In the Royal Oak home of Kirk and Catherine Goddard, about a dozen friends and neighbors gathered around a 27-inch television and settled in for an evening of pizza, salad, soda, movie watching and friendly conversation.
But the show and conversation were far from light.
The Goddards wanted to talk about the community's drug problem. The DVD they showed was an emotional -- and telling -- documentary, "Addiction," from HBO.
"It sounds weird when you say you're having a house party to talk about drug addiction," Catherine Goddard, 52, said last month. "But once you understand what it's all about, you want to sign up."
The Goddards are among parents in metro Detroit and around the country who are using social gatherings to discuss important issues. At these parties, the host usually initiates the discussion by showing a film.
The idea of having house parties to discuss drug addiction is being promoted by AddictionAction.org, a spin-off of two national groups, the Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America and Faces and Voices of Recovery. After HBO aired its documentary on addiction March 15, the group's Web site, http://addictionaction.org/, began encouraging parents and community organizations to screen and discuss the film in small groups.
The Goddards, who bought copies of "Addiction" from HBO, have been involved in planning several parties since their first one about six weeks ago. They say the parties are a grassroots effort to respond to the problem of drug addiction.
Diane Dovico, executive director of the Royal Oak Community Coalition, a community group established in 1993 to focus on issues related to substance-abuse prevention, said she is impressed with the parties. "Rather than going to a presentation, it's more like over-the-fence kind of talk," she said.
The Goddards are members of the city's Save Our Youth Task Force, which is trying to reduce the number of drug overdose deaths. Last year, there were 10.
That number includes the Goddards' 19-year-old son, Zack, who provides the couple with inspiration for the parties. He started drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes in seventh grade, something his parents said they didn't know at the time. By ninth grade, he was busted at school with marijuana, which is what alerted his parents that he had a drug problem.
As Zack struggled with addiction, there were attempts to get him straight. Upon returning after he left home for several weeks, his parents put him in a long-term drug rehab program. And he decided to enlist in the Marines because he thought the service would help him stay drug-free, his parents said.
But after boot camp, he left North Carolina without permission and returned to Michigan, where he died of a heroin overdose last spring. Goddard said she hopes the parties will save another family from going through the pain that her family suffered.
"My hope is that parents who don't even know about their children's use of drugs and alcohol will understand that this happens to families everywhere -- rural and urban, rich and poor," she said.
"I want to get people away from the shame stigma, away from feeling alone."
Contact FRANK WITSIL at 248-351-3690 or witsil@freepress.com.
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