#pdap

Bob Meehan's 12-year-old daughter recently sang him a song she had learned at school. Sung to the tune of "Frère Jacques," it goes like this:

"Marijuana, Marijuana, PCP... PCP... Scientists make it, teachers take it... Why can't we? Why can't we?"

"Do you know how much dope is out there?" asks Meehan, founder of the Palmer Drug Abuse Program, which has affiliates in about 20 cities.

Eyebrows raised, he waits a split second for an answer, then launches into his tireless tirade against drugs.

"A child born today has as much chance as using drugs as getting the chicken pox," says Meehan, throwing up his arms. "In the average urban high school or junior high, about 75 percent of kids on a given day are either high or have some traces of drugs in their systems."

For 14 years, Meehan has been obsessed with drug abuse. Before that, he was abusing drugs.

If anyone knows what drugs can do, just ask ex-addict, ex-convict and recovering alcoholic. Go ahead and ask. He wants you to.

He wants you to know that drugs are the root of all evil. He doesn't mind if kids dye their hair purple, push safety pins through their noses or generally go on a rampage, just as long as they don't use dope.

He tells the story of meeting with one of his counselors recently. He asked her how things were going. Not good, she told him. Police has caught a group of program participants shooting out street lights.

Meehan asked whether they were high at the time. No, she told him. "Then we're successful," he says. "Teenagers are fun machines. We're not there to control their lives or make them take out the garbage. They're dumb, stupid and lazy."

Meehan travels in a world of hip kids who think they know everything. But since he started the Palmer Drug Abuse Program in 1971, 30,000 of them have learned from this man who speaks their language.

He peppers his conversation with words like "hey" and "baby" and "right on." He wears a trim beard and his thin, white hair cascades past his shoulders.

Meehan is no longer affiliated with the Palmer group; he resigned from the board of directors five years ago because "it was time to move on." Since then, he has started Freeway, another support group, and taken over operation of SLIC (Sober Live-In Center) Ranch, a teenage drug rehabilitation center in Escondido, Calif. Both Freeway and Palmer are free; a monthlong treatment at SLIC Ranch costs $5,000.

To further spread his word, Meehan also has written a book, "Beyond the Yellow Brick Road: Our Children and Drugs" (Farnsworth Publishing, $14.95), which he was promoting in Dallas recently.

Meehan's only training as a drug rehabilitator is what he calls his "degree from the streets." He first smoked marijuana when he was 12; by age 16 he was shooting heroin. At one point, he was drinking six bottles of codeine-based cough syrup a day.

At age 26, he was arrested for possession and sale of heroin and sentenced to a Kentucky penitentiary. While in prison, he tried to blame others for his problem - his parents, the nuns who taught him at Catholic schools. But then he realized that nobody put the first joint in his mouth or the needle in his arm.

After he was released from prison at age 27, he went to work as a janitor at Palmer Memorial Episcopal Church in Houston. Nearby was a city park; kids who played there often came by to use the church's bathrooms. Meehan started talking to them.

Out of his conversations with the kids, Meehan developed the Palmer program and gave over his life to fighting drug abuse.

Treatment in Palmer is based on the traditional tenets of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Meehan adapted AA's 12 steps for his teenage drug program. To be successful in the program, kids have to admit their drug problem, keep company with "winners," take a "moral inventory," and try to share what they've learned.

"We ask them to come to meetings and stay away from drugs for 30 days," he says. "We're not interested in whether they make the 30 days, just that they make a commitment. It's a personal decision."

Palmer drew national attention on 1979, when Carol Burnett's daughter, Carrie Hamilton, joined the program.

Today, Carrie is a student at Pepperdine University in California, and Burnett has shown her gratitude to Meehan by funding his Freeway program.

Meehan has had to weather accusations that his programs border on cults. A few former participants and former staff members say the program is based on mind control.

But Meehan shrugs off the critics. "Any group of people sharing a belief has a language," he says. "From outside, we look in and see kids saying the same phrases: 'One day at a time,' 'I own my behavior.' But the 12 steps teach them to think for themselves, so how the hell can it be a cult?"

Meehan acknowledges he's fighting a long, arduous battle. He knows that if kids are curious about drugs, they'll try them. And, he writes in his book, "there is little that we as parents can do to stop them."

I started the Personal Development Action Plan before leaving for London. As instructed I set myself three goals. Independence, Confidence, and Networking. Below you can see how this part of the Plan is set out.

This is where Neil’s advice about Reflective Learning Practice came into play. We were given three things to focus on when trying to get better at something.

What happened? You want to be specific about this, the people the places etc. and also slightly objective. 

Focus on identifying what went well. You want to focus on the positives when developing something. Despite this, be sure to look a little bit on what you can change.

Test the changes. The only way to know if a skill has improved is to try it again.

When setting my goals, it was also important to remember they needed to be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time-bound). I found this really helpful when thinking about what to choose as I was able to highlight goals that I’d be able to work on during the trip but still develop afterwards. This was also good as it helped me to think about what I wanted to get out of my trip.

Before going to London, I worked on my Independence goal by researching the travel connections in London. This included looking up the ticket prices for trams, subway, and buses.

For my Networking skills, prior to leaving I attended the Networking Event put on by the Global Insights group. I found this really helpful as I’d never experienced what networking was before. It really eased my worries about it and I’d really recommend attending. I also came up with a few questions for each alumnus I’d be meeting.

In order to work on my confidence my group split who would reply to emails from the various alumnus so that it wasn’t just one person corresponding with everyone. If I were to do the experience again I think I would out myself forward for more. Despite this, I did find it useful to be in contact with them prior to the meetings especially the ones I had conversed with.