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4A — THE SARATOGIAN, Sunday, March 13, 2011

ERICA MILLER photos/The Saratogian

It started with one sip She was only 9 years old

By MAREESA NICOSIA
The Saratogian
For Brian Farr, it started in
high school with one sip of
beer.
But his drinking pro-
gressed quickly through his
teenage years. By the time he
was a senior, he was partying
every weekend at boat
launches or in the woods
around his hometown,
Corinth.
While there’s no biological
factor that contributed to
Farr’s alcoholism — his par-
ents only drank socially, and
his exposure to alcohol was
limited in their household —
access was found at an
uncle’s house in Long Island,
where the family went for
summer holidays.
“I hated the taste, but I
liked the effect,” said Farr,
recalling his first sip of beer during a trip to Long
Island. “Looking back on it now, I was a real anx-
ious kid. … Alcohol as a depressant really calmed
me down and made me feel more comfortable in
my own skin.”
Alcohol and cigarettes always went hand-in-
hand.
In college, where there were no parents around
to keep him in check, his binge drinking and heavy
smoking took off, Farr said. The consequences
piled up, in the form of poor grades, spending all
his money and trouble with the administration
when he was caught drinking underage.
Farr’s solution, at the age of 20, was to get into
an exchange program and go to England, where
he could drink legally.
“It’s what we call a geographic cure,” said Farr,
who is now a teacher in the chemical dependency
program at Hudson Valley Community College.
But putting 3,000 miles between himself and the
environment in which he had begun a love affair
with alcohol did nothing to stop his binging.
Even while sightseeing throughout Europe, he
said, “my focus was always on, ‘when is the next
drink going to be?’ ”
In England, Farr met the woman who would be
his future wife. She was a student at the same col-
lege, although they hadn’t crossed paths in the
U.S.
His drinking quickly drove
their short relationship south,
however. “She saw that my
drinking was really getting
out of control, and she
dumped me,” Farr said.
“There was no room for her
as long as alcohol was there.
When you have alcoholism or
drug addiction in your life, it
really is a love affair.”
It wasn’t until years later,
after he had graduated, lived
in Colorado and moved back
to New York to work in his
father’s business that Farr
found the means to perma-
nent sobriety.
The trigger for his 180-
degree turn was his father’s
sudden death in an accident.
“That was the beginning of
the end of my drinking,” Farr
said. “He passed away in November of 1996 and in
November of 1996, I took my last drink. I just kind
of knew I had to step up and be responsible. I
could see that alcohol was taking me to a place
that I didn’t want to go.”
He commenced a year-long no-drinking, no-
smoking “experiment” that occurred parallel to
his and his mother’s collective grief over the death
of his father and, for Farr, a sort of spiritual awak-
ening.
“When I got to that year deadline I had set for
myself, I couldn’t deny that my life had gotten bet-
ter. I was exercising more, I was saving all this
money that I had been spending on alcohol. I was
feeling comfortable in my skin for the first time. I
had spent 10 years turning to alcohol to do that
again and again.”
Farr and his college sweetheart reunited in
1999, and they live in Wilton with their two young
children.
His experience overcoming alcohol propelled
Farr, now 40, to spend his career helping others
recover from their addictions. He’s spent years
working as a counselor locally and holds a mas-
ter’s degree in elementary education. Today, he
runs his own business, First Step Consultation, to
advise educators, parents and students about the
risk factors that can lead to dependency and other
unhealthy behaviors.
Editor’s note: The name of
the person profiled has been
changed to a pseudonym at her
request.
By PATRICK H. DONGES
The Saratogian
Lauren, who grew up in
Schuylerville and now works for
an agency in Saratoga Springs,
was 9 years old when she took
her first drink.
“It burned my throat,” she
said of that first tumbler of wine,
“and I was so distracted from
whatever it was that I was so
unhappy about.”
Lauren was the fourth of five
children, two boys and three
girls. Her mother became an
alcoholic in her later years, at
the same time her daughters
were starting to drink.
“The way I remember it I was
lost in the mix,” she said of her
childhood, which included being
wrapped up in a family tradition
of lying and then stealing.
Her mother passed on a pre-
disposition to alcoholism through
her family; Lauren recalls seeing
photos of maternal relatives with
bloodshot eyes and bulbous
noses. To this day, she says all of
the women in her family are
either alcoholic, in recovery, or
deceased from alcohol-related
health issues or accidents.
“I grew up in a very small
town; we drank as recreation,”
she said.
Between 11 and 13 she would
take bottles from her grandfa-
ther, a high-ranking state gov-
ernment official. By the time she
was 15, she was drinking at bars
on Caroline Street.
“My drinking was disgusting,”
she said of those nights out.
“Aren’t you attracted to the
woman with vomit on your shirt?”
In high school, her mother
would buy the liquor for sleep-
overs, with the justification that
she would at least be able to
monitor the consumption.
When Lauren was 21, her
24-year-old sister was killed in an
alcohol-fueled car accident. Lau-
ren left New York for Atlanta,
with $2,000 stolen from a Colonie
pizza shop. She was introduced
to the intravenous use of cocaine
and other drugs.
“In my early 20s I realized that
I was not having fun anymore,”
she said. “I was hooked.”
She returned to New York
about 18 months later and
dropped the needle for good.
When she was 25 she had a son
— and began going on long alco-
hol binges, eventually turning to
crack cocaine.
She gave up custody of her son
when he was 8 years old and pro-
ceeded to spend two years in the
streets and shelters of Albany,
turning tricks for crack and stay-
ing drunk most of the time.
“I knew how to smoke, I knew
how to prostitute, I knew who to
avoid. It came so natural. I
believed that that’s where I
belonged,” she said.
She would attempt to get
clean, never making it past two
or three months.
“It’s not that we don’t fit, or
that we don’t follow rules,” she
said of alcoholics and addicts.
“Our lives have a different set,
and we can’t live by your rules
until we know that we can. We
don’t know we can until we can
tell you that we’re breaking up.”
Her turning point was on the
night of June 23, 2002. She was
confronted in Albany’s Washing-
ton Park by a John she had
taken $10 from earlier that day.
“I was kicked through Wash-
ington Park for about two and a
half hours,” she said. He left her
with separated shoulders and 17
broken ribs. “My face was unrec-
ognizable.”
After months in the hospital,
she began a path of recovery that
included years of residential
treatment in Sullivan County and
Long Island, a controversial psy-
chiatric technique used to mini-
mize the impact of traumatic
memories, and adherence to a
12-step program she still follows
today.
After a period that included
more than a year of sobriety fol-
lowed by a relapse, today Lauren
has been sober a year and a half,
and she has renewed her rela-
tionship with her son, whom she
speaks to regularly.
“Somewhere along the line I
fell in love with my son,” she
said. “He’s got blanks he wants
me to fill in.”

ALCOHOL: Raising awareness a challenge

Continued from 1A

tests, a violation of the five-year

probation for his second DWI
conviction; he had already served
20 weekends in jail.
Alcohol abuse is so wide-
spread and pervasive that one
of the biggest challenges is sim-
ply getting society to recognize
and come to grips with it.
“Alcoholism is a disaster
every single time,” said Robert
Lindsey of Saratoga Springs,
president and CEO of the
National Council on Alcoholism
and Drug Dependence Inc. The
Manhattan-based council is a
voluntary health organization
dedicated to fighting alcohol
and drug addiction and their
impact on individuals, families
and communities.
“When you start to describe it
to people, their eyes start to roll
over because it’s so overwhelm-
ing. It’s such a major problem,
people have a hard time getting
their minds around it. Alcoholism
is, was and always will be this
country’s number one drug prob-
lem,” he said. “If you don’t stop,
you’re going to end up dead.”
There are 75 meetings of
Alcoholics Anonymous every
week in Saratoga County, 37 of
them in Saratoga Springs.
“There is help, hope and heal-
ing,” Lindsey said. “In addition
to the millions suffering from
alcohol abuse, there’s another
20 million individuals and fami-
lies in recovery. We’re just as
concerned with families as indi-
viduals, because that’s where a
lot of the cost lies.”
Alcohol is so heavily promot-
ed and generally accepted that
many people are complacent
about its ill effects, making it dif-
ficult for people who have a
problem to come to grips with it.
“It’s doesn’t get talked about
enough,” said Heather Kissel-
back, executive director of the
Prevention Council of Saratoga
County. “I don’t think people
understand a lot about alcohol,
how it affects your body, espe-
cially with young people, how it
affects your brain development.”
Prevention Council head-
quarters, at 36 Phila St., is one
of dozens of area sites where
Alcoholics Anonymous hosts
weekly meetings. The first time
Robert Lindsey
National Council on
Alcoholism and
Drug Dependence Inc.
president
Kisselback went — to observe
— more than 50 young people
from their teens to 30-some-
things were there, primarily
from Saratoga Springs.
She was encouraged to see
that people were getting help,
and shocked at the sheer num-
bers in such a small city. And
they’re just the ones who
acknowledge their problem.
Many others don’t, until they’re
forced to.
“Usually it takes some kind of
mandate,” said Patty Kilgore,
the council’s director of counsel-
ing services. “Most people don’t
come to terms on their own.”
Mandates might come in a
variety of forms:
ä Legal — A court order to
get counseling following a driv-
ing while intoxicated charge.
ä Family — A spouse threat-
ens to leave if an alcoholic
doesn’t seek help.
ä Work — Inability to per-
form jeopardizes or costs some-
one their job, or prevents pro-
motions or raises.
Most of The Prevention
Council’s work is in area
schools.
The organization’s surveys of
adolescents over the years is
finding less alcohol and mari-
juana use. However, Kisselback
said, “For people who are drink-
ing, the drinking is excessive.
They’re going out to get drunk.”
Heather Kisselback
Prevention Council
of Saratoga County
executive director
Up to 40 percent of Saratoga
Springs High School seniors
reported binge drinking — five
or more drinks in a row — at
least once in the past month, in
a survey conducted two years
ago; results of a more recent
survey are not yet ready.
Last Halloween, nine Skid-
more College students were
taken to the hospital when
friends became concerned that
they’d consumed dangerous
levels of alcohol.
Lindsey of the alcoholism
council sees the same trend
among high school and college
students nationally. “They
binge drink to see how fast they
can get drunk,” he said. “It’s
become a major concern in the
past five years. Years ago,
nobody talked about alcohol
overdose. Now we get calls all
the time.”
Getting people to recognize
the danger is a challenge.
“Getting drunk is actually
overdosing on alcohol,” Kilgore
said. “It begins an assault on
your body. It’s the same kind of
thing as drugs. You can die
from an alcohol overdose. More
people die from alcohol than all
other illegal drugs combined.”
Two of the most susceptible
age groups are sixth- and ninth-
graders making the transition
from elementary to middle
school, and middle school to
TREND: Youth drinking
Continued from 1A
One of the most startling
findings was that 12th grade
scores for alcohol, binge
drinking and marijuana use
were 10, 15 and 17 points
above the national average,
respectively.
Also, up to 40 percent of
high school seniors reported
binge drinking — five or
more drinks in a row — at
least once in the past month.
Recently, two local 14-year-
olds required hospital treat-
ment after binge drinking
and police are still trying to
determine what role alcohol
had in last week’s death of
19-year-old college student
Alexander Grant.
“We were all that young
once,” city Police Chief Chris
Cole said. “Sometimes it’s
hard to think something like
that will happen to you. It
high school, respectively. Quite
simply, there’s a tendency
among younger kids to emulate
their older peers. They also
meet new people when going to
a new building and want to
make friends. Alcohol is one
means of gaining acceptance.
“They just want to fit in,” Kil-
gore said. “It’s almost like a rite
of passage.”
In addition, the older kids get,
the fewer restrictions parents
put on them.
“They’ve got more freedom
than they’re probably ready to
handle,” Kisselback said.
Many people don’t view alco-
hol as a danger because it’s reg-
ulated. Even among underage
teens, it’s readily accessible —
swiping a beer from the family
refrigerator or having an older
friend or sibling buy it for them.
Winning the battle begins at
home, Kilgore said.
“It’s the message the parents
give,” she said. “Parents might
tell kids they aren’t old enough
falls back on parents to be
involved with their kids start-
ing at a young age. When
your kids go off (to college or
work), you lose that control
over them.”
For the first time since sur-
veys began eight years ago,
scores for some risk factors
have gone in the wrong direc-
tion. Examples of risk factors
are a complacent attitude
toward alcohol by parents,
schools or the community, or
the community’s acceptance
of alcohol in general.
“There are bars all over
downtown Saratoga,” Pre-
vention Council Executive
Director Heather Kisselback
said. “What messages are
kids receiving at home, on
TV, in school? How strong a
stance does the school take
when kids get in trouble with
alcohol? These things are
important.”
to consume alcohol. Then kids
see mom and dad having a
glass of wine every day. It’s an
interesting thing. Kids are look-
ing for permission. It’s impor-
tant for parents to give a clear
message.”
Most people can use alcohol
with no problem at all. Howev-
er, society at large sends all
kinds of signals indicating that
more is better.
“Look at our advertising,” Kil-
gore said. “We make alcohol
look like it’s the greatest thing
ever invented.”
To those suffering from
addiction and related problems
— from financial setbacks to
physical and sexual abuse —
it’s the worst.
Many people, including
friends, family and loved ones,
deal only with alcoholism’s
symptoms and consequences,
not its root cause. A co-worker
might cover up for a buddy’s
drinking problem on the job. A
husband will hide bottles of
On a positive note, scores
for nearly all substances used
by sixth and seventh graders
were extremely low. Following
are other survey highlights.
ä Middle school kids are
quite accurate in their per-
ceptions about their peers’
substance use. But these per-
ceptions change drastically in
high school, which in turn
affects the rate of use.
ä Kids perceive opportuni-
ties for positive involvement
in school, at home and in
their community, but school
is the main place where kids
reported being rewarded for
positive involvement. Scores
that show bonding to school
were very strong.
ä The gap between par-
ents’ perceptions and kids’
reports of substance use is
very low at the middle school,
but grows to 25 points at the
high school level.
liquor from his wife, thinking
he’s helped her to stop. A par-
ent rationalizes their son’s or
daughter’s binge drinking, say-
ing it’s just a phase they’ll grow
out of.
“In reality, all we’re doing is
reinforcing the problem,” Lind-
sey said.
From the Prevention Coun-
cil’s perspective, helping young
people make smart choices
about alcohol is the key to
avoiding years of heartache,
because bad habits early on are
hard to break.
“That’s what sets the stage
for lifelong risk of alcoholism,”
Kilgore said.
The answer, for people of all
ages, lies with prevention, com-
munity education, intervention,
treatment and recovery. In most
cases, that requires teamwork.
“This is about everybody
working together to find the
solution for the whole family,”
Lindsey said. “It’s the only way
out.”