In every high school classroom three young adults will become addicted to alcohol and/or drugs. One will live a long life, well, kind of a life. One will go off to prison. And one will die. At least these are the typical roads on an addict's map.

But do you want to know what remains more shocking than those predictions? If you take 15 of those young addicts and give them a chance at life; that is if they find help in a rehabilitation center: just one, only one, will find recovery the first time.

This is not an exaggeration of the power that lady addiction has upon all of us. This lady appears with many labels and varying degrees of seduction. She is hard to beat. She smiles at everyone and doesn't like to be ignored. Those that do divorce her have got to fight. They must constantly push her away as they move onward but they may never, not ever, forget what she looks like.

(These statistics were supported by Paul Right, a clinical coordinator at Monmouth Chemical Dependency Centers, Chelsea House. 1997)

Something to Remember

Three hours after lunch and three before dinner, the late August afternoon blued and greened inside a small basement window behind my father as he told me he was scared and out of options. I knew what he meant right away by the shiver in his voice, not from what he said. My father's emotional capacity had been buried for so long that I almost felt like saying, "Hey Dad, where've you been? I missed you," but that would not help me now. Although his passion was new to me, valuable and warming, I was only thinking of getting away from his sincerity for accepting it meant he was right. Ultimately I was afraid of losing control and calculating the greater affect that rehab would have upon me, especially the time it would take away from my otherwise important 17-year-old world.

This blue-green afternoon which crept into and surfeited the fake wood basement looked to be like my middle age crisis. Except the difference here is that I had pimples, not a briefcase. Terrified of changing — of drowning — I searched the room for outlets, since all I have learned and all I knew was refuge in drugs. Now this man wanted me to come out of this basement-this swimming pool and one day give him a hug. Could an embrace by my father replace everything else? I didn't know the answer, but I did feel the doubt riding up my back into my neck and surrounding my throat to swallow only lumps of air.

Just a week had passed in my father's house. Drained from worrying, my mother politely kicked me out to spend the rest of my high school summer with my dad and his family. Sure, bring this elevated and rushing racer of a teenager into a delicate garden of a home, I thought. Knowing my situation was everything but open for preferences, I kept myself in line with my father for six days. It was like hiding a dirty magazine under my mattress. I knew it was a bad spot but that was the best I could do to hide myself. My father knew where to look. He knew my mother wasn't skeptical when I came up his misty lawn with several angles of direction.

That morning I was late. I had spent an evening with some animals. They didn't last to see and taste the ice melting away from the cans of beer inside our motel bathtub cooler. But I did. I stayed up staring and drinking with nothing but images from a reliable television. I knew I was late and that my father was sure to catch me but it didn't matter. I wasn't a dangerous drunk. I was myself. A thing that lived and breathed for escape. A thing that felt it necessary to stop at a convenience store like a business man would stop before work. I paid for something like white mints specked with green, then got back into my car. It was only natural for me to think I was right as I drove even later to my six-day-old garden.

The decision, hell the phone calls to different rehabs, must have been difficult. Holding back his tears, he asked me to go willingly. He tried not to cry. This killed me because the image felt like someone pulling on my skin. Was he trying to help me or hurt me?

"I'll have to call the police department to remove you. You'll go to juvenile hall then a rehab," my father managed with waning confidence. His words infringed upon me along with the yellow mustard smell of the basement. Why did it have to smell like a basement now? I'm not sure if I would have gone any other way but willingly, yet I knew I couldn't disrespect this man nor neglect his plea despite my stoned rates. It was hard to look straight at him. His face was new, and I had thoughts of appeasing his wishes just to keep things the same later on to trick my own father: rehab would be a yellow speed bump-nothing more. The missed eye contact grew harder since I never gave this man anything but my best shot. But now he was asking me to give up my favorite blanket and stand naked. He knew of nothing else to do and loved his son too much to let him dive and dissolve into a horrible world.

So I went without much of a good-bye. My sight went from basement to rehab without the 30-minute drive. The steps of the rehab were tall and the chipped sky blue paint told a story of how many teens had to walk or be led up them. It was frightening to see the drugless, friendless hallway through the two glass doors. They were probably glass to scare the teens, kind of get them ready for some torture.

An unconcerned secretary directed us to a room. We waited, looked around and kept quiet. Then 10 minutes later a man, a woman, a thief came in to take me away from my father and his new garden, from his light blue eyes filled with tears, from my old world. Just like that my vision was only forward. I don't remember looking down the hall back at my father. To think of it, I probably couldn't see a thing.

Where have I gone? Was my father home in his blue-green garden? It had all happened so fast that only a few images could burn themselves inside my memory. Like the elderly counselor watching me take a shower — to make sure I wasn't hiding drugs. The gentle nurse gazing at and caressing my palms daily — to make sure my drug withdrawal was safe.

The young woman crying about her parents never being there for her — to learn why she chose to escape. The young man bravely admitting to coating his cigarettes with toothpaste — first to get away then to get out of rehab sooner. And an older black man who had his cigarettes taken away (among other punishments) for laughing too much-to be himself without the counselor's help.

I didn't think of it then and it hurts even more now to think that he probably never made it out. He might not even laugh anymore.

There was one other thing that I saw. It, above all other images in the rehab, remains something to remember. Late one night I couldn't sleep.

My new roommate snored like a train. I didn't want to be a bother since I would leave in a few days, but I couldn't ignore the sound. Out of darkness and into the low-level light of the hall monitor's perch, I startled the man on duty. I told him of my predicament and he let me into the dayroom where the night-shift counselor nearly smothered half of a round, brown table. I didn't care with who or what I would do until I was tired enough to sleep through anything, but this man wasn't appealing to be with. I never found him kind or informative in the eight weeks that I was in rehab. The most impressive thing he performed was blowing a huge smoke ring into the middle of the community circle discussion one night. But now here I am alone with this guy watching television at 3 a.m. and slowly missing the sound of the train in my room.

We sat and smoked cigarettes for a few hours. What I remember feeling during this time was an invading sensation that something was different in my life. It formed around the dull conversation that we trudged in and out of. It tingled my spine with the new ceiling of smoke that we formed. It smothered over me from the brainless blathering of spit streaming from the television that lingered then drooped from our faces. The disparate sensation injected itself while me and this guy were alone together without drugs or alcohol. We were sober as we sat. I was sober as I felt this other-worldly form. When I got up at the suggestion of the indifferent counselor that never gave me anything until now, it hit me hard. Life had shown itself as it would be from now on.

The best way I can explain it is that for five long years I had a swimming pool for a brain. It was full of water like everyone else but mine became covered with leaves and scum. Now as I got up from this otherwise dull experience with this man, leaves were being removed. I had personally taken the time to clean my pool and now see all the way down to the bottom. I could dive inside the clear liquid, finger the containing walls that give a new blue color, and lay flat at its depth.

Holding my precious breath I can now look up to see the surface and the new world beyond; it is my natural world. This man gave me the opportunity to realize this without even noticing. It was only years later that I would consider our time something to remember.

So it has been over six years that all of this happened. I left rehab and went on to an aftercare program. I finished high school and moved on to some more help from other addicts. I consider myself that one lucky person that makes it from the rehab door. I am still sober and still alive.

I do fight the lady of addiction daily. She has never forgotten me just as I have not forgotten her. It really hurts to think of my old world at times.

But it must be done. I must always have something to remember. I'll leave you now as I go home to hug my light blue-eyed father.