• 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'
• Wounded adolescents find Focus
• Alcohol-related deaths in 1995

SOUTH PORTLAND - The boys sprawl in plastic chairs, looking like boys anywhere in their shorts and sneakers, laces trailing. They are from 13 to 17 years old. The 13-year-old has a stubbly blond crew cut and the kind of sunburn little kids get, flushed pink along the cheekbones. He is here for assault.

He and the others are being held at the Maine Youth Center for crimes from burglary to weapons charges. As they wait for group therapy to start, they idly debate which drug of choice best leads to ''that nice drunk feeling.''

Susan Lombardo, a substance abuse counselor, gently steers the talk to how drugs mask feelings. ''We're looking to feel different, but it doesn't work,'' she says. ''Those feelings are still there after you come down.''

She hands out a paper listing 160 words for feelings: foolish, tranquil, despondent. The kids study the list. A jumpy 17-year-old from Aroostook County, who started drinking when he was 9, tugs his baseball cap up and down and clicks an incessant ballpoint pen as he reads. He looks up abruptly.

''They don't even have anger on this list,'' he says, pen clicking.

The others keep reading. The Aroostook kid frowns.

''Where's anger?'' he asks of no one in particular. The pen clicks faster. He bends again to the list. ''Anger should be on here,'' he says firmly.

Substance abuse counselors say almost all juvenile offenders have drug or alcohol problems that have both masked, and fueled, the anger behind their crimes. Their work with kids here offers a magnified image of the difficulties, and rewards, of working with kids anywhere.

Counselors with Day One, which runs a treatment program here under contract with the state's Office of Substance Abuse, say juvenile offenders tend to have more hard-core problems with alcohol and are in greater denial, arguing they got into trouble for, say, stealing, not drinking.

There are about 180 youths committed - already sentenced - to the Youth Center, and another 60 or so are held awaiting trial. Counselors estimate 85 percent to 100 percent of those kids have a drug or alcohol problem; at least 60 percent have reached later-stage dependency levels.

Kids here tend to be so-called poly-drug users. Alcohol is the most abused drug; it is often mixed with inhalants: lighter fluid, magic markers, gasoline.

Treatment is designed for a year. But with many kids serving only three- or four-month sentences, Day One's six counselors - facing caseloads of up to 18 kids - say they rarely get to see behavior change.

Mostly, they try to show kids the role alcohol has played: that most commit their crimes under the influence of, or to get money for, alcohol and other drugs. And they help them explore the feelings alcohol has long obscured.

The kids have individual, group and family therapy. They do art projects, making Native American healing sticks and drawing pictures of their feelings. They write, trying to process what they feel.

''Empty brains/empty bottles/16 years old/with no role models,'' reads one youth's poem. ''Broken bottles/broken bones/empty bottles/broken homes . . . Scarred face/missing teeth/it's all my fault/I hold the grief.''

To learn about boundaries, the kids must obey strict rules. On the hot day of Lombardo's group therapy, they must ask permission to get a drink of water. When Lombardo offers them soda - a reward for attending a voluntary group - their usually guarded faces light up, child-like.

With high recidivism rates, the issue of success is key here. The kids' pasts are often so troubled, and their futures so unknown, that many counselors see their work as a leap of faith, a story whose ending they may never know.

David McDermott, director of Day One's outpatient and correctional programs, has on his wall a picture of a fishing scene, with the word, ''Persistence.''

''Let your hook always be cast,'' it reads. ''In the pool where you least expect it, will be a fish.''

With kids, as with adults, McDermott notes wryly, ''Telling them what they can or cannot do is not real effective.'' Counselors teach kids they have choices, peer pressure notwithstanding: keep old friends who drink, or make new ones.

But for many, doing their time is far easier than changing their ways.

''When you ask them the first thing they want to do when they get out, they say 'party.' They'll sit and listen to this stuff, but when they get out they have a whole different perspective.''

Many bargain: ''They say, 'I'll only smoke dope, or have two beers.' We try to make them see there are consequences. If a kid heads out to the world saying, 'I'll only drink Friday night,' and he reappears here a few months later, our job is to say, what happened?''

One 16-year-old from central Maine was here for 11 months, got out, and was back six days later for assault on a police officer. His story is typical. The first ''buzz,'' complete with vomiting, at 12. The downward spiral, from skipping school to breaking into stores. The remorse.

He says he has learned that alcohol silences ''the voice in the back of my head that tells me what's right and wrong.'' He blames bad kids, bad habits, the bad luck of knowing only people who want to get high, not get rich or smart.

''It affects your dreams,'' he says.

Counselors here often wrestle with such litanies. It is difficult: They don't want kids using the excuse they are victims of, say, an alcoholic home or abusive stepfather, though in fact they often are.

They must also battle the natural obliviousness of adolescence, exacerbated by the denial of alcoholism. ''If I was drinking to cover something up,'' insists one brash 16-year-old, ''I'd know what that something was.''

Counselors tread a fine line, trying to salvage the often-damaged egos of kids without encouraging their outlaws' bravado. Jokes McDermott, ''If you raise their self-esteem, what you have is a criminal who feels good about himself.''

Treating juvenile offenders, McDermott says, is ''a long, hard process.'' Still, he insists, we all have the right to a future.

''These kids have strength, and they have hope, and you can't write them off at age 16 or 18 or 20,'' he says. ''People well past middle age can change. So why not these kids?''