• Kids struggle to break alcohol's grip
• 'I don't have a problem, and if I do, so what?'
• Maine kids and alcohol
• The parent's role
• Schools arm children with arsenal of 'life skills'
• Program extends hand to hardened youth
• Alcohol-related deaths in 1995

BANGOR - It is group therapy time for the families in Focus, an after-school program for adolescents with drug and alcohol problems. On the wall is a group statement to help guide them through.

''This is our group,'' it says. ''Its success or failure is up to us. We come together in search of ourselves.''

In a place of fractured families and wounded kids, it is a daunting task.

Kids with substance abuse problems often come from severely dysfunctional families, experts say. Today's group is a case in point.

There is a pregnant 19-year-old girl. The father of her baby is a 17-year-old boy on probation who has recently relapsed and is drinking again. He has left her for a 16-year-old girl who now wants to get pregnant by him. She, too, has relapsed. She no longer shows up for group, but her mother is here. So is the mother of the boy, who has just trashed her trailer. She is at her wit's end.

Their grievous needs, tangled connections, and stunningly short attention spans are not uncommon. Experts say a typical family profile includes an absent, alcoholic father; a mother barely coping; and damaged kids who have learned not to trust.

Reaching those kids, says David Dyer, senior psychiatric clinician, is delicate. ''If we're going to try and take down that wall,'' he notes, ''we need to have something else in place.''

The Focus program is run out of Acadia Hospital, a private nonprofit facility for acute mental health needs. These kids' needs, says Dyer, are many.

Heather Piasecki, 19, is pregnant. She cries often, dabbing at her eyes with a stiff brown paper towel that by the end of the session is crumpled and damp.

Chris Rockwell, 17, the baby's father, is a loping, Jimmy Stewart-ish boy with buck teeth. He wears an oversized T-shirt and a Nike cap pulled low over his eyes, which he keeps aimed at the floor. Despite his earring, he looks 14.

His weary mother, Marie Rockwell, has told Heather she and the baby can move in with her. Chris' friend, Jeremiah Savio, 20, is here for support; he has several children. Kristi Sargent is a full-figured, mascara-laden girl who has grown up in foster homes. She looks about 26. She is 12.

The mood is tense. Heather is furious at Chris for drinking again and leaving her for Melissa. This is Chris' first return to the group since his fall.

Dyer asks them to think of something positive. A short, pained silence.

Jeremiah nods toward Chris: ''We're both gonna be dads, so we have something in common.''

Chris' mother Marie: ''Yeah, raging hormones.'' Heather snickers.

Chris: ''I got a job, I hope. And I'm not in jail.''

Heather: ''Yet.''

Chris begins to argue he will be ''a wicked responsible father.'' Heather retorts, ''I'm the one who has to be responsible, who has to grow up.''

She is upset because Chris failed to show up for an ultrasound, as he said he would. Chris says he didn't feel well. Heather snorts, cries, says Chris was hung over and ''can't take an hour out of his busy life going to the mall.''

Dyer grasps a teachable moment. He asks how many of them had parents, too, who failed to follow through on something. They all raise their hands.

Through the rest of the session, the kids recount pasts of assaults, foster homes, absent fathers, time in jail. The mothers recall the times their kids pawned their jewelry, punched out their walls, stole from them.

They all, Dyer says later, face tough odds. The moms live with bottom-line hopes: ''They're hoping that they wake up and their kid isn't dead.'' The kids know nothing of success: ''The only thing they have is this use of alcohol.''

Two months later, Chris has disappeared from the program. He is said to be drinking again. He is no longer with Melissa, who is on the street, and drinking. Heather has not been seen. Kristi ''blew out of'' her last foster home, Dyer says, and is drinking again. Recently, though, she did call Dyer.

Dyer is unsurprised by any of it.

''You have to hope you're putting in place some seeds that may come to growth,'' he says stoically. ''That eight months or five years later, they're gonna say, 'Oh, I remember that, those people seemed to make some sense.' We try to be there for them. We're a place to come back to.''