Communication

Andrew was livid. "I could just smack her." He paced back and forth in his office with Bridget on the speaker phone, admiring the two new high speed computers he had installed.

"But it's human," Bridget said as she relaxed on the bed in her room, resting her sore feet and talking to Andrew on her Droid. "Physical violence would be totally counter-productive. It would demonize you in her eyes and she would then see herself as a martyr and if she told her teachers or the police you'd be dealing with the courts and Child Protective Services. You really don't want that."

"I can't just let her get away with this. Especially not now."

"No you can't. But you can discipline her in ways that are more effective and won't cause you long term problems. What would hurt her the most, something you can reach out and do to her right from where you're sitting? What would hurt a teen-age girl the most?"

He sat, thinking. "Suspend her credit cards?"

"Worse, even worse than that."

Then it hit him. "Her Blackberry."

"Exactly. Have your cousin take her phone and her computer away and then only give access back if she behaves well for the day. But remember she'll be even more bored and frustrated and angry and she'll still have the same problems that led her to that binge. You've got to fix that problem or the next time it could be far worse."

"What, another round of designer detox?"

Bridget thought ... "That's certainly a possibility and it would be better to put her in detox in New Zealand than to have her fly home with Siobhan still out there. But why is she drinking and drugging in the first place?"

Andrew shook his head as he pulled up his notes and scanned them, utterly baffled. "It makes no sense. When I was her age maybe I'd quaff a pint at a friend's house while watching a football match on the telly. I'd never do something so stupid."

"You're not her. Don't make the mistake of thinking she will react like you will or even will react logically."

He sat, thinking long and hard. She was right, all too right. "How do I stop her from destroying herself?"

"You can't control her."

He switched his keyboard/video/mouse switch so his database server was on screen and looked at the configurations against the checklist in his notes. Finally everything seemed to be in order. "Well what do I do?"

"For just the next few weeks? Keep her away from it. If your cousin hadn't waved it right under her nose she might well have stayed clean. Have your cousin just get it out of the house and keep Juliet busy. She likes people but has a tough time with getting good ones and keeping them. If there were some good, sensible people around her age that would help. For long term help, if you just lock her up in rehab without her being ready she may rebel as soon as she gets out. She has to realize her life is out of control and unmanageable because of her using."

"She sounded pretty beat."

"I hope so. The sooner she surrenders the better."

Andrew just shook his head hopelessly as he went through the checklist on everything he needed to load on his analysis server. "Will you call her? I am so lost here."

"Of course."

"Thanks! Tell me how it goes."

After a quick trip down the hall to the bathroom, Bridget lay back down and called. Eventually, the phone answered. "Hello?"

"Bridget?"

"Yes, Sweetie. How are you?"

It was still a chilly Autumn morning in New Zealand. Juliet was sitting outside looking at the beach and the fog over the water. "I feel so stupid."

"I left a lot of wreckage myself. The question is whether you're going to do it again."

"I didn't mean to do it."

"Nobody ever does."

"I was just like going to have one."

"And that is where it all goes to Hell. Just that first drink or that first hit or that first pill. Just a little bit becomes just a little more and just a little more to keep it going and then soon you can't stop."

"What do I do?"

"Don't take the first one drink or the first drug. There are some people who should never have a drink in their lives. You're one of them. I am one of them."

"It's just not fair. They all can drink and have fun. Why can't I?"

"They're normies and we're not."

"Normies?"

" Andrew and his cousin are normal people who can have one drink and just stop. You and I are not. Normies don't understand the craving - that need within you that just won't stop. We're people who should never have another drink."

"Siobhan is a normie."

Bridget laughed, remembering cruel years. "Only about drugs and alcohol."

"How did you get over the cravings?"

"I ... didn't. I have to deal with them every day. Every day I know I am just one drink away."

"I don't know if I can do it. They just hit. I'd been fighting it since that night at the apartment."

"Don't worry, Sweetie. Stress like that can make the cravings a whole lot worse. It's like everything in you says 'Just one little drink and you'll feel all better.' But it's a lie. The truth is every problem is worse with alcohol. But the cravings are getting easier to deal with. Some people say they actually go away. But right now for me it's just a one day at a time thing."

"That's you. But why me? Why am I stuck like this?"

"Juliet admitting you're an addict and you're not normal stinks but it beats becoming another Amy Winehouse."

"I just love her work with that Jazz influence and pop and that fearless experimental style.

"MTV and VH1 treated her like a hero for saying no, no, no to Rehab and for going back to blackout. They all gave her Grammies until she joined the 27 Club."

"What's the 27 Club?"

"You don't know the 27 club? That's how old they all were when they died of drugs or alcohol when that demon within got them. Amy Winehouse, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Pigpen McKernan and Jan Morrison and a whole lot more."

"Bridget I have enough problems trying to fit in at High School. I don't want to be the weirdo who can't even take a drink. I'll be the laughing stock of my whole college!"

Bridget laughed. She tried to stop but couldn't.

"Bridget, this is serious."

"Juliet, I am sorry but that's not it. Do you have any idea how much I would love to go to college? I don't mean party but ACTUALLY learn?"

Juliet was stunned. "Like ... really?"

"What, just because I'm old enough to be your mother?"

"No ... I didn't mean it like that. Besides, you're not old enough to be my mother."

"I was born September 29, 1979. You were born in 1996?"

"May first."

"You have a birthday coming up. I'd have been what, sixteen and a half? I've known younger mothers than sixteen."

Juliet paused as she watched the fog began slowly lift away, thinking quietly. "I guess you really could be my mother."

"Juliet, I spent more than ten years in an awful darkness. It was worse than any prison cell I've ever been in because it was inside of me and I hated myself for it. It started out with just a little something at night so I could go to sleep. Then in High School I could show off. I could drink all the boys under the table. I liked that. It was fun. Then it's more stuff and more kinds of stuff you use and you have less and less fun and you have uglier and uglier consequences because of that using. I consider myself lucky because God intervened and I did find my way out. Don't spend your life in the same Hell."

"They always talk about how bad the drug problem is in Miami. I thought it would be better once I got out."

"The geographical cure. I tried it all over the country.

Juliet just sat in the cold autumn sea breeze, shaking her head, feeling the sun on her face as it climbed in the sky. " They made me read the NA book and do the twelve NA steps and everything at Village South Rehab. I even tried to fake it and do that whole surrender yourself to God thing. See how much good it did."

Bridget laughed sadly. "Join the club. The first time I went to Alcoholic's Anonymous, I was seventeen. I had been sentenced by the court because I had a drunk and disorderly charge. I called it my AA classes like someone caught speeding goes to traffic school. I didn't want to change me so when my time with the court was up I went right back to drinking. I got pulled over for driving drunk on the Three Flags Highway just outside of Minden Airport in Nevada but I did a plea bargain for reckless driving instead of a DUI and so I had to go to AA again. Then they got me just outside the No Name saloon in Park City, Utah. Don't ever drive drunk in Utah. Mormons have no sense of humor. They confiscated my car and took my driver's license for four months and I had to listen to people quoting the Book of Mormon in the AA meetings there."

Juliet laughed. "It sounds dreadful."

"It was NASTY - really boring. Or so I thought at the time. But now I know I was the problem. I wasn't willing to make that first step. I refused to admit that I was powerless over my addiction and that my life had become unmanageable. I'm not sure I was even really ready when Detective Machado made me go to NA in Wyoming. But I learned there that people who had been using even longer than I was had found a way out."

Juliet watched the gulls soaring over the ocean as they looked for their breakfasts. She could manage, couldn't she? It was embarrassing but she hadn't actually hurt anyone. She knew now that she couldn't drink rum. But that didn't mean she couldn't drink whiskey, did it? She did just fine drinking whiskey at London's place.