As they meet, day in and out, with youths who have had serious drug and alcohol addictions - and as they keep trying to hone their abilities to intervene and even prevent the cycle and effects of substance abuse completely - Gary Baker and Bob Terragno are reminded of peeling an onion.
"You can get so overwhelmed as you fall back through the process to earlier and earlier pieces. There are so many basic issues involved in substance abuse: food or its lack, jobs, abuse, hopelessness, health-care issues," Baker said."Addressing substance abuse doesn't mean just getting kids not to use drugs. You have to dig a lot deeper."
Baker should know. He's been director of the Substance Abuse Prevention Program at the Community Counseling Center long enough to have noticed some patterns among the youths who become heavily involved with substance abuse. And center director Terragno has seen those patterns emerge over and over.
The onion analogy works on another level, too. Both the causes and the solutions are layered.
The substance-abuse prevention program there goes back to 1968, when the facility was called the Drug Crisis Center. According to Terragno, the staff didn't take long to realize that providing anti-drug information alone was not enough.
"You have to be careful in this field," Terragno said. "Information can actually pique interest."
By 1978, prevention efforts included alternative programs like tutoring and truancy prevention in schools. And from that, Baker said, grew the peer-leadership concept that is so popular today.
Somewhere along that evolving path to substance-abuse prevention and reform, another truth emerged: If it looks like a duck and it quacks like a duck. . . .
"We know that association with drug-using peers is a high indicator of drug use," Baker said. "We need to harness the considerable power of peer influence in a positive way. And we need to start earlier, with grade-school programs."
The information-only programs didn't make a dent. And what Terragno calls "the touchy-feely programs" had some impact but were not strong enough to make much change.
With skills-based training, they believe they may finally be able to make an appreciable dent in a massive social and criminal and economic U.S. problem.
"We can reach the kids before they use," Terragno said. "And we can identify many of them as early as second grade."
The Living Skills Project does just that, working with children from second to fifth grade. The children have been targeted for the program because of their behavior and other things that indicate they are at higher risk to become involved with substance abuse. Among those indicators are agression, peer rejection and withdrawal.
Many high-risk older kids share a "common ground" that includes teenage pregnancy, dropping out of high school, use of drugs and involvement with gangs.
It is, in fact, similar to the profiles of 25-year-old domestic violence offenders.
The curriculum is designed to decrease the risk factors and increase the protective factors operating in the lives of these children. With good self-esteem and skills, with food in their stomachs and belief in a bright future, they are less apt to turn to drugs or alcohol for entertainment or solace.
"Instead of building kiddy prisons, we want to start working with kids as early as possible. Maybe the infrastructure will change," Terragno said.
"It seems to me that we've moved beyond a hypothetical promise. We just need to decide how we can intervene."