Laura Pearman is a solid student, getting top grades as a senior at City Honors School and

waiting to hear from such schools as the University of Toronto and Cornell University. She has

been on the school bowling team, played the flute with the concert band and has even gone to

New Orleans with a religious group to help rebuild homes in the Ninth Ward.

Laura also is an alcoholic &#8212 a recovering one.

She&#8217s also one of the success stories of the Renaissance Campus in West Seneca, where

she spent almost 14 months as an inpatient at ages 15 and 16.

The campus, a 62-bed facility for drug- and alcohol-dependent teens, will benefit from the

23rd annual Kids Escaping Drugs telethon, airing from 6 to 11:30 p.m. Saturday on WGRZ-TV

Channel 2. Last year&#8217s telethon raised more than $700,000.

Laura believes there&#8217s a strong message about her descent into a world of alcohol,

marijuana and pills. When she hit bottom, she was bringing wine- or vodka-filled water bottles

to school and either drinking or doing drugs six days a week, when she was 14 and 15.

&#8220It can be anybody,&#8221 she said of teen alcohol and drug abusers. &#8220I come from

an upper-middle-class family. My mother is a minister, my father is a lawyer, and I was a good

student. And it happened to me.&#8221

Laura, who seems wise beyond her years, understands what drove her to drink. It was low

self-esteem, boredom, identity issues, insecurity and anger over her parents&#8217 bitter

divorce.

Alcohol, drugs and partying began to define who and what she was.

&#8220It became my identity,&#8221 she said. &#8220I was shutting off the world, going into

my own little happy place. It was a wall protecting me from the outside world and keeping

people from getting in.&#8221

She cut her teeth on drinking after a family Christmas party when she was 12. Home alone,

she found a box of wine, started drinking glasses of it, getting drunk and sick and sending

Instant Messages to her friends.

In the summer before eighth grade, she met some older kids at a Bible camp, and they

introduced her to drinking and marijuana. Then she followed a typical abuser&#8217s script,

getting caught stealing from her mother&#8217s liquor cabinet, drinking when she was alone,

seeing her grades slip, getting busted at school when a wine-filled water bottle spilled and

getting taken to hospital emergency rooms three times.

The last hospital visit was the worst, in late March three years ago. Drinking, along with

some friends, from a water bottle full of vodka, she wandered off on her own and apparently

passed out for about half an hour before being taken to Women & Children&#8217s Hospital.

The once-defiant Laura had struck bottom.

&#8220She was begging for help,&#8221 said her mother, Dorothy. &#8220She said she

didn&#8217t want to live this way.&#8221

That feeling didn&#8217t last, though. The next day, her mother and father, Robert, made

her watch the Kids Escaping Drugs telethon.

&#8220I thought, this isn&#8217t for me,&#8221 she said. &#8220I&#8217m not like this. I

don&#8217t need this.&#8221

But her mother called the help-line number on the screen. On May 3, 2007, Laura entered

Stepping Stones, on the Renaissance Campus.

She started learning what had driven her to drinking and abusing drugs.

&#8220It didn&#8217t allow the real me to come through,&#8221 she said. &#8220It put up a

false me. It was the only way I could communicate with other people or go through the school

day. I had to be under the influence of something.&#8221

Laura talks willingly, even comfortably, about her addiction. She has learned that she

can&#8217t shut the door on her past; instead, she has had to learn from &#8220the old

me.&#8221

&#8220She&#8217s a whole different person,&#8221 she said of her former self. &#8220I

couldn&#8217t be what I am today without her, without going through the Renaissance Campus

... without the therapy.&#8221

Laura knows that some teens headed down the same dangerous path she was on haven&#8217t

survived, or at least haven&#8217t thrived the way she has.

She credits others who have stood by her, including a childhood friend and City Honors

officials who allowed her to return to school following her rehab stint. And, of course, those

who forced her to seek help.

&#8220It was my parents,&#8221 she said. &#8220They pushed me into rehab. They made me stay

even when I was kicking and screaming, and when I said I hated them for putting me in

there.&#8221

Her mother said that the Renaissance Campus brought the family together, counseling her and

her ex-husband.

&#8220We learned how to relate to one another, how to be consistent with our parenting and

how to forgive each other,&#8221 Dorothy Pearman said.

Laura marvels at the Renaissance Campus staff.

&#8220They&#8217re amazing,&#8221 she said. &#8220They take kids who hate them and curse at

them, and they take it until the kids say, &#8216Oh my God, thank you. I needed to be

here.&#8217 &#8221