Freedom Fighters

These pervasive, quiet tragedies are crippling the relationships, livelihoods and hopes of millions across America. The need is almost overwhelming for an answer to an illness that has no preferences, no prejudices and at times very little pattern. 

In an extraordinary response, the Baylor Addictions Research Consortium (BARC) formed in 2007 to re-define "community service" and change the face of addiction recovery support in Central Texas. The brainchild of four diverse, highly credentialed faculty, whose research interests span from mouse genetics to cognitive-behavioral therapy, this small group of experts set out to bring scientific discovery once shrouded in academia into a social space where the heart of addiction and substance abuse lives. Their methods are unconventional. Their involvement, unusual. But their passion is exceptional and is helping bridge the often colossal canyon between laboratory and life.

The reason behind their effort can be explained by, if nothing else, sheer numbers. In 2006 alone, more than six million Americans abused cocaine. Some 25 million abused marijuana, and 73 million used tobacco. Regionally, the Texas Drug Threat Assessment report has ranked the state among the nation's highest for marijuana, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine seizures, and the Texas Department of State Health Services reported in 2006 that 30 percent of students in grades 7-12 had used alcohol in the last month.

BARC's researchers have discovered that reaching a solution first means reaching out to the problem where it lives, works and plays.

White coats getting dirty

Dr. Doug Matthews is the first scientist in line to shed the image of white coats and a pristine lab full of beakers and petri dishes.

"It's not that the science doesn't matter," he's quick to point out. "The science is at the heart of what we're doing. But faculty at a university have a certain responsibility to the general population to be involved in the community in terms of education or service, to give back in some way. Because, at some level, our job is derived by the goodwill of the general population."

That's precisely why Matthews and his colleagues created BARC. Recently awarded a grant from the Baylor/Waco Foundation, BARC will embark on an initial yearlong pursuit to get its hands dirty, so to speak. Matthews, whose genetic research on alcoholism stems both from intellectual curiosity and a family history of addiction, has been recognized in 46 publications and has earned more than $2 million in external grants. His investigation into the effect of alcohol use on gambling behavior in college students provides dual insight into one of BARC's target populations.

Matthews and his colleagues will significantly expedite the dissemination process from science to society. In an enormous and complex industry like healthcare, it typically takes months--sometimes years--to get even the most critical research findings into the hands of doctors and specialists. But because each BARC member holds direct ties to the practicing professionals fighting addiction on the front lines, the lag time is virtually eliminated and the research is placed closer than ever to those it can help the most.

"Everything must be torn away in terms of the academics of it," Matthews says. "It's a bittersweet experience to make those connections with real people. In this case we have to stop treating science as science, and instead treat it as a life-impacting story."

'This is your brain on drugs'

It's anything but the old egg-in-a-frying-pan technique. BARC scientists have long understood that classic scare tactics no longer affect a numbed culture that's seen all the mangled drunk-driven cars and has heard all the percentages. Dr. Matthew Stanford, BS '88, MA '90, PhD '92, a clinical researcher and expert on impulsive and aggressive behavior, says a naïve public policy toward drug use has slowly eroded substance abuse education in both the academic and treatment communities.

"We need a fresh perspective," he says. "The typical mantra, 'Don't do drugs', is fine for an initial approach. But when someone does them and they become dependent, it doesn't work anymore. We like to think all the abusers have been dealt with by the legal system, but that's far from the truth. Dependence is a biological trap that alters a person physically. It is not like a person can just decide on a Thursday to go to an AA meeting and stop."

Stanford works closely with churches and other religious organizations throughout Central Texas and contributes regularly to initiatives through Mission Waco. He consults for the Federal Bureau of Prisons and is a recipient of grant funding from the Dreyfus Health Foundation. But perhaps most importantly, his relationship with the faith community allows BARC to reach a critical, but undereducated, segment of the addiction support system.

Spirituality and addiction, Stanford explains, represent a peculiar, though vital relationship in treatment and recovery. At rock bottom, sometimes the only thing to hold onto is a person's faith. Addicts turn to God, to their faith, in times of trouble and often rely on religious leaders for support and guidance. Too often, however, those leaders see ending addiction as an intellectual choice, rather than the physiological stranglehold that it is. They lose sympathy and patience with a person errantly seen as repeatedly and voluntarily making poor life choices.

"We have to help clergy and other support counselors understand that this can't be a one-shot-and-you're-out kind of thing," Stanford says. "It takes, on average, seven treatments to get a person to one year's worth of sobriety. That is after multiple relapses. My goal is to help them view any sobriety, even short-lived, as a step to success, rather than a miserable failure. It's a huge challenge, but a highly rewarding one when even one person can turn that corner."

Talk about the right place at the right time. Through BARC, Stanford and his fellow scientists have an uncommon ability to resonate the hope of the gospel to those desperately in need of its message. Because the scientists' personal faith walks have in four unique ways called them to their life's work, they are both genuinely compassionate toward the population they're serving, and ideally positioned to communicate the love and faithfulness of Christ through their messages. It is, in fact, one reason why they're all at Baylor in the first place.

In the trenches

Dr. Sara Dolan came to Baylor precisely to have the kind of community impact BARC promises. A clinical psychologist, she specializes in educational outreach and regularly trains healthcare professionals, backed by the very same cutting-edge research she and her colleagues perform in a laboratory setting. Highly and directly involved with the Waco VA's Center of Excellence program, Dolan explains how BARC exists to help victims' family, friends and support professionals understand that addiction is a chronic, brain-based mental illness.

"Peole need to see, from a scientific perspective, what people in their lives [who suffer from addiction] are experiencing," she says. "It starts by educating people on what the disorders are, where they come from and what they look like. It's good for society to hear about mental illness, because it's the first step to eliminating the stigma that addiction is a moral failure."

Dolan's community involvement includes leading regular seminars, at no cost, at the Freeman Center, an addiction counseling and rehabilitation facility in Waco that treated more than 1,300 people last year. She says BARC's goal is eventually to grow into an even wider-reaching program through workshop hosting, fundraising efforts and multi-faceted involvement by Baylor faculty and students. And the community already is taking notice. Dan Worley, executive director of the Freeman Center, threw his support behind BARC from its inception and believes the program will allow many local and regional non-profit organizations to take great strides in their efforts to treat addiction victims.

"This is an opportunity for our staff, and many others in the community working on the same issues, to receive some absolutely first-rate training that we could never have accessed otherwise," he says. "It gives us the kind of insight into addiction treatment that might previously have taken years to trickle down."

Speaking the language

Each BARC faculty member acknowledges the program's success hinges largely on reaching not just the addiction-afflicted, but the addiction-prone. While Dr. Jim Diaz-Granados, like Matthews, studies addiction in an animal model, the Department of Psychology and Neurosciences chair is no stranger to perhaps the most vulnerable population of all. Diaz-Granados' commitment to education and his desire to reach students at a young age has made him a prominent figure in classrooms across the region. He's made everything from colorful, energetic presentations on the brain in front of kindergarteners, to high-school targeted speeches on life-altering drug binges and chronic alcohol abuse.
"At first it amazed me how receptive students were to this information," he says. "But as I listened to their reactions over time, I heard the same thing over and over. They would tell me 'This is real stuff. This is like science telling you what can happen to your brain and to your body because of the alcohol.'"
Diaz-Granados discovered that influencing a young audience depends on tapping into one distinct feature of its collective personality.

"They're adolescents," he muses. "They look at a horrible car wreck caused by a drunk driver, or you tell them the statistics on alcohol and teen pregnancy, and what do they think? They think, 'Well, that's not going to happen to me.' Showing them what the alcohol does as the brain is developing has had a clear impact. To show them a person who can't remember what a green light is, because he's been a chronic abuser of alcohol, hits home in terms of the realities of dependence."

Diaz-Granados' relationship with Waco and Midway Independent School Districts helped acquire letters of support from each system's superintendent, which weighed heavily in the Baylor/Waco Foundation grant process. Part of BARC's mission is to reach out into the school districts and touch young people both directly and indirectly damaged by substance abuse and addiction. 

"It can be a very frightening thing for a young person to experience," Diaz-Granados says. "They may not know how to recognize a substance abuse problem, in themselves or in another person. Many have seen family members and friends fall into substance abuse and addiction, and even death. I'm sure if they just had a resource where they could have turned for help, many situations could have had a different outcome. At least, they would not have ended in the regret of thinking 
'I could have done more.'"

Getting the word out

BARC's strategy suggests efficient, immediate dispersal of its state-of-the-science research. Each of its members has worked independently to generate the information and is now actively engaged in bringing together all their research into a cohesive and seamless communication. By spring, all four scientists will represent the face of BARC in the community niches where they each specialize. Through printed materials, interactive presentations, Q&A panels and plenty of behind-the-scenes help from Baylor graduate researchers, BARC will bring crucial solutions directly into a community incubating a grave problem that threatens its very lifeblood. 

BARC's funding through the Baylor/Waco Foundation will jumpstart its goals through the first year, but its much-larger mission is to establish an eventually self-sustaining program. Through additional grant funding and growing Baylor faculty involvement, BARC hopes to forever connect scientific breakthroughs at Baylor to real-life application in Waco and beyond.

"We want BARC to be a useful, digestible, accessible source of real help for our neighbors," Matthews says. "We're building a foundation for this program to have a very, very long life. There's room for every piece of the university to contribute, from psychology to sociology to business. It's a tall challenge, but it's one we're excited to take on; we're obliged to take it on. If we accomplish what we're setting out to do, it is to provide education and to create hope--in perpetuity--for people to grasp onto."

For so many who are suffering--for that mother, that friend, every face and family member of addiction--it's the hope of getting through tonight, and reaching the fresh start of a new tomorrow.