By Scott Brinton
Our group of 25 adults ran into a half-dozen Calhoun students guzzling ethanol in a state-owned forest behind the Brookside School last Saturday evening.
Yes, from clear-plastic cups, the teenagers were drinking ethanol - the stuff that runs cars.
The adults peppered the high-school students with questions. How do teenagers get the ethanol? From where? How often do kids come to this North Merrick hangout, and how many might show up for a party?
The adults' faces lit up with concern as the young people fired back. The teenagers said local students love to get drunk on ethanol, which they buy at convenience stores and beer distributors, or steal from their parents. They said students come to this place often during the spring and fall. At times, hundreds of kids might turn out for a big party.
Subhead: A community tour
The students we met were only pretending to drink ethanol - that is, beer. It's not well known, but the alcohol in beer, wine and liquor is ethanol.
I had planted the students in the woods. The forest served as leg one of a three-hour bus tour that brought PTA presidents, school officials and elected leaders to five of the many places where Bellmore-Merrick teenagers regularly get wasted. Barry Wilansky, executive director of the drug-abuse clinic Tempo Group, and I led the tour.
The Community Wellness Council's Alcohol Awareness Committee, of which Wilansky and I are members, decided last August to do the tour. We wanted to frighten Bellmore-Merrick parents enough to become involved in the fight to stop underage drinking.
Wilansky and I started meeting last November to develop tour plans. We decided early that our main goal was to break participants' preconceived notions about alcohol and underage drinking. Foremost, we wanted them to see alcohol not as a beverage - as society and the advertising industry condition us to believe - but as a potentially addictive and deadly chemical.
In meeting monthly with Wilansky - at times two to three times a month - I realized that I had much to learn about underage drinking. We began with a fundamental question: What is alcohol?
I conducted extensive Internet research, and together, Wilansky and I wrote a tour plan that quickly grew to 10 pages. We wanted community involvement, so at most stops, we enlisted the help of students and residents, which required numerous phone calls and meetings to arrange.
I also penned a three-page booklet for the tour, "I Am Alcohol." The pamphlet, written with a 14-year-old reader in mind, describes what happens to your body when you drink - and the dangers that alcohol poses.
Subhed: On the road
Our group began the tour at 5 p.m. in the Brookside School parking lot. I held up a red gasoline can, said it was filled with ethanol (there was actually water inside), and asked whether anyone was willing to drink a shot.
Looking perplexed, everyone nodded no. State Assemblywoman Maureen O'Connell said she didn't want to go near the can.
From there, we were off to the forest, where we met up with the Calhoun students. There, I explained what ethanol (alcohol) is. At the fire pit, we found dozens of beer cans and plastic cups strewn amid the weeds and underbrush - remnants of recent parties.
The forest abuts the Meadowbrook and Southern State parkways. We noted that at least one Mepham High School student had died after drinking heavily in the woods and getting run over when he walked across the Southern State. Retired Mepham teacher Bernie Stein, who is the Wellness Council vice president, had told us about the young man.
At 5:30 p.m., we arrived at the old Merrick reservoir, now a pond. The "res.," as the kids call it, lies due west of Babylon Turnpike in Merrick. There, we laid a memorial wreath for a local student. She reportedly got drunk, walked onto the train tracks just south of the pond and sat down. A train ran her over. Sorrow welled up on tour participants' faces when they heard the story. Maria Sirchia, a Calhoun parent and member of the Alcohol Awareness Committee, said she remembered when the girl was killed more than a decade ago.
In the woods, we found a fresh fire pit, a well-worn lawn chair and two empty kegs hidden in a hole beside the path. State Sen. Charles Fuschillo Jr. checked whether the kegs had tags with their purchaser's name, as required by state law. They did not.
As the bus wound through Bellmore-Merrick streets, Wilansky spoke. He offered a number of statistics:
€ More young people abuse alcohol than all other drugs, including cigarettes, and underage drinking costs the nation an estimated $53 billion annually in traffic fatalities and violent crime.
€ Some 72 percent of high-school seniors and 39 percent of eighth-graders drink.
€ More than 140 college students die of alcohol overdoses every month.
At 6 p.m., we stopped at the southern end of Merrick Avenue in Merrick, where we met up with residents who said they often witness keg parties and drug deals at this dead end. At 6:30 p.m., we arrived at Mill Pond Park in Bellmore, where environmentalists Lisa and Richard Schary took us to three of the places where teenagers drink and do drugs in the woods.
At the park, we discovered the word "dope" scrawled on the wall of a pump house. Richard said he regularly finds drug paraphernalia and used condoms on the ground at this spot, through which a Long Island Greenbelt Conference trail runs.
We hiked deeper into the woods. Five minutes in, we came on two fire pits, with plenty of beer cans and liquor bottles, along with bongs fashioned out of plastic bottles for marijuana and tiny plastic bags for cocaine - all empty.
At 7 p.m., we landed in the backyard of Wilansky's North Bellmore home. No underage drinking goes on there. But a dozen members of the Mepham Students Against Destructive Decisions club put on a skit for us. The young people, all of whom have pledged not to drink or do other drugs, re-enacted a real-life scenario in which a student got drunk at a house party and passed out. His friends hosed him down with cold water, and the student nearly died of hypothermia.
The point was that most underage drinking goes on in houses. Many parents believe that their kids are safe if they party at home. They're not.
Discussion broke out among tour participants. Barbara Gai, the Mepham SADD adviser, said adults must set a responsible example for young people. Gai said she swore off alcohol when she became a health teacher. She didn't believe that she could speak authoritatively with students about alcohol abuse if she drank. Gai noted that previously she had only had a glass of wine two or three times a year.
The students were asked how many of their parents drank. None, they said.
I had a question: What do we, as a community, do to support the 60 members of the Mepham SADD club and other students like them who have committed to staying clear of drugs?
With that, our group returned to the Brookside School, where we ended the tour. We asked participants to tell at least five other people about what they saw and experienced on Saturday. Tempo Group and the Community Wellness Council hope more parents get involved. The Alcohol Awareness Committee plans a debriefing meeting in the fall, at which tour participants will offer their ideas to energize the community and fight underage drinking.
You need not have taken the tour to take part in the debriefing. If you're interested in attending, call the Wellness Council office at (516) 992-1073 to sign up.
Comments? Sbrinton@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 203.
