There is a sign along Interstate 275 in west central Florida — near St. Petersburg, where the friends grew up — in memory of Laura Gorman. Rasdall said teenage alcoholism she often visits the crash site and reflects on what might have been. But most of all, there is the hard reality that she must wake up to each morning.

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Others accused the Allens of trying to find people to blame for their daughter’s death and said it was Shelby who had drunk the alcohol that killed her. Police were already investigating Shelby’s death as a matter of procedure. “It became clear to me that negligence had occurred,” recalls Gerald Benito, who served as Shasta County district attorney at that time. The 17-year-old drank them at a friend’s house, with adults at home — and now her parents are fighting to keep others from the same fate.

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But none of it would be what it is without the suffering—the pain caused by others and the pain I brought on myself. I’ve heard stories that make my life sound like Disneyland. The Honorable Daniel Flynn ruled that she had not behaved in a criminally negligent way, and found that it was unclear how the second bottle of vodka had been provided for Shelby to fulfill her “unwavering intent” to down 15 vodka shots that night. Despite the outcome, Benito insists that this proceeding did increase awareness about how dangerous binge drinking and social hosting can be — and will continue to. “If one life is saved because of the awareness this raised, it’s worth it,” he says.

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Offer them a safe ride home or arrange a ride from another trusted driver. And as for the urge to drink, Genna said she doesn’t feel compelled any more. ‘He had seen me get sober before and relapse very quickly and was mistrusting of me up until recently. I think it was hard for him to see me repeat this pattern over and over again so he was cautious to get emotionally invested in our relationship,’ Genna said. Like most parents, Grace was concerned when her son Jacob began displaying concerning behaviors at home and in school. After reaching out to Safe Landing Recovery for help, she is amazed at the transformation compassionate guidance and has had on Jacob.

Shannon has been sober for a little over a year and said she started to apply the life skills and tools she learned at Newport Academy when she was ready to embrace sobriety. Shannon entered Newport in 2015 when she was 18 years old and was there for 45 days and was in the rehab center’s intensive outpatient program day school for four months where she finished out high school. Only her close friends knew about her problem. It got to the point where they would tell her to slow down or take away whatever she was drinking from her. Eventually, Shannon started raiding her parent’s alcohol cupboard, picking up a bottle to drink before, during and after school.

• “Drinking made me feel at ease, comfortable in my skin, and finally not hyper-vigilant of what people thought about me,” she says.
• More than just a sip out of someone’s glass, the cold beer with a lime that my new stepdad handed me was all mine.
• As you can imagine, I didn’t care much for school before too long.
• One of the tasks I had to complete to be released was to climb a flight of stairs.
• “It’s established that no one forced her to drink.” Friends and teachers were interviewed after Shelby’s death, but no one presented an image of her as a troubled teen.

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And if you and your child are comfortable, you can even share relatable stories from your own life. When it comes to talking about substance use, having multiple little talks can be more effective than one “big talk.” Talking frequently builds trust with teens. They are less likely to misuse alcohol or drugs when they have strong, trusting relationships with their parents and guardians.

When it was enacted, lawmakers felt that too many suits were being filed against deep-pocketed hosts — that guests were overindulging, which led to injury, and then refusing to assume blame. In a nutshell, the code says those who choose to drink too much are responsible for what happens, not those who provide the alcohol. On that December night, after stopping for tacos, Shelby got a call on her cell from another pal, Jane (not her real name), who invited Alyssa and Shelby over to her house.

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But eventually, if no one had come, he would have taken his finger out and the water would have broken through in a torrent. That’s the only difference between me now and me on that gray morning. I’ve gotten up every day since and left the door wide open. I grimaced as it went down, but I reveled in the layer of padding the alcohol put between me and the real world, as if someone had wrapped the block of ice constantly pressed against my soul in a fluffy towel. The constant sense of danger wasn’t as imminent. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) in its fifth edition as of 2013, refers to the disease of alcoholism as Alcohol Use Disorder or AUD.

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• For her, it has always been crucial to have a support system of friends who can call her out on her ‘bullshit and push me to be my best’.
• That community may look vastly different from what it used to look like before sobriety; in many ways, that’s the point.

This scary but necessary step catapulted her into a journey of long-term recovery. She believes in the raw power of storytelling, mental health awareness. Knowing she couldn’t keep putting herself and her family and friends through this, Laura returned home and sought help. She talked to a mental health and drug hotline. Understanding she couldn’t handle this on her own and admitting she needed drug intervention was the first step to getting her life back. This kind of collateral damage doesn’t give Debbie even a split second of pause.