“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.”
The serenity prayer, by Alcoholics Anonymous. It’s the first thing read off at senior Zak Beil’s AA group meetings. After they pray, the 12 steps of recovery are recited — he’s currently on step six: allow God to remove all defects of character.
Attending the AA meetings on Mondays and Wednesdays, Zack calls them his “home group.” It’s a home — a community he feels close to, the place he goes to sit in a circle with other alcoholics or substance abusers fighting through the painful reality of sobriety — it’s his home.
Zak is 18 years old, and he is officially sober. With May 5 marking his one year of sobriety, Zak feels that his inner-strength and support systems have helped him remain strong and true to his sobriety.
After experiencing the trauma of his mother’s battle with breast cancer in seventh grade, Zak spent years struggling with mental health. He feels like being a boy makes it easier to bottle up your emotions opposed to expressing them to others. This philosophy caused him to look for other ways to channel his emotions, sparking his substance abuse and addictive personality.
“He was in seventh grade, [and he was] going through so much trying to hold it all together,” Zak’s mother Lindsey Beil said.
Using drugs and drinking socially began for Zak in eighth grade, but once sophomore year hit, his relationship with substances turned from recreational to reliant.
Zak was a pro at keeping his addiction from his parents. Whether it was changing clothes in his car after smoking weed, always having a pack of gum on hand to mask the stench of vodka or hiding his drug stash in an empty shoe box buried at the back of his closet, concealing his problem from his parents was always his primary concern.
However, Zak didn’t recognize the depth of his substance abuse problem until around the beginning of the pandemic. Zak almost wasn’t able to go a day without consuming a mix of prescription Vyvanse, alcohol and marijuana. His supply of drugs and alcohol quickly ran out, leaving him with no choice but to face his addiction.
“[While using], I felt like I was invincible,” Zak said. “And I didn’t care about anybody else except myself. And I would basically do anything to make myself feel better, but the things I was doing were just making me worse.”
Zak often found himself lashing out at his family, slacking on his school work, struggling with honesty and even driving under the influence. Of the few times he got pulled over while using, not once was he caught for his substance abuse problem. He said the cops would always assume he was on the opposite substance than he was buzzed by: when he was high, they assumed he was drunk, so he would pass the DUI test. Zak said that instances like these made him think it was okay to continue smoking and driving, or using and spiraling.
But when the pandemic started and he was unable to obtain drugs and alcohol, Zak didn’t have to tell his parents something was wrong — they already knew.
“I had a problem,” Zak said. “It was really easy to tell. I couldn’t hide anymore because I had nothing left. I was out of marijuana, I was barely hanging on [through sips of] my parents liquor. I was out of Vyvanse. But I was also just empty because I didn’t have anything to fill the void I’d been filling for a while.”
After checking Zak’s Skyward one day in January to see 15 missing assignments and receiving numerous alerts of unexcused absences, Lindsey knew this wasn’t the son she had raised — the one who made her laugh, smile, beam.
Walking into his mother’s room months later in March, he sat down looking distraught. Lindsey asked him if he was smoking weed or doing something out of the ordinary — his simple response was yes, and that he needed help.
“That [was] such a hard thing to hear as a mom, that your kid that you think is so special, someone that lights up your life and your room, was unhappy,” Lindsey said.
After the conversation with his parents, Zak voluntarily went to an outpatient rehabilitation center here in Kansas City — The Crossroads Program — and got sober at the age of 17.
“[The Crossroads and being sober] changed my life because me getting sober was the start of my journey that I still go through every day,” Zak said. “It was the start to me finding out more about myself. It was making me feel way better about myself. My self worth is so much more now. I have better friendships. I care for people more.”
At Crossroads, Zak was attending an intensive outpatient therapy program from 1-5 p.m., five days a week from May to September, which taught him how to integrate sobriety into everyday life.
“It’s obvious that the only way that I can stay sober is [by] finding out how I can stay sober for myself and work my own program,” Zak said. “I find out every day what’s triggering me, what might trigger me to a relapse. It’s an everyday thing. I learn more about how to live sober every day.”
After five months, Zak was out of the intense and timely phase of Crossroads, and now works with a support group, along with attending weekly AA meetings. Additionally, he has a sponsor who he can call and talk to when the inevitable hardships that come from being a teen in recovery arise, like seeing friends out at parties or even driving by a gas station and seeing a beer sign.
Since entering the program, Zak’s mom has seen his commitment to sobriety. Lindsey is proud of her son for staying true to his sobriety and doing what he needs to stay clean, whether that be opting out of drinking environments or digging into his passions such as journaling, music and playing the drums.
“He makes me a better person,” Lindsey said. “He makes me a more aware person — and I’m pretty aware. He’s so able to articulate things that he needs, and I think through this program, he’s even more able to talk about things that are important to him and choose himself.”
As a parent, Lindsey feels Crossroads stands out with its supportive mentorship, the older members who show Zak different ways to have fun in social and adrenaline-rushing environments while staying sober.
“He’ll be like climbing bridges or going to jump off a quarry, or he’s driving to Arkansas in the middle of the night [with the older Crossroads kids],” Lindsey said. “And I have to say, I had to work really into that. But he’s had some of the best times of his life — sober.”
Zak’s current mentor, 26-year-old student at The University of Kansas, James Walton*, learns from Zak every day watching his commitment and empathy.
“Every time I meet with [Zak], and he talks to me about what’s going on, I might not be able to relate to the exact situation that he’s in, but I completely understand all the feelings that come with it,” James said.
James has also recognized the growth in Zak’s sobriety journey and character development through the past year.
“He’s grown a lot and matured a lot,” James said. “He is not the same person [as he was coming into Crossroads]. I can just tell he cares a lot more about [his sobriety] and about his relationships with his family and his friends then when he came, for sure.”
Even if Zak had the chance to go back and change something about his journey with sobriety, he wouldn’t because now he has found his authentic self. Sobriety freed him.
“I’m not perfect at all,” Zak said.“But now that I’m sober, I’m still finding ways that I need to be better. I think it’s a lot easier for me now because I don’t have that mask that was drugs and alcohol to hide behind with all my feelings. The hardest part about getting sober isn’t quitting. It’s facing your fears that you were hiding behind for so long.”