NORTH HOLLYWOOD : Youths Get Help Overcoming Addictions

Sitting next to her best friend, Valia, but surrounded by virtual strangers, Erin, 16, described what it was like to watch her father get shot and killed by robbers at his used-car shop.

Poppie, 18, talked about her three suicide attempts, her drug addiction and being raped by her aunt’s boyfriend.

Erin was a visitor to the weekly ACTION program for troubled teen-agers at Grant High School in North Hollywood. The other 10 teen-agers there were regulars. Most of them had at least one parent sitting in the next room, participating in a group of their own.

ACTION, a nonprofit support program for parents and teen-agers, was started by two recovering addicts about 2 1/2 years ago.

The program runs 38 free support groups throughout Southern California that range in size from 10 to 50 teen-agers.

The program is struggling to keep up with the growing demand for new ones. ACTION receives about 60% of its $30,000 monthly budget for the programs and a 24-hour help line from the Avalon Treatment Program, but it relies on private and corporate donations to cover the rest.

ACTION founders Cary Quashen and Ronald Kaufman, who worked together at a treatment center, saw a need for a support program aimed at adolescents recovering from addiction.

“When adults get out of treatment, they go and see a psychiatrist or a psychologist to understand why they were drinking,” Kaufman said.

“With adolescents, there is nowhere to go.”

Like the founders, ACTION’s eight full-time counselors are recovering addicts.

Poppie, who has been sober for one month and is trying to go back to school or get a job, said the other teen-agers in the group often give her good advice.

“Adults are sometimes ‘nag, nag, nag,’ ” she said. “But teen-agers understand what you’re going through.”

At the end of the two-hour group counseling session, the teen-agers and their parents gathered in one classroom and joined hands in a circle around the desks.

Each parent stepped forward with an individual request: One father asked his daughter to stop lying to him. A single mother asked her son to help more around the house. Another mother begged her daughter to stay out of juvenile hall.

All the pleas had one thing in common--they ended in hugs.

For information about ACTION or to reach the help line, call (800) 282-5660.