A Real Eye-Opener Mom’s ‘Bong Show’ Helps Parents Recognize, Cope With Kids’ Drug Use

Sharry Heckt-Deszo will have some explaining to do if her scuffed pink suitcase ever springs open in front of a cop.

Out will tumble pipes, cocaine vials, bongs, roach clips, all manner of drug paraphernalia. You name it, Heckt-Deszo probably has it in her stash of real-life props she uses for “The Bong Show,” a show-and-tell program about drug abuse reserved for adults-only audiences of parents and teachers.

Named for the water-filled marijuana pipes (with a sly nod to TV’s defunct “Gong Show”), The Bong Show clears the smoke surrounding teenage and adolescent drug use by alerting parents to the ingenious devices that may be hidden in their son’s bedroom or daughter’s purse. If parents know what to look for, Heckt-Deszo reasons, chances are they’ll expose their kids’ drug use sooner, rather than later.

That can make a difference, says the former Bellevue woman, whose own rude awakening occurred in 1978 when she found her oldest son’s bong under the front seat of her car. According to a number of studies, kids use drugs two to three years before their parents catch on.

“That child could already be addicted by the time the parents find out,” Heckt-Deszo says.

The Bong Show illustrates the creative lengths to which teenagers will go for a toke. From the suitcase, Heckt-Deszo plucks a handmade clay figurine, a devilish-looking mask small enough to conceal in the hand. Flip it over, and it’s actually a pipe.

A bong confiscated from a Bellevue High School art student is made from a light bulb coated with enamel and decorated with intricate sculptures of a snake and ram’s head. The teacher didn’t realize what it was until the student was almost finished.

But simple household objects will do in a pinch. A piece of aluminum foil with tiny holes punched in it serves as a pipe screen. Heckt-Deszo holds up a pipe fashioned from a cardboard tampon tube, a pipe made from a battered soda can, a bong made from a bear-shaped honey dispenser.

People who have seen The Bong Show say it was enlightening.

“I personally had never seen much of anything, so to be able to see what the kids had used was a real eye-opener,” says Gayle Krauseneck, clinical supervisor for counseling programs at the Issaquah office of Friends of Youth, a private, nonprofit counseling agency.

“There are so many people who need this information and don’t have it,” says Pam Heinzle, former president of the Parent-Teacher Association at Bellevue’s Tyee Middle School.

Peggy Wilkerson, a parent and PTA member at Bellevue High School, says, “I think the fact that (Heckt-Deszo) is a parent and went through it herself adds credibility and humor to her presentation.”

Finding her son’s bong in the car was Heckt-Deszo’s wake-up call. Suddenly she had an explanation for the teen’s troubling behavior - breaking rules, lying, defiance, coming home once with alcohol on his breath.

With her son at school, Heckt-Deszo marched upstairs and methodically searched his bedroom, something she’d never done. Midsearch, her son came home, and Heckt-Deszo guiltily rushed toward her bedroom with the armful of drug paraphernalia she’d found.

At the last minute, she stopped, turned and confronted the boy. A screaming fight ensued. Now, Heckt-Deszo recommends that parents see a drug-and-alcohol counselor before confronting their own kids about drug use.

“That person will lead you through how to intervene so you won’t blow it,” she says. “I blew it.”

Heckt-Deszo and her husband called a family meeting with all nine of their children to discuss the crisis.

“The first thing we had to deal with was our son’s extreme anger over having his privacy rights violated,” she says. “We explained that privacy for children is not a right, but a privilege that’s built on trust, like driving the family car. “

Later, another of Heckt-Deszo’s sons told her he had used drugs without getting caught. Another son developed a cocaine addiction and ended up in treatment.

Uncovering her son’s drug use fired up Heckt-Deszo. She became an unstoppable volunteer and a leader in the state PTA’s successful fight to ban drug paraphernalia from record and music stores. She helped found the Washington State Substance Abuse Coalition in Bellevue, a statewide information center on drug abuse prevention, and was its president for five years. She developed The Bong Show and took it on the road, visiting places as far-flung as Georgia and Alaska.

She also burned out, big time.

Heckt-Deszo expended all her energy on helping others but neglected herself and her marriage. The result: A messy divorce, then five years of intense counseling “to work on me,” she says.

At age 57, she’s remarried, her kids are fine, and she has six grandchildren to dote on. She still does The Bong Show, but turns down most invitations to travel far from her Seattle home.

Now she sees fallout from the generation of baby-boomer parents who themselves experimented with marijuana or harder substances. Often they ask Heckt-Deszo what to say when their kids ask if they used drugs.

“Don’t lie to them,” she advises. “Kids will see through that.”

A survey released last month found that two-thirds of baby-boomer parents who experimented with illegal drugs as they grew up expect their own children will do the same, and many don’t consider that a crisis. They should, Heckt-Deszo warns.

“Marijuana in the 1970s and ‘80s was nothing like it is today,” she says. “It’s much more potent and addictive.”