The horrific car accident in which a woman driving drunk killed eight last week in New York sheds light on a disturbing trend - the increased instances of women getting behind the wheel when legally drunk.

In Westchester County, NY - where Diane Schuler’s fatal crash occurred - the number of women arrested for driving under the influence is up 2 percent in 2009. Across the U.S. a federal study found that the number of women who reported abusing alcohol nearly doubled, rising from 1.5 to 2.6 percent in the 10 year period from 1992-2002.

Men still drink more than women and are responsible for more drunken-driving cases, however their rates continue to decline while DUI’s among women are rising rapidly. In 2007 the number of women arrested for DUI was 28.8 percent higher than in 1998, while the number of men arrested declined by 7.5 percent.

In the 15 years I drank, I was never picked up for DUI. Did I drive drunk? Unfortunately, my answer is yes, worse there was more than one occasion where I did not remember how I got home. In Shades of Darkness, Shades of Grace, Kay Scott tells her brother Paul he must stop drinking before he is responsible for something “he can never take back” and certainly driving drunk is at the top of the list.

Ms. Schuler’s family appears to be in denial that she had a drinking problem, a fact which only compounds the tragedy. But the increasing numbers of women driving drunk now has the attention of the U.S. Department of Transportation. The department’s annual crackdown which begins in late August will focus on getting drunk women driver’s off the road.

My sister Susan passed on Shades of Darkness, Shades of Grace to a friend who is a therapist by training. She (I’ll call her Jane) loved the book but also commented on the dead-on accuracy of Pamela’s sociopath character in her pursuit of the Pierson family.

Jane also imparted a chilling observation - therapists don’t actually see the Pamela’s of this world as they don’t ever believe there anything about them that might be problematic. Who they do see as patients are the persons dealing with the constant fallout from a Pamela. Just as in the book, a Pamela is never at fault, is often a master manipulator, and will not stop until she wears down the opposition. Jane has the clients to prove it.

Like many authors, I wrote what I knew. Readers have come along for the journey for which I am grateful. Some of the details are not pretty, particularly the Pierson family’s battles with alcoholism and drug abuse - the toughest part of the novel for Jane to read. But to hear from a trained professional that the characters, their flaws, and their struggles came alive for her is a great compliment. Honestly you never know who will be reading your book or what you’ll learn from a reader.

Last August over 100 college presidents signed a letter asking legislators across the U.S. to lower the drinking age from 21 to 18 because they believe it’s impossible to stop young people from drinking. Called “The Amethyst Initiative” the coalition  includes college presidents from Johns Hopkins, the University of Maryland, Washington and Lee, Colgate, Syracuse, Sweet Briar, Duke, Tufts, Dartmouth, and other schools. The group insists with a higher legal drinking age, binge drinking on college campuses has gotten progressively worse.  

Fast-forward 11 months to the July 12 editorial in The Washington Post that maintained a lower drinking age won’t stop binge drinking. As a recent study published in the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry noted, the higher drinking age has led to a decrease in binge drinking nationwide, with the exception of college campuses.

Lowering the drinking age won’t make binge drinking disappear, on college campuses or otherwise, a fact The Amethyst Initiative appears to ignore. They also disregard that binge drinking typically results in acute intoxication which can be detrimental to a person’s health in a number of ways:  

• Brain function is impaired, resulting in poor judgment, reduced reaction time, loss of balance and motor skills, or slurred speech.
• Blood vessels dilute causing a feeling of warmth but resulting in rapid loss of body heat.
• Alcohol intoxication increases the risk of certain cancers, stroke, and liver disease (such as cirrhosis) when excessive amounts of alcohol are consumed over an extended period of time.
• Alcohol consumption also poses risks to pregnant women and their developing fetus.
• Alcohol consumption increases the risk of motor-vehicle traffic crashes, violence, and other injuries.
• Binge drinking can also result in death.

As illustrated by the Pierson family in my novel, Shades of Darkness, Shades of Grace, binge drinking as an adolescent can lead to deeper alcohol problems as an adult. So instead of complaining about the higher drinking age, college administrators might do well to put more thought and effort into enforcing it.

I read just such an intriguing post today by LuAnn Schindler. She recounts a friend asking her, “Have you ever read a story that saved your life?” Schindler notes she’s read many books that resonated with her and believes the answer to her friend’s question may lie in how you define the word “save”.

To Kill a Mockingbird Schindler argues saved her from spreading prejudice and injustice; The Great Gatsby from greed and misplaced love; Macbeth from using ambition in the wrong way. Still, she’s unsure whether those works saved her rather than simply relating to the ideas within a book’s pages and applying them to our lives.

As an author and recovering alcoholic, I thought about Shades of Darkness, Shades of Grace. I do think it’s possible for a book to at least begin the process of saving an individual from something such as alcoholism if the reader is willing to acknowledge the existence of the problem. And quite frankly, I hope that story within the novel does save someone from the ravages of chemical dependency.

So in response to Schindler’s musings, I believe a story at least has the potential to save someone, but as she notes in her examples, a person must be open to a story’s message.

The first time I had exposure to illiteracy in America was 20 years ago in drug treatment. At that time, part of recovery was group therapy in which members took turns reading from Alcoholics Anonymous’ “Big Book”. As we passed the book it became obvious that over half of the 20-25 participants could only read at the barest of minimums. I clearly remember those of us who could read helping those who couldn’t sound out words.

I learned the scene playing out in drug treatment was far from unusual. These statistics from the National Right to Read Foundation paint a grim picture:

• 42 million American adults cannot read at all; another 50 million read at the level of a fourth or fifth grader.
• The number of functionally illiterate adults increases by 2.25 million every year.
• 20% of high school seniors are functionally illiterate at graduation.

Being unable to read or being functionally illiterate leads to a host of other problems and as research by the National Institute for Literacy illustrates:

• 70% of prisoners in both the federal and state systems are classified as illiterate.
• 85% of all juvenile offenders rate as functionally or marginally illiterate.
• 43% of those who literacy skills are lowest live in poverty.

As an author such staggering statistics cannot be ignored. For that reason when Literacy Instruction for Texas (LIFT) contacted me about promoting the importance of literacy I was more than happy to oblige. Leslie Clay, Director of Community Development says, “We are very proud of the fact that more than 7,000 adults learned to read at LIFT this year.  When you factor in children whose parents learned how to read to them through our Family Literacy program, the number of lives LIFT touched is closer to 10,000.  It is both an amazing and sad fact that 49% of Dallas county cannot read better than a 4^th grader and Texas now holds the distinction of being the #1 state in the nation with regards to the number of high school dropouts.”

The miserable statistics in Texas mirror what is occurring in the rest of the country. I plan to get involved as a volunteer helping others to read and promoting programs such as those sponsored by LIFT and other such organizations. I encourage you to become active in literacy organizations in your own area and help eradicate America’s tragic reading problem.  

Recently I found a blog post regarding “The Saving Grace of Sobriety” that I’d written in April. The upshot was the alcoholism portrayed in Shades of Darkness, Shades of Grace was nothing out of the ordinary and the Pierson’s apparently, didn’t suffer enough.

The novel was inspired by a true story which included Kay and Paul’s alcoholism not to mention the four generations that scar the family’s past and present. If four generations of broken lives isn’t enough suffering, what is? We’ve buried one sibling and our parents would tell you there is no anguish comparable to the grief of losing a child.

We’re in the midst of an intervention with another blood relative and again, unless you’ve lived it, most people have no idea of the trauma involved in attempting to save a loved one from themselves because we know we might fail. Unless the person has hit bottom enough times and decides their life is worth living, beyond an intervention there is not much else we can do. We can’t stop that family member from ultimate destruction if that’s the path they choose.

So reading that our family history of alcoholism is too ordinary is almost laughable. No one ever looks at drug treatment and says, “Now there’s something I haven’t tried”. The road leading to a drug treatment program more often than not is one of the few remaining options families or in worse scenarios; the state has at its disposal.

The opinions of this particular blogger are, like anything, as relevant as their experience. Another person (in this case a book reviewer) found the alcoholism addiction sub-plot too gruesome and depressing.  Opinion at opposite ends of the spectrum but one thing I can tell you - no one comes away from the experience unchanged.