Safety Nest addresses addiction

A student's transition from high school to college is often a major life change: living away from home, sharing a room, and dealing with a heavier workload. But on top of that, an unfortunate one in four college students comes from a home affected by alcoholism, according to a recent National Insitute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) study.

"Statistically speaking, there are a lot of students at BC who grew up in an alcoholic family," says Robyn Priest, assistant dean for the Alcohol and Drug Education Program at Boston College.

These students often feel as if they have to control every part of their lives. They stress about being perfect, feel uncomfortable about starting new relationships, or feel sad and angry without understanding why. What these students should know, however, is that they don't have to deal with it alone.

Safety Nest is a new, entirely student-run support group for BC students who have been or are currently affected by someone else's alcohol or drug addiction. It runs on a weekly basis and loosely follows the typical Al-Anon/Alateen program. You can sit and listen or participate in casual discussion, and everything is completely confidential. It is likely that many students will share similar experiences.

"It's the type of disease that you really can't deal with on your own," says Danielle, the program's co-founder. "A lot of people don't know that. It's a struggle."

The co-founders of Safety Nest, Danielle and Laura, a senior and a freshman respectively, knew each other before college and were aware that they had this issue in common.

"She has experienced alcoholism in her family, as have I," Danielle says. "The difference is that I've already spent four years here at BC without any sort of resource for that. And now with Safety Nest, Laura and others will not have to do the same."

BC's Alcohol and Drug Education Program provides counseling services for students. There's also the Alcohol Intervention Meeting (AIM), which surveys students' drinking habits each week over a course of 10 weeks, in which students are sometimes mandated to participate in by BC's judicial system.

Upon arriving in her freshman year, Danielle found herself shocked at the lack of specific support for the friends and family of alcoholics.

"I remember my sophomore year talking to a friend who got really upset and started telling me about her mother and how bad her alcoholism had become and how it was so horrible to be so far away from it. But it was still meddling its way into her life," she says. "I felt like there had to be multiple other students dealing with the same thing and there needed to be some sort of support system in place for them."

Laura and Danielle decided to make a move and approached two men who worked both in the community as local substance-abuse-treatment providers and at BC as consultants, proposing their idea. They then went to the Office of Student Development, which was highly supportive.

"Alcoholism affects children and relatives of alcoholics every day, whether they are in close proximity to the alcoholic or not. The idea is to focus it on the students during these four years when they're not at home, yet still struggling," Danielle says.

Alcoholism is a disease that affects the entire family system and can be passed to children both genetically and through experience. Children exposed to alcoholic relatives may have difficulty dealing with emotions and beginning new relationships when they reach adulthood.

What's more, the children of alcoholics are on average seven times more likely to become alcoholics themselves. They may develop unhealthy ways to deal with emotions and look to alcohol to quell these feelings. Abuse problems can be passed genetically, as one person's body may respond to alcohol differently from your friends, and it may become harder to stop. At a college like BC, where drinking is a popular activity, these risks are multiplied.

"We hope that generating this discussion will make people more aware of it, so that 10 years down the road they don't put their children through what they went through," Danielle says.

Al-Anon and Alateen, community-based support groups for relatives and friends of alcoholics, host regular meetings in downtown Boston; however, Danielle and Laura found they didn't quite suit them, as they were far away and often attended by adults of all ages.

"We're trying to make the group a bit more comforting for a college student," Laura says. "Al-Anon is more for adults who are comfortable with that sort of style of meeting."

Meetings are run entirely by the students and attended by anyone who has come into contact with the alcohol or drug addiction of a loved one. If you find it difficult to explain your experiences to the people you know, you may find it easier to speak to other students who come from the same background.

"It's kind of different to explain to my friends all the ways that I'm screwed up," Laura says. "It's easier to talk to someone who's gone through it too."

The group has had four meetings so far and welcomes newcomers. The meeting loosely follows the Al-Anon style of themed discussions, the 12-step process, and readings from books and magazines by the Al-Anon national organization, to encourage people to open up and share their stories.

Danielle and Laura run meetings in a flexible way. They might select a theme such as fear, inconsistency, guilt or pressure to be normal and simply discuss it informally to help one another overcome it.

"It's just a therapeutic way to talk it out. It's very low-pressure," Danielle says. "At the end of the meeting we just hold hands and know that we're here for each other."

If the idea of a group discussion doesn't sit well with you, the Alcohol and Drug Education Program at BC provides counseling services for a one-on-one chat. If you feel concerned about your own drinking, whether your family has a history of alcoholism or not, you can approach the office confidentially and anonymously. People need not worry that they're going to get in trouble because they've been drinking underage.

"Many students who have come so far have expressed their complete happiness at finding the group," Danielle says, "We're hoping as the weeks go by that more people will come."