By Alyssa Riley
*Trigger Warning: topics of abuse, addiction and suicide in this story may be triggering for some readers*
Eloise has hair the color of an out-of-control forest fire, one that destroys everything in its path, ringlets drifting upward. She is short and stout, but what she lacks in height, she makes up for with her loud choice of dress and her booming voice, often coming out in an excited, boisterous laugh. You can regularly find her in a thrifted get-up, made up of every article and accessory manageable; something you wouldn’t be able to find on the market, that is wholly her own. At 21, she can freely choose what she wears and how, exactly, she wears it. And choose she does, because, for a while, all she felt was trapped, for this freedom wasn’t always a presence in her life.
She lived her childhood and teenage years in Bass, Arkansas, a town so minuscule and isolated that you wouldn’t notice if you drove straight through its center. The home she grew up in, which her parents, Edena and David, built themselves, resembles a storybook picture.
The cabin, blooming in a field of shaded trees, floats on a bed of flowers, bushes, and vines. Up the 13 wooden steps and onto the front porch that extends the length of the house that built her, a church pew takes up residence where the sunset can be viewed perfectly on a warm, summer night; the cicadas and mosquitos filling the night air with earthly clicks and buzzes. Here, David could often be found perched with a bottle in his hand and some pills in his pocket, drinking and popping himself silly into the night. In a few hours, Edena would be waking up, sliding into her starch scrubs, and heading to Cox Medical Center in Branson, dropping Eloise off at the Mount Judy school on her way.
“One time my dad mixed pills and alcohol and the ambulance came; he got really upset that we called it,” Eloise said. “I was in eighth grade.”
The only regulars of her childhood besides her parents were more adults, and like David, who struggled with addiction for the entirety of Eloise’s life, most of them were addicts themselves; alcohol, meth, or otherwise.
Education became her salvation, her escape from the loneliness and drunkenness of the only town she’d ever known. She was seen as a good girl, an outlier in a community that was destined to pump her full of its vices and imprison her with the addictions that made wreckage out of her father. But this she was not oblivious to; she knew the dangers of not having a ticket out, a way to save herself.
So, Eloise studied hard. She made the plans and packed her bags to head to the University of Arkansas to study political science; she thought she had finally escaped her generational fate. However, life rarely works out according to plan, and hers was no exception.
During the fall of 2021, the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, she was taking online classes for her political science degree and living with her then-boyfriend, Jonah Houston, when she started to notice her own dad-like, unhealthy behavior of drinking, drugs, and fighting. With these addictions quickly consuming her life, telling herself to not become like her father wasn’t enough; it was like he had hitched a ride in her mind, concocting every reason why she should pick up the bottle and never put it down.
Her control began unraveling, as she was undiagnosed and, thus, unmedicated in several areas and in an incompatible, open relationship in which sex was her only means of intimacy. She felt that she possessed a certain invincibility, that consequences didn’t pertain to her, so life quickly became a game and for a while, it worked in her favor.
Before long, she dropped out of college, feeling like she had failed at the only goal she had ever known. “School was really easy for me,” but the adjustment was huge, she said of balancing homework, relationships, and the new freedom to party whenever she pleased. “I was not prepared for it. That brought about a lot of shame and “What the f*** do I do now,” being 20 and lost.”
She describes herself now as an inheritor of a predisposition, selfish with her addictions – alcohol, cocaine, and marijuana – and the “F***ing cliché of losing your mind and going crazy when you move out,” but also making moves that her father never attempted; regularly attending recovery meetings.
Is Talking About It Adequate Enough?
Childhood is usually for sweet cups of lemonade from scrappy, home-crafted stands when thirst arises, but not for Eloise. She was 12 years old when her uncle Justin passed her the cheap bottle of “dizzy water” and she took her first swig of the repugnant liquid. She didn’t know how the vodka would taste, but she had been smelling it on her father’s breath for as long as she could remember. If he could drink it, so could she. And drink it she did. It wasn’t long before she was “pretty blackout” and immediately knew it was a problem, but it didn’t create a drinking problem, not until she was out in the world and on her own, at least.
“Substance abuse runs very bad and is in almost every vein of my father’s family,” she said. “He still drinks to this day; he’s never gone to AA meetings or therapy or any of that shit.”
According to a 2016 National Survey on Drug Use and Health study, 3.8 million out of 21 million people ages 12 and older sought and received substance abuse treatment. However, only 2.2 million people, just over 10%, accessed such treatment through facilities that specialize in rehabilitation.
The problem isn’t the stunted numbers of people with addictions seeking help but the availability of impactful help, especially ringing true for Arkansans. American Addiction Centers lists eight states that offer state-funded programs, and Arkansas isn’t one of them. Because of Arkansas’ unavailability of state-funded recovery services, those struggling with substance abuse – who want to recover – must turn to non-profit organizations like Alcoholics Anonymous, or in Eloise’s case, SMART Recovery of NWA.
SMART Recovery, an international organization, aims to help people cope with and move past addictive behaviors through cognitive behavioral therapy. “SMART works for anything. Meth, food, sex, gambling, alcohol, etc.,” said Luke, 31, a SMART meeting facilitator who prefers not to share his last name. “However, in our meetings it’s drugs and alcohol that make up most of the participants’ addictive behaviors.”
After dropping out, Eloise’s drinking became worse, so she turned to cocaine to feel better, or even different, but this addiction switch created a boomerang effect. Realizing she couldn’t use cocaine forever, she would pick the bottle back up, until memories of her father’s addiction would materialize.
“You’re not a pleasant person to be around, you act like a fiend which is very annoying, unsettling, and sad; I think anyone who is an addict knows,” she told me after returning home inebriated one night, shattering glass from who-knows-what on our front porch and falling onto the kitchen floor. To this day, her mud-caked boots from that night remain under the carport where she had drunkenly kicked them off.
About five years ago, when Raymond Roe started the meetings, they were originally held at the Rogers Police Department and, later, at the Center for Nonprofits at St. Mary’s. Now, after luckily receiving a free meeting space from Bentonville’s Keypoint Church, SMART has its own facility, Rogers Dream Center, where meetings are held daily, whether online or in person.
Despite Keypoint’s generosity, SMART receives no state funding, relying heavily on word-of- mouth and out-of-pocket donations to continue providing free help to those with no other option. “Having money would be useful. We could probably buy more materials to give people,” Luke said. “…Probably could spend some money marketing it so more people know about it.”
“I think better dissemination of information about resources available for recovery would help a lot,” said Megan, a regular attendee of SMART meetings. “I went through multiple therapists and not once did any of them point me in the direction of SMART. For some, it was just because they didn’t know it even existed.”
Attending meetings on Tuesdays and Thursdays, Eloise believes the meetings are “Such a good thing,” but that she doesn’t gain much from hearing about others’ sobriety. Even therapy – she is on her 12th therapist – isn’t adequate in aiding her recovery the way that she needs.
“They’re just people, they don’t have the answers,” she said. “But I’m going to these meetings and people talk about how they’ve been sober for years, but I don’t want to be sober for years and not have alcohol for years. Why can others do it and I can’t?”
For Eloise and others like her struggling with substance abuse, affordable help at the age of 21 can be hard to find, so she leads herself with a short-term plan – to stay sober for as long as she can. However, she doesn’t have a long-term plan to beat her addictions with an iron fist. “I don’t want to hurt the people I love, because I’ve been on the receiving end of someone you love picking addiction over you and it hurts so much,” she said.
Like Father, Like Daughter
Home life was never good growing up, Eloise told me, remembering how her father raised her, “If that’s what you can call it.” Her parents were always fighting, so weekly fits of verbal abuse, and some physical abuse were consistently endured by Eloise as only a child.
“I hated my dad for a long time, but despite everything, they both (her parents) try hard to be good people; I think they both had very traumatizing childhoods, themselves,” Eloise said. “And I’m 50% him.” Everyone on her father’s side of the family suffers from either alcohol or drug addictions.
According to the SAGE Encyclopedia of Abnormal and Clinical Psychology, Substance Use Disorder (SUD) affects nearly one in five adults in the United States, as well as their families.
Even for Megan, who attends SMART once a week, her grandmother and grandfather had addictive behaviors with alcohol, although her family didn’t typically discuss it when she was growing up. “I’m not sure how much either case actually contributed to my issues,” she told me. “I now think that drinking was a compulsion I developed, and I didn’t have the tools to break my compulsion.”
Organizations like the National Association for Children of Alcoholics identified the negative effects SUDs have on children, including a heightened risk of developing SUD, mental health disorders, attention deficit, conduct disorders, and borderline personality disorder in females. Risks even reach adopted children, despite their adoptive parents not having SUD.
“Risk is, therefore, genetically and environmentally transmitted to children as approximately 50% of children raised by a biological parent with SUD will develop a SUD, which is at least 4 times higher than for children raised by parents without SUD,” the SAGE journal said.
The National Association for Children of Addiction, NACoA, which spearheaded Voice for the Children, an outreach program advocating for the needs and circumstances of at-risk children, has made SUD intervention their top priority as the prevalence rate nears 20% with a transgenerational continuity.
Eloise feels the impact of SUD daily. “For some people, it doesn’t seem to be a question or a temptation, but for me, that’s my inclination,” she said. “I just wish I could think about it differently. Why can’t I just drink and be normal when so much of society seems able to?”
According to the Addictions and Recovery Organization, children of addicts are eight times more likely to develop SUD. Additionally, if at least one family member is an alcoholic, children are at a greater risk of developing addictions to opioids, cocaine, or marijuana – especially important for women from alcoholic families.
“My mom is a saint and she doesn’t deserve for her only child to be an addict,” Eloise told me. “I loved it [cocaine] enough to not want to stop and I knew what that meant, death or being absolutely broke; that’s not what I want to be, and that’s not what childhood me wants to be.”
A Look Inside
The rectangular room’s faux trees, green paper-link garlands, and a semicircle of chairs facing the whiteboard give the semblance of a classroom, where each occupant is ready to listen and learn, but mostly every face is aged with decades of life and addiction struggles.
The whiteboard showcases five sections for the SMART meeting attendees to ponder; definitions of stress, myth vs. reality, what in your life causes stress, how you cope with stress, and managing stress. Luke opens up the discussion, and one by one, 11 people begin spouting out what brings them stress and how they handle it.
Family, relationships, seeing a bottle on the shelf; the answers go on. Then, with resolve, outlets for working through stress are called, including breathwork, shopping, creating, meditating, yelling, cigarettes, and metal music – a crowdfavorite. Despite a serious and personal topic, the room is vibrant with joking and shared laughter, giving the notion that everyone can resonate with each other. However, the word “addict,” whether of drugs, alcohol, or otherwise, is never spoken.
Frankly, Luke said, they don’t focus on what their “things” are; “It is all about moving forward and finding ways to build a better life.” This, he can say with discernment, for his position as facilitator didn’t come without a history of addiction and, to the benefit of the 11 attendees on April 16, recovery.
As a teenager, Luke started showing signs of Bipolar Disorder; his dependency on alcohol and various non-prescribed pharmaceuticals as a means to cope had dangerously developed by his early 20s.
“After being arrested a couple of times, I decided to stop doing everything except the alcohol,” he said. “Over the years, my drinking became worse as I coped with the bipolar and previous trauma. It got to the point where I decided I was going to seek help one last time, and if it didn’t work, I was going to kill myself.”
At 27, he started a new job – his current career, which he prefers not to disclose – becoming the one thing he had succeeded at. With life looking up, he began attending therapy and was professionally diagnosed and medicated for Bipolar type 1 – defined by the National Institutes of Health as manic episodes lasting at least seven days or severe manic symptoms that demand immediate medical care.
When his therapist recommended SMART, he decided to take a real swing at putting down the bottle for good. In February 2020, three days into being sober, Luke walked into his first meeting and continued to do so several days a week for the first year and a half of his recovery journey.
“Therapy, medication for my mental illness, taking care of my physical health, self-reflection, attending SMART meetings, countless hours of working the SMART and other tools on my own, and a ton of motivation totally changed my life,” he said.
Six months into attending, he was asked to become SMART certified to facilitate meetings. After declining to focus on his happiness, something that was so elusive in his life, he realized that facilitating could be the very solution for his self-improvement.
“As a participant, it was a key part of me changing my life and finding freedom from my addictive behaviors,” Luke said. “Facilitating for me started as a way to continue growing in my recovery, as it holds me accountable to come up with content to share each week. The guy at the time that was running the Sunday meeting decided he needed to stepback (June 2021). I’ve been doing it ever since.”
An Opportunity for Change
With Arkansas’ drastic unavailability of state-funded recovery resources, the announcement of new federal grants for all-hours mental health and substance abuse care on October 19 could not have come sooner.
According to a Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette article, the government is focusing on providing 24/7 support for crisis care to Americans, which has only been available to some depending on income and ZIP code; “That’s going to start to change,” said Health and Human Services’ Xavier Becerra.
Dating back to 2014, the Excellence in Mental Health and Addiction Treatment Act was born by Senators Debbie Stabenow and Roy Blunt. “Mental illness and substance use disorders do not discriminate – they affect our parents, children, CEOs, students, teachers, veterans and other community leaders,” said Senator Stabenow. “For too long, our country has funded health care above the neck differently than health care below the neck. We are finally transforming the way we deliver high-quality services in our communities and the results are clear.”
By 2024, ten states will be selected to receive the new federal grants, and ten more will be selected every other year until all 50 have been provided for.
Effective May 22, 2023, “AR ConnectNow will move from grant funding to its long-term, sustainable, fee-for-service financial model,” said Victoria Spradley, outreach coordinator at AR ConnectNow, a psychiatric research institute. As has been their philosophy since the model’s inception, patients seeking behavioral health care will be seen regardless of their ability to pay.
“I’m not sure where I would have turned if SMART hadn’t been an option,” Megan said. The best-case scenario was that she would’ve moved home to live with her mom, and the worst-case scenario isn’t something she likes thinking about. “But it’s hard to say because SMART was so pivotal to my recovery that I can’t imagine how I would have succeeded without it.”
While SMART has successfully benefitted Luke and Megan and will continue to do so, Eloise and others like her who require a bit more than discussion to overcome addictions can soon receive affordable, and possibly free, substance abuse care with ConnectNow and, hopefully, other state funding options. According to Spradley, the UAMS Center for Addiction Services and Treatment will soon begin providing alcohol abuse treatment.
“It’s amazing to see people’s progression; it’s a community of people supporting each other through something incredibly difficult,” Luke said. “…Unfortunately, it is not typically a straight line to recovery. Rarely is it one thing that gets people to turn it around. I love SMART Recovery, but it is only one tool.”
Arkansas has greatly lacked affordable recovery services, but the future shows promise as this potential solution has been set in motion, and, hopefully, more Arkansans than ever before can embark on casting their addictions out for good.
“You get to a point where you start really liking it and you’re going to spend your next paycheck on it,” Eloise said about cocaine. “And it just became this whirlwind of everything I loved – making me emotionally obsolete, cold and unbothered. It doesn’t make you a good person, I was doing stuff I wasn’t proud of. I’ve relapsed a lot, but I’m five months now; that’s the farthest I’ve ever gone since I started using.”