comprise as much as 25% of our U.S. population, "just say no?" Or are these "solutions" simply preaching to the choir, to the children of good, conservative citizens with Bennettesque values?

I think it's worth noting that these approaches were crafted by politicians, not professionals. My old boss John Volpe chaired the President's Task Force on Drunk Driving in 1981-82, the incubator of public policy these past two decades. The career experts pushed for balance. It was mothers like angry Candi Lightner (MADD) and Joyce Nalepka, a conservative woman who felt her drug-using son had been victimized by dealers, who outshouted the call for balanced public policy and joined with the political conservatives to tip the scales to the right.

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Maybe mothers like me, whose children have suffered public abuse under the conservative policies of the past two decades on top of the personal abuse of our afflictions, should now yell for liberalization and coddling in the next Administration. But it would be better to work together -- conservatives, liberals, Republicans, Democrats, healthy, afflicted, moral, addicted -- to find REAL solutions for ALL our children, and our children's children of tomorrow.

In 1987 I attended the First National Conference on Substance Abuse Prevention Research in Kansas City. It was hard for me, as the parent of recovering children, to hear about all the progressive programs in the West and Mid-West, in New York and Florida, and other places "outside the beltway." At that time, my children would have been better off living in Harlem than in wealthy Montgomery County, Maryland where the "just say no" idea had taken full hold and a teacher was disciplined for teaching the disease concept of alcoholism. School programs other than D.A.R.E. -- a program that added to the shame and isolation of the victimized children -- were suspended. There was a fantasy among local school personnel that somehow the affluent residents of the county could and would find other resources for their children -- predicated on the incorrect assumptions (a) that such programs actually existed, and (b) that there was a group of healthy, wealthy high-functioning parents who could and would have the time the money and the power over their children to make such programs work. Nothing, in my experience, could have been further from the truth.

The most sensible thing I saw at that conference was a paradigm by Karol Kumpfer, then at the University of Utah. When I got back to Potomac, I enlisted the help of Chris Faegre of the National Prevention Network and the county Substance Abuse Prevention Coordinator in crafting my own home-based program. Her paradigm, in its central concept, showed the child as a part of three primary systems: Family, School and Peer Group. All these existed in the context of the community, the community as part of the society, and the society as surrounded, in her framework, by the general media. Our family was doing what it could; the school was excluding and shaming children, but at least keeping things clean; what remained was the peer group. And what a peer group!

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The county laws permitted children to participate in treatment programs without parental permission, which was critical, since the parents of my children's friends were mostly alcoholic, addicted to drugs, or abusers. There was no chance the parents were going to be helpful or supportive, in my opinion -- an opinion later borne out by experience (they were defensive, in denial). The school, by policy, was not going to be helpful to these children, or offer them any alternative to their families. So we would have to create an alternative in my den. Maybe someday there will be a center called Carolden, like Hazelden.

We found a gifted youth counselor to work with them, and I provided a safe place. Several of them, including both my children, survived to adulthood and are living lives today as good citizens -- something the majority of American parents, at least middle-class parents, take for granted. But not millions of us who have a personal and family history of addiction, including the middle class, the upper class, and the superrich -- many have lost children to intergenerational transmission.

Some of that group from "Carolden" are dead. Brilliant, handsome, gifted, wealthy young college men, they died in a drunk driving crash -- their own. If you know the whole story on the statistics, you know that most "victims" of drunk driving crashes are drunk -- drunk drivers, their passengers, drunk pedestrians get themselves killed. One member of our group is now with the Korean Mafia -- sharing with others the terrible abuses his father shared with him, at home.

During the current Clinton Administration, incidentally, a new child abuse law has been passed that makes absolutely no sense if you understand the dynamics of the family that is alcoholic or addicted. The Child Welfare League of America estimated that 75% of "child abuse" cases come from families substances are abused; the county program directors in my area think it's more like 95%. This takes me back to the main subject, what schools can do.

Treatment research says that if you have chemical dependency or addiction in a family, as is usually what we're talking about in cases of abuse, you need to separate family members, treat them each individually, and then put them back together.

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Common sense says that if 75-95% of child abuse cases involve parents with chemical problems, and treatment research says to separate family members for treatment success, we would separate the children and work with them and the parents until the children could be safely returned. But the new child abuse laws mandate local child protection authorities to try everything they can to keep the family TOGETHER for six months THEN separate them. Figure out how well that augers for the future of America!

So what do I suggest schools do? Do I think we should hire codependent teachers who will love and forgive children who drink and do drugs in school? Do I think schools should set up treatment and education programs for the children of alcoholic and addicted families? Do I think children from abusive or dysfunctional homes should camp out at school? No -- I think the pendulum can swing too far to the left just as easily as it can swing too far to the right…and in our political system, too often does. I think we need sane, rational, and balanced programs that illuminate the problem and enlighten those involved, without encouraging or enabling behavior that's unacceptable. To paraphrase the ancient wisdom, "punish the sin, not the sinners."

Why can't we Americans come up with HONEST facts about drugs, including alcohol and tobacco, that everyone can agree on? We're confusing our children. When the government, foundations, schools and others choose to teach only those facts and "statistics" that support a politically correct viewpoint, kids whose parents are part of the problem hear DIFFERENT facts and figures at home. We could minimize this just by seeking TRUTH AND BALANCE.

Why can't our U.S. Special Operations Command use some of its knowledge of psychological operations to design debriefing and reeducation programs for our schools to offer the children of families with a history of alcoholism, addiction, or other conditions that involve altered mental states and aberrations? Or for young parents in recovery? Programs aimed at offering healthy new attitudes and behaviors, not the kind of counterproductive shaming and blaming and finger-shaking that leads even healthy people to say, "Boy, I need a drink!" Programs like Hyrum Smith (Franklin-Covey) has designed in his program, Getting Control of Your Life (an idea you can sell!)

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Why can't more schools teach conflict resolution, ways to deal with upsets and angers and resentments and abuse without taking a drink or a drug? The Johnson Institute and others have developed programs aimed at children from dysfunctional families that are also skill-building for children from the "nice" homes with "good" family values. (Nobody's perfect!)

Why can't Corporate America help the schools deal more effectively with diversity, with the browning of America, with the equalization of women, and with the reality that somewhere between 10 and 25% of our children (depending on who you ask) come from severely dysfunctional homes and are part of the community the others need to live with without being abused or getting involved?

Why can't more schools provide safe places for children who come from difficult homes? And continue to build up mentoring programs? Or why can't we as an advanced society create more public boarding schools? Whatever happened to Sam Nunn's original "National Service Corps," a civilian version of the military experience for children from chaotic, undisciplined, unpredictable homes?

I have a lot more questions than answers, and every year I realize that there are far more things I don't know than I do know. But there's one thing I know I know: IF WE KEEP FOCUSING ON SHORT-TERM AND SHORT-SIGHTED "SOLUTIONS" FOR OUR CHILDREN AND OUR SCHOOLS, THESE PROBLEMS WILL STILL BE PLAGUING US IN THE 22ND CENTURY AND BEYOND. WE NEED TO TAKE OUR HEADS OUT OF THE SAND, LOOK SQUARELY AT THESE CHILDREN OF ADDICTION AND ABUSE, AND SAY TO OURSELVES: "WHAT CAN WE DO WITH OR FOR THESE CHILDREN THAT WILL CREATE A BETTER WORLD IN SEVEN GENERATIONS?

We have been as a society in denial, a giant national Ostrich with our head in the sand, pretending to ourselves that if some just say "no," others will follow and the problem will go away. That if we isolate the afflicted, the problem will go away. That it is a problem of the poor. That if we just keep kids off alcohol and drugs until 21 the problem will go away -- as if we could keep the children of addictive families clean!

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Many of our leaders confuse CORRELATION with CAUSATION, and don't seem to be in touch any more with which is which.

Today's three-year-olds who will one day use illegal drugs will probably drink orange juice first, then alcohol, then use other drugs -- simply because orange juice and alcohol are more readily available to them and easier to use. But does drinking orange juice or using alcohol CAUSE illegal drug use? Usually not. Millions and millions of Jewish boys, for example, have had alcohol by the time they're 13 without its ever leading anywhere bad.

On the other hand, alcohol and other psychoactive drugs definitely DO cause many other problems: Ask anybody who's ever been chemically dependent, addicted, or even sometimes intoxicated. People do many things they would NEVER do otherwise "under the influence." They have driving crashes, fall in bathtubs, break their necks diving into empty pools, get pregnant, commit crimes, assault people, beat their wives or kids, become controlling and manipulative, lose contact with God, go broke, lose jobs, ruin relationships, turn brain cells to jelly, neglect their children, and more.

These are the kinds of practical things we should be teaching children, and we should be teaching them alternative ways of doing things. Coping skills, stress management, discipline, anger management, conflict resolution, self-esteem, independence, goal-setting, health, happiness, hope.

I did the best I could to repair the damages of my life and heritage, to break the link between my centuries-old, intergenerational family history of alcoholism and abuse, and the future of my heirs and of America. Maybe in the future there will be more and more parents like me -- especially if we start now to work with the children who will be the parents then. These problems have been around for centuries in one form or another -- and if we want to change that in the 21st and beyond, we'd better dig in for a long-term view. Schools need to become more than drug-free; they need to become links in human evolution where children of addiction and abuse can heal.

Keeping drugs out of schools by keeping kids out of schools may be a "solution" for schools, but not for society. Out of sight is not out of action. We need to do better.

Carol Liege has been living in California since 1997, exploring the many holistic, alternative and metaphysical approaches to healing addictions and abuse now emerging "outside the beltway." The Section Editor for Angels & Addicts (previously titled Beyond the Twelve Steps) for Planetlightworker.com, Carol is a member of a California-based professional group from science and religion forming to develop research projects on "futuristic" healing methods.