• 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
• Wounded adolescents find Focus
• Program extends hand to hardened youth
• Alcohol-related deaths in 1995

Tom Griffin role-plays an ethical situation with a student in the health class he teaches at Scarborough Middle School. Here, he pretends to be asking a student if he can copy her homework, testing her ability to come up with reasons why not. Staff photo by David A. Rodgers

SCARBOROUGH - Tom Griffin's seventh-graders swoop into his health class at Scarborough Middle School like an unruly flock of birds, gangly and chattering. They are 12 and 13 years old, gap-toothed and sweet-faced; they cart books and backpacks and the painful self-consciousness of elder childhood.

They are here to learn ''life skills.'' On the walls around them are posters to point the way: ''You Never Know What You Can Do Until You Try'' and ''Stand Up For What Is Right Even If You're Standing Alone.''

Griffin presents them with a scenario: Their parents drop them off at a party, where, it turns out, there is alcohol. What should they do?

He hands out papers. They must list five positive options. They ponder, scribble, frown. They offer their lists: call someone for a ride, try to get rid of the alcohol, stay but don't drink, call the police.

They debate the pros and cons of each. If they leave, they'll be safe, but their friends will be mad; if they stay, their parents will be.

Summing up, Griffin asks them, ''Anyone been in a situation like this?''

The flock hollers in unison, loud and unquestioning, ''NO!''

He asks, ''Think you could handle yourselves in a situation like this?''

A troubled pause. Half the room shouts ''YES!'' Half the room yells ''NO!'' The words grate against each other, a jarring, inchoate medley - the bewildered sound of kids confronting alcohol.

A student in Tom Griffin's Scarborough Middle School health classlists refusal techniques to use when she is confronted by peer pressure to drink. Like Griffin, most health teachers have made substance abuse part of their curricula. Staff photo by David A. Rodgers

At a time when kids are drinking earlier than ever before - and in a state where a third of all households are said to include a parent who abuses alcohol - substance abuse prevention has become a cottage industry in Maine.

Virtually every school system in the state has some prevention education, from in-house counselors to peer support programs. All, says Griffin, are aimed at combating the same stark reality facing educators.

''Alcohol's out there,'' he says. ''If they want to get it, they'll get it.''

Maine schools have prevention programs that start as early as Grade 2 and move up through high school. Many are funded with federal grants under a Safe and Drug Free Schools program.

Many high schools have an in-house substance abuse counselor, usually aided by a social worker, guidance counselor, or health teacher. There are wellness teams, theater groups, alcohol awareness days, and a variety of community-based projects that include schools.

Like Griffin, most health teachers have made substance abuse part of their curriculum. They teach self-esteem, decision-making, refusal techniques, all aimed at arming kids with skills they can use to reject alcohol.

In Portland, early intervention teams at 12 of the city's 19 schools try to keep tabs on possible problems in students' lives. In South Portland, a team of kids and adults made 1,000 videos telling the stories of Mainers whose lives were forever altered by drunken driving accidents.

Still, in an already oblique field, prevention is recognized as the most oblique component, a leap into the unknown.

Notes Cynthia Krum, ''We're trying to prevent something from happening. We never know if we did (prevent it), because we don't even know if it was ever going to happen.''

Krum is prevention educator for Day One, which provides substance abuse services to kids and their families. She coordinates its storytelling project, using stories to help kids connect with each other and cope with difficulties in their lives.

Thus, Krum might recite a story about a mythical parrot who put out a forest fire by ceaselessly dropping tiny drops of water from its wings. Then she asks students to tell about a time when they, too, were brave or persistent.

''It's amazing to sit down and tell a story,'' says Krum. ''It immediately calms them down, and takes them to this internal, reflective place. They enter in, and they're there. And it makes them see they're not alone.''

Other prevention projects are likewise aimed at combating a sense of isolation that leads many teen-agers to drink. Day One's Natural Helpers project is based on the reality that kids with problems will instinctively turn to other kids long before they turn to adults.

Natural Helpers, totalling 300 students in 16 southern Maine schools, trains kids chosen by their peers to simply be there for them. Their task, says one, is ''not to solve people's problems, but to listen to what they have to say.''

A student responds to a question posed by Tom Griffin in his health class at Scarborough Middle School. ''Alcohol's out there,'' he says. ''If they want to get it, they'll get it.'' Staff photo by David A. Rodgers

Natural Helpers approached about a ''Red Flag'' issue - abuse, suicide, eating disorders - must contact an adult at school. But they are on their own to settle disputes, welcome new students, perform small, key acts of kindness.

They will hook up a soccer-playing freshman with the soccer coach or ask a shy new student to eat lunch with them. What they offer, says Gretchen Spear, a Scarborough High School senior, is ''a sense of belonging, so they have somebody, so they have something to do besides drink.''

Spear figures at least 75 percent of high school kids drink. But she says their rules and attitudes about alcohol have evolved, for the better.

It is no longer automatically cool to drink and uncool not to, she says. It is decidedly uncool to drink alone, to drink until you lose control, to drink till you throw up or fall down, and, most emphatically, to drink and drive.

There is less peer pressure to drink than there once was, she says. Still, kids often think it will help them fit in - especially younger ones, who she calls ''more moldable.''

Many of those confronted about their excessive drinking will grow defensive, loudly denying they have a problem. Still, Spears believes ''it could be a wake-up call.'' Above all, she says, ''It's important they know you know.''

Prevention workers agree that teaching or helping adolescents - who tend to think they're infallible - sometimes means saying things again and again. It is their job, they say, to persist, and to hope.

Says Nan Urban, a social worker at Deering High School, ''We're always hopeful that something will make a difference. That we're going to touch somebody. That they're going to hear it. It just may take a while.''