In from the
cold:
Nord House helps teenage girls
trapped in drug addiction
Karyn has tacked her own chemical
dependency and is headed toward a career in marketing research and public
relations
Sometimes in life, hitting a
low point is necessary to turn things around. For Karyn (last name omitted
by request), that low point came when she ran away from LSS Nord House, a
program for teenage girls with chemical dependency problems. She left the
house in her pajamas and slippers … in the middle of February. She hiked
more than a mile in the snow to call her father from a nearby gas station.
She told him, "Dad, I don't belong there. I don't have a problem."
Luckily for Karyn, her father
picked her up and returned her to Nord House. The next day she met a woman
at a "12-step group" meeting who would later become her mentor, and
everything changed. She realized that what she had been doing for the past
four years, drinking and doing drugs every day, wasn't anywhere near
"normal." Since her time at Nord House almost two years ago, she has been
sober. She is now 19 years old.
LSS Nord House is a
residential program that works in conjunction with the Fairview Adolescent
Chemical Dependency Program in Crystal, Minn. Nord House provides housing
and support for teenage girls who attend the Fairview Treatment Program
during the day. Over 500 girls like Karyn have stayed at Nord House since
its inception in May of 1996. The house can hold five girls at one time,
and the staff teach basic living skills and "non-using" activities to show
residents that life doesn't have to include drugs and alcohol.
"Nord House creates an
environment where it's easy to follow a treatment program," said Julie
Shannon, who has managed Nord House during the eight years of its
existence. "Some of the girls coming through have unstable home lives,
which have often led to their drug or alcohol use in the first place.
Here, it's easy to be good. Our completeion rate is between 80-85%. For
those girls who stay at home as they go through this treatment program,
the completion rate is about 60%."
"Even though many of the girls
coming to us have had almost no structure, they adapt to our regimented
schedule pretty well," said Shavonda Allen, who has worked at Nord House
for two years, and who also worked with Karyn. "The hard part for the
girls is simply being here, being away from their family and friends."
Karyn started drinking and
doing drugs when she was 11. By age 13, she was doing them every day.
Unlike many of the girls that go through Nord House, she had supportive
parents and lived comfortably.
"I stole lots of money from my
parents over the years to pay for drugs. I was lucky - some people I know
were prostituting themselves for cash."
When asked why she started
drinking and taking drugs, she replied, "I don't know why I started." She
pointed the fact that she was adopted, and that both her birth parents
were drug addicts and alcoholics, but she didn't use this as an
explanation or an excuse for her chemical dependency.
Regardless of the reason,
Karyn managed to hide her problem for years. She was doing everything
normal teens do, sometimes exceptionally so. She played basketball for her
high school team, and was so good that she was thinking about playing
college basketball at a Division 1 school.
"I was taking speed before
games. The game would be over and all the girls would be exhausted, but I
was asking if anyone wanted to go run five miles with me."
The deception ended in Karyn's
senior year when she was caught by her parents coming home late one night
and revealed that she had a drug and alcohol problem. She was soon
enrolled in the Fairview Adolescent Chemical Dependency Program. Her life
was coming apart, and she entered Nord House depressed and mad at the
world.
"The night I ran away from
Nord House, I prayed for the first time in years. I asked God to tell me
what to do. The next night, I heard a woman speak at an AA meeting we were
attending, and we are still friends to this day. I consider her my
spiritual advisor."
Sober since her Nord House
experience, Karyn now attends three 12-step meetings per week. "The idea
is to attend the same meetings every week so that the people there can
keep tabs on each other," she said. "Only one out of every 100 people do
not relapse at some point in their lives."
Karyn also works full-time at
a coffee shop and goes to school full-time at a local community college.
"I love coffee and coffee shops," she said. She is thinking about a career
in market research or public relations when she graduates.
Karyn reiterated that the
staff at Nord House were wonderful, and that is a comment that Julie
Shannon hears often, displaying a stack of letters from kids who have
written back to Nord House. "Many girls do not want to be here at first,
but at the end of their time here, many of them ask if they can stay. It's
an easy place to make changes."
