The moment Jessica Smith stepped into Campus Middle School in Greenwood Village, fresh from private school, people treated her like an outsider.
The other eighth-grade girls made it clear she didn’t belong. She didn’t dress in bootleg jeans or wear brand names like Polo or Tommy Hilfiger. She still tucked in her shirt.
“Who dresses like that anymore?” they would say to each other, in front of her.
She tried to fit in, but when Jessica talked to peers, they acted like she was a geek. So when a popular girl invited her to a sleepover, she jumped at the chance. The party turned out to be a kegger, and no adults were there. It was the first time she drank beer. She drank Jell-O shots too.
“We partied the whole night,” she says. “Boys were spending the night. I was like, ‘Whoa!’ I’d never been that close to a boy before. It was crazy.”
The next morning, before the father of the host got home, the kids cleaned up, gathering bottles into a large trash bag and dumping the evidence.
” ‘Oh, my gosh, what am I getting myself into?’ ” Jessica asked herself. But she felt like she was being accepted; that’s what mattered most.
“I was shy,” she says. “Coming from private school into public school, everyone already had friends, and the only way it seemed I could get out of my box was to do these things.”
After her initiation into alcohol, Jessica drank once or twice a month. “I was still afraid my parents would find out.”
If there was a girls’ sleepover and the parents were out to dinner, they took whatever was in the liquor cabinet.
Jessica’s drinking gradually increased during her freshman year at Cherry Creek High School. Glass by glass, she again worked her way up the social hierarchy.
She drank only on weekends and successfully hid it from her parents, careful not to get tipsy. Before going home, she’d brush her teeth and spray on layers of perfume.
Jessica’s parents, Jeff and Jayleen Smith, trusted their Greenwood Village neighbors. What they learned shattered their illusions about kids who drank.
“They were the athletes, the pompom girls, the cheerleaders,” says Jeff. “That’s what shocked us more than anything.”
One of Jessica’s friends was the most popular girl at Cherry Creek High.
“Her parents are very well-known in the community, and so, so rich,” Jessica says. We’d have parties downstairs while her parents were upstairs. They totally knew; they’d walk downstairs.”
At that house one night, about 60 kids were partying around the pool. The parents were out to dinner; the nanny was in charge.
“I was taking shots with this girl, trying to talk to her. All of a sudden she goes upstairs and someone comes downstairs, says that she’s throwing up black stuff. Bile.
“Her eyes had rolled back in her head. I’d never seen anything like it. She couldn’t even get up to the toilet to throw up, so she was sitting on her side throwing up.”
Someone called paramedics, who took the girl to the hospital. Suddenly the place was crawling with cops, who started writing drinking tickets.
Kids scattered everywhere, running to hide in the bushes, calling parents from cellphones. Jessica escaped because a friend’s mom soon whisked them away.
That summer she partied almost every night.
That’s when Jayleen became suspicious. Jayleen’s father was an alcoholic, so she knew the signs – that look and that smell.
“Something is up,” she’d say to her husband, explaining that she could smell alcohol on Jessica.
“What are you talking about?” he’d reply.
In hindsight, Jeff says they should have acted sooner.
“I was hoping that it wasn’t true,” he says. “Once we knew what was going on, we tried to figure a way to best manage the whole situation. We were always trying to be honest and fair to her.”
“We shouldn’t have been,” interrupts Jayleen.
“You have to crack down,” says Jeff.
But when they did crack down, Jessica rebelled.
“They really tried their hardest,” she says. “But I was sneaky.”
If Jessica said she was going to spend the night with a friend, they called that friend’s mother to verify.
“I had one girlfriend whose parents would always cover for me,” she says. “My mother would call her mother, who would say, ‘Jessica’s sleeping right here.’ My mother would say, ‘Can I talk to her?’ So I’d talk to my mom, and then we’d leave (to party). We planned this with her mom.”
Her parents invested in a portable Breathalyzer. But when Jessica flunked, she’d argue with them. Anger became part of her strategy.
Family counseling lasted two sessions. “I would blow up and freak out,” says Jessica. “That didn’t work at all.”
As the parents struggled to control their daughter, she continued to drink. She loved shots of Captain Morgan rum, but Jack Daniel’s was her favorite. Everyone in her crowd knew there was always a party at two particular houses.
“One guy’s mom would buy us alcohol and stock the downstairs fridge with beer,” says Jessica. “She just wanted to be one of the cool moms. There were so many of those – they wanted to feel like the cool mom, like, ‘Let’s go hang out at that house, because that’s where the cool mom is.”‘
Eventually, she earned a reputation, which she treasured, as “the party animal.” She craved the status: The popular kids weren’t those who studied on weekends but those who partied with the older kids.
“I did some of the craziest things. I’d get up on tables and dance, and there were so many times I would drink and let guys take advantage of me.”
In that milieu, sex went with alcohol like beer with a chaser. One of her friends had sex with a different boy every weekend. Jessica and the other girls invariably found themselves trying to help the friend find morning-after pills. Many of her other friends used birth control, but some got abortions.
For Jessica, alcohol was the gateway to drugs like Ecstasy and ketamine, also known as “Special K” or psychedelic heroin, popular in the rave scene she frequented.
“You get drunk at a rave and you’re sitting there, and someone says, ‘I have this thing called Ecstasy; wanna do it?”‘ she says. “You’re drunk, and you say, ‘Sure, give it to me.’ That’s how I started.”
To raise money for drugs, Jessica crafted a meticulous plan. She’d been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and had a prescription for Adderall.
“A lot of kids crush it up and sniff it as a form of speed,” she says. Instead of taking the pills, Jessica would tape the Adderall to the bottom of a drawer in her bedroom, then sell pills to friends.
By sophomore year, Jessica and her friends were drinking in school. They especially loved “fatorade,” made by taking a large bottle of Gatorade, pouring out half, then filling it with vodka.
“I would take it to school and drink all day. Sophomore year, I was out of control.”
During lunch, she’d go out with her friends, drink wine and smoke pot. She’d go back to class and sit quietly without saying anything. The teachers didn’t seem to notice.
In the evenings, Jessica suffered from hangovers. She’d skip doing homework and eating dinner with the family, telling her parents – until they caught on – that she was sick. Then she’d head off to bed at 5 p.m. and sleep until morning.
Her rapid downward spiral included blackouts.
“One morning my dad said, ‘You crashed your car last night.’ It was scary not to really remember that. I blacked out and crashed into a mailbox.”
As her parents grew increasingly angry over her behavior, Jessica ran away to avoid confrontations.
“I’m not coming home anymore,” she’d say. “Try and stop me.”
But she always returned eventually, crying, saying she was sick and had no place to go. They’d let her back in the house and ground her. It worked for a few weeks, but then she resumed her old behavior.
Desperate, the Smiths tried to get her into a new environment with new friends. They enrolled her in an alternative high school, but Jessica continued to abuse alcohol and drugs.
So they sent her to a boarding school in Boston. In the beginning, she didn’t drink during class. Because her grade-point average at Cherry Creek High School had plummeted to 0.02, she had to repeat sophomore year.
“I thought, ‘What have I done to my life, screwing up this education my parents wanted me to have, and now they’re so disappointed.”‘
But then someone invited her to get drunk, and the old habits kicked in. Her parents knew they had to do something extreme.
“I was at wits’ end,” says Jeff, who started to research treatment clinics. Finally, he found a place in Mexico. “We picked it selfishly because we like warm weather and wanted to go somewhere that was nice for us.”
The clinic was served by what’s called the transport industry, professionals hired by parents who’ve lost control of difficult teenagers and pay to have them transported to rehab clinics.
One day, Jessica thought her father was stopping by the ATM before he dropped her at the airport.
“Don’t worry,” he said to her. “I know these people.”
A car pulled up next to them, and a man and a woman jumped out and grabbed Jessica.
Screaming and crying as the car sped away, Jessica glanced out the window and saw her dad standing there, tears running down his face.
The strangers, who’d taken her shoes so she couldn’t run away, explained they were going to a rehab clinic. When they arrived, she was given a pair of sandals, one uniform, two pairs of pajamas, a toothbrush and toothpaste, soap and a diary.
They took her to a trailer lined with bunks and pointed out her bed. That night, she cried herself to sleep.
The next morning, she reflected. Before ending up in Mexico, she’d almost driven her car into a tree. She’d also thrown up black stuff, just like her friend, but no one called the paramedics. Instead, they’d dumped her in the backyard so the parents wouldn’t come home and discover her drunk.
“My parents saved my life by sending me there,” she says.
This epiphany, along with the fact that she was locked up, fueled her passion to adhere to the austere behavior-modification program.
“No mirrors, no makeup, no fun, no family,” says Jessica. “I really started to get homesick right away. I appreciated my parents so much after that, because I could not see them.”
They could trade letters, but they were not allowed to visit for nine months. Later, they spent time there together in family therapy.
In rehab, her day started with 30 minutes of exercise, then school all day. Her GPA soared to 3.8. During a year and a half in the program, she completed three years of high school and modeled such good behavior, authorities appointed her president of the student council.
Today, years after her first drink, Jessica, now 21, is happy and productive. She lives in Denver in a split-level home she shares with her boyfriend, and she works as an administrative assistant at a restoration and construction company.
She goes to church almost every week and wants to become a Sunday-school teacher. She’ll drink a glass of wine on occasion, usually over dinner with her parents, whom she now considers best friends.
“The biggest thing I learned in the program is that family is there forever, and friends come and go,” she says. “When the cops are arresting you or you’re driving a car into a tree, your friends are not there for you, but your family will always be there for you.”
Jessica wants to help teenagers avoid the path she took, so she has appeared as a guest speaker for adolescents at a local rehab program.
Now, when she reflects upon the choices she made, Jessica says: “If I could, I’d go back and change everything.”
She wishes she’d thought more about her future.
“I went to an outstanding boarding school which could have gotten me into any college I chose, but I screwed it all up and used it as a vacation. I didn’t go to college. I love my job, but if I’d put my all into school, I’d have a better job and be making more money. … Now I think going to school and getting your education is way more important than partying could ever be.”
Staff writer Colleen O’Connor can be reached at 303-820-1083 or at coconnor@denverpost.com.
How to ward off trouble: some tips for parents
Warning signs of underage drinking
Some of these behaviors reflect normal teenage growing pains, but experts say drinking could be a problem if several of these signs appear at the same time, if they occur suddenly, or if they are extreme.
Mood changes: flare-ups of temper, irritability and defensiveness.
School problems: poor attendance, low grades and/or recent disciplinary action.
Rebelling against family rules.
Switching friends, along with a reluctance to have you get to know the new friends.
A “nothing matters” attitude: sloppy appearance, a lack of involvement in former interests and general low energy.
Finding alcohol in your child’s room or backpack, or smelling alcohol on his or her breath.
Physical or mental problems: memory lapses, poor concentration, bloodshot eyes, lack of coordination or slurred speech.
If you think your child is drinking
Keep tabs on where your child goes.
Talk to the parents of your child’s friends.
Always have a phone number where you can reach your child and have your child check in regularly when he or she is away from home.
If your child is spending an extended length of time away from you, have your child check in periodically with a phone call, e-mail or by stopping at home.
For teens, especially those old enough to drive, negotiate and sign a behavioral contract. The contract should spell out the way you expect your child to behave and state the consequences if your teen drives under the influence. Follow through and take the keys away, if necessary.
If you have alcohol in your home, keep track of the supply.
Encourage responsible behaviors, such as planning for a designated driver or calling an adult for help rather than driving under the influence.
Tying responsible actions to freedoms such as a later curfew or a driver’s license acts as a powerful motivator. Teach your child that freedom only comes with responsibility.
Be a good role model
Use alcohol moderately.
Don’t communicate to your child that alcohol is a good way to handle problems. For example, don’t come home from work and say, “I had a rotten day. I need a drink.”
Show your child you have healthy ways to cope with stress, such as exercise; listening to music; or talking things over with a spouse, partner or friend.
Don’t tell your kids stories about your drinking in a way that conveys the message that alcohol use is funny or glamorous.
Never drink and drive or ride in a car with a driver who has been drinking.
When you entertain other adults, make available alcohol-free beverages and plenty of food. If anyone drinks too much, make arrangements for them to get home safely.
Source: “Make a Difference: Talk to Your Child About Alcohol,” National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism; niaaa.nih.gov or write NIAAA, Publications Distribution Center, P.O. Box 10686, Rockville, MD 20849-0686
