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Finding the Courage to Change: Alcohol & Drug Program Helps MHC Women Move Beyond Addiction

Published in Spring 2008 issue under Features, Learn More (Web Extras)

By Susan Bushey '96

Kate* woke up from an alcohol-induced blackout her first month on campus with a student adviser handing her a telephone number, telling her to call it and ask for help. “I felt coerced into calling, but I later was happy for it,” she says. Ann* vowed never to become her father—an alcoholic who got sober when she was fifteen, but who never found happiness. But in her junior year on campus, she picked up a bottle that she wouldn’t put down for another eight years. “I was a sick, sick girl,” she says.

These are two of the many Mount Holyoke women who are recovering alcohol and drug addicts. It’s not a fact about which people brag, but being able to provide help is. ADAP—Mount Holyoke’s Alcohol and Drug Awareness Project—has been serving the needs of students and alumnae for thirty years, long before such programs were federally mandated. In the fall, anniversary events included a panel with alumnae who told their stories and students who read the stories of others, as well as speakers such as Susan Cheever, author of Note Found in a Bottle: my life as a Drinker.

The road to recovery, though paved with pain, can and should be one of hope, according to ADAP director Susan McCarthy. “Recovery is possible,” she says. “[Addiction] doesn’t have to go to the extreme.”

Though the stories told at the October panel were not all happy or easy to hear, they were inspiring, and every alum had words of thanks—and sometimes tears—for McCarthy. “Without her, I wouldn’t be here today,” says one. “Thanks to Susan, and ADAP, I was able to come back to finish my studies at Mount Holyoke,” says another.

McCarthy, who has been at Mount Holyoke for nineteen years, shared credit with Coordinator of Health Education Karen Jacobus, who has been at MHC for fourteen years. The two were given a standing ovation at the October panel—a tribute to the blood, sweat, and tears shed by those involved with ADAP.

ADAP helps students by offering counseling, support services, education, resources, referrals, and an alumnae network. It is confidential and free to Mount Holyoke students who are struggling with their relationship with alcohol or other drugs, or know someone who is.

Some students are required to seek counseling through ADAP—those who use illicit drugs or have a serious alcohol-related incident, often involving a medical emergency. Roughly fifty students had mandated counseling in the 2006–07 school year. That number has hovered between thirty and fifty since 1999. Before that, the number was in the teens and twenties. (Note: changes in policies over time also affect those figures.) There are no statistics on how many seek help on their own, but between one and twenty students regularly attend the weekly ADAP lunches, according to Jacobus.

Students who violate MHC’s drug/alcoholpolicy must attend ADAP education sessions. In the last full school year, nearly seventy students attended a session.

McCarthy says she and the staff go to great lengths to provide confidentiality to all who use ADAP services. In the case of student counseling, this is a legal requirement, but she says the policy also builds honesty and trust. Confidentiality is the norm with alumnae too. “When we have events, we can’t articulate that someone has been a client, but some alums choose to share their ADAP experiences to help others,” says McCarthy.

The alumnae network comprises about 135 women, including those in recovery, those working in the field of chemical dependency, and others committed to the project’s work. These alumnae offer support to students and alums who reach out to the network for help.

The project was founded in 1977 as part of a grant from the R. Brinkley Smithers Foundation to counsel and educate students, and teach intervention. Mount Holyoke’s program was one of the first at an American college or university. “Mount Holyoke is a real leader in this issue,” says McCarthy.

Over the years, alumnae have played a large part in the ADAP’s success. McCarthy says the alumnae network program allows those entering recovery to see there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

“Alums have been extraordinarily generous with their time and energy, as well as financially,” she says. “It takes time for alumnae and students to establish a relationship and to build trust.”

McCarthy works side-by-side with Jacobus to get the word out that ADAP exists. “Education is key,” says Jacobus. “Knowing that help is available is so important.” 

Ann’s Story

Ann*, who graduated in the early 1980s, says she wishes ADAP had been better known at that time.
“When I was at Mount Holyoke, I was a sick, sick girl,” says Ann, who would isolate herself and drink alone. “I didn’t
know that much about ADAP [in college], and I was active in drinking,” she says, althogh she never took drink or used drugs in high school.

“I grew up in a family where a parent was an alcoholic. It was a really nice family, but there was a lot of inherent misery. I said I would never go the path Dad went,” she explains. Ann’s father got sober when she was fifteen, but things never returned to happiness, she says.

“I started drinking when I got to Mount Holyoke. But I was a solitary drinker, never a partier. And I spent my twenty-ninth birthday in a rehab [facility],” Ann says, which capped her eight or nine years of drinking.

What sent her to rehab? “I had a total meltdown, and my family was watching me,” she says. At the time, Ann’s husband had a job that kept him away for most of the month. On this particular night, he returned home from work to find her passed out and their fourteen-month-old baby crying hysterically. “He realized if he didn’t do something, I would die and no one would be able to care for our daughter,” she says.

Ann says her husband remembered someone who had just been through rehabilitation, and called him for help. He gave Ann’s husband a hospital’s number, and the hospital led an intervention over the phone.

“My mother came, and they told me if I wanted to see my daughter again, I had to get help. They pretty much did a late-Saturday-night, on-the-spot intervention and gave me the choice of drinking myself to death or that there was help for me in the morning,” she says. That rehab hospital, she says, “saved my life.”

Since her sobriety, Ann has been an active volunteer with ADAP, speaking on panels and sometimes attending recovery lunches, where she can connect with students and alums on a small-group basis.

“I’ve been sober twenty-one years, and I have stayed active in ADAP because I wish I’d had the opportunity to use it. … It’s such an important tool for people to draw on the experience of others in recovery,” she says.

“It’s very fulfilling on the level of being able to be in contact with the school where I was a sick woman. … To go back [to MHC] whole and say to them, ‘I’ve been there and there’s a way to get help.’ It’s been so healing for me and such an incredible gift,” she says.

“My life looked so bleak at the rehab, but it has been incredibly wonderful since. My advice to someone who hasn’t taken that first step yet? Keep an open mind,” she says. “Don’t dismiss the idea that you might need help. Getting into recovery can be an incredible experience in a good way, even though it looks terrifying to start. … And don’t stay alone. Try to take the help, because that’s what makes [recovery] possible.”

Kate’s Story

Kate* graduated in the early 1990s. She says ADAP “is one of the most invisible, but most important, resources on campus. And I appreciate the confidentiality—Susan guards that with her life. … People know they can go there and know they will be protected. And that’s huge.”

Kate was brought into ADAP by another student after having an alcohol-induced blackout. She had only been at Mount Holyoke for a month, but had taken her first drink at fourteen.

Her family was aware of her problem, but “were powerless and baffled by it.” She had sought help before, but only when she was in trouble. As soon as the trouble was over, she turned her back on the help.

“I grew up in an environment of angry, unhappy nondrinkers and footloose drinkers. … I didn’t see drinking as a problem. I grew up in a bar, so what I saw and how I lived wasn’t abnormal for me,” she explains.

But after her blackout, when Residential Life had her call McCarthy, Kate’s life started to fall in place. “I had an appointment with Susan. It was the start of planting seeds of my recovery,” says Kate, who met McCarthy late in 1989 and got sober in March 1990. “Susan showed great compassion with much direction and knew how to speak to me. She knew I was angry and volatile, so I credit Susan—and ADAP—for making it possible for me to get through the early insanity of not drinking.”

The hardest part of her next three years at Mount Holyoke were Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. “It wasn’t that it was such a drinking culture, but I had no social skills to cope [with spare time and the social scene]. That’s where working with Susan was helpful. She kept me focused. She helped me put one foot in front of the other,” says Kate.

Kate now helps as a member of the ADAP alumnae network when she has time. “I’ve done some panels, but mostly I go in and tell [administration and faculty] ADAP is important to people getting well—not the end of getting well, very much the beginning,” she says.

Her advice to those who are where she was nearly twenty years ago? “As Mount Holyoke women, there is a strength about us, of us being high over-achievers, but [addiction] is so demoralizing and paralyzing because it requires that we seek direction and help,” she says. “We will only become independent again if we seek the direction and help we need to get us out of the problem.”

 

*Names of alumnae have been changed to preserve their privacy.

Susan Bushey is public relations director for regis college in Weston, Massachusetts, and lives in Worcester, Massachusetts, with her fiancée.

 

ADAP Services

  • Counseling (individual and group)
  • Support Services (facilitated and peer-support groups that provide opportunities to meet others working on similar issues)
  • Education (workshops, training, and campus-wide events)
  • Resources and Referrals (to chemical-dependency treatment programs and other community resources)
  • Alumnae Network (recovering and professional alumnae who provide support to students)  

Can You Help?

The Alcohol and Drug Awareness Project at Mount Holyoke College is always looking for alumnae volunteers. You can support an alumna in recovery, make personal contact with alums or students in recovery, or speak on a panel about your experiences. Your story could also be told anonymously to foster awareness. Volunteers who work in the fields of recovery and chemical dependency are also welcome. For more information, please email Karen Jacobus or Susan McCarthy.

Learn More: 

Self-Help Resources and National Alcohol and Other Drug Websites

Note: This listing is intended to be comprehensive but does not indicate an endorsement of services listed herein by the Alcohol and Drug Awareness Project.

For Further Reading

Note: This listing does not indicate an endorsement of these resources by the Alcohol and Drug Awareness Project

Alcoholics Anonymous: The Story of How Many Thousands of Men and Women Recovered From Alcoholism. 4th ed. New York: Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, INC, 2001.

Al-Anon's Twelve Steps & Twelve Traditions. New York: Al-Anon Family Group, 1981.
ISBN: 0-910034-24-9

From Survival to Recovery. Virginia: Al-Anon Family Group, 1994.
ISBN: 0-910034-97-4

Living Sober. New York: Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, INC, 1975.
ISBN: 0-916856-04-6

Narcotics Anonymous . 5th ed. Chatsworth: Narcotics Anonymous World Services Inc, 1988.
ISBN: 0-912075-02-3

Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions. New York: Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, INC, 1989.
ISBN: 0-916856-01-1

Women Under the Influence. Baltimore: John Hopkins UP, 2006.
ISBN: 0-8018-8228-1

Black, Claudia. Double Duty. New York: Ballantine Books, 1990.
ISBN: 0-345-36152-0

Black, Claudia. It Will Never Happen to Me. 2nd ed. Bainbridge Island: MAC, 2001
ISBN: 0-910223-00-9

Brown, Stephanie, and Yvonne Pearson. A Place Called Self: Women, Sobriety, and Radical Transformation. Center City: Hazelden, 2004.
ISBN: 1-59285-098-7

Cheever, Susan. Note Found in a Bottle: My Life as a Drinker. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999.
ISBN: 0-684-80432-8

Covington, Stephanie S. Woman's Way Through the Twelve Steps. Center City: Hazelden & Educational Services, 1994.
ISBN: 9780894869938

Davis Kasl, Charlotte. Many Roads, One Journey: Moving Beyond the 12 Steps. New York: Harper Perennial, 1992.
ISBN: 0-06-096518-5

Hafner, Sarah. Nice Girls Don't Drink: Stories of Recovery. New York: Bergin & Garvey, 1992.
ISBN: 0-89789-247-x

Jay, Jeff, and Debra Jay. Love First. Center City: Hazelden, 2000.
ISBN: 1-56838-521-8

Jersild, Devon. Happy Hours. New York: Harper Collins Publisher Inc., 2002.
ISBN: 0-06-092990-1

Kinney, Jean, and Gwen Leaton. Loosening the Grip. 8th ed. St. Louis: Mosby Yearbook Inc, 2006.
ISBN: 0-8016-2769-9

Knapp, Caroline. Drinking: a Love Story. New York: Dell, 1996.
ISBN: 0-385-31554-6

McGovern, George. Terry. New York: Random Halls Inc, 1995.
ISBN: 0-679-44797-0

V., Rachel, ed. A Woman Like You: Life Stories of Women Recovering from Alcoholism and Addiction. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1985.

W., Bill. Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age, by a Co-Founder. New York: Harper, 1957

Wilcox, Danny. Alcoholic Thinking: Language, Culture, and Belief in Alcoholics Anonymous. Westport, CT: Prager, 1998.

Woititz, Janet G. Home Away From Home. Pompano Beach: Health Communications, Inc, 1987.
ISBN: 0-932194-38-9

 

Audio of talk by Susan Cheever, keynote speaker for the ADAP 30th anniversary event, and author of Found In a Bottle and My Name Is Bill: Bill Wilson--His Life and the Creation of Alcoholics Anonymous. 

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