MIDDLEFIELD, Ohio - It's just after midnight when Deputy Jim Dhayer is dispatched to check on a buggy weaving down the road.
"Pull it over," Dhayer yells from his patrol car.
Inside are two bleary-eyed young Amish men. The buggy reeks of alcohol.
Deputies leave the passenger to hold the skittish horse and escort Paul Detweiler, Jr. to the side of the road.
First he says he's 18, then changes it to 17.
"You can stop lying to me now," Dhayer says, shining a flashlight into the boy's bloodshot blue eyes. "Do you think we're stupid? How much did you have to drink tonight?"
"Maybe a couple," mumbles Paul, who is dressed in tight-fitting jeans, a short-sleeved yellow shirt, and tennis shoes.
This is a typical weekend in Geauga County, about 30 miles east of Cleveland and home to more than 6,000 Amish families. Young Amish men and women are drinking, then getting into buggies to drive home. Sometimes, the teens pass out leaving their horses to find the way home.
Amish youth - those between the age of 16 and their early 20s - are not yet members of the church. That "loophole" frees them to pursue worldly activities that normally would be off-limits.
Sheriff's deputies attack hard in the spring, when most big drinking parties start. On one night last year, they took into custody an entire busload of Amish teenagers after breaking up a party.
On this night, deputies report "Buggy all over the road ... headed toward (State Route)168 1 mph."
After stopping the black buggy pulled by a single horse, they find what they had suspected.
"Deputy Dhayer observed a 12 oz. Budweiser beer on the floor of the buggy. There was also a cooler in the rear of the buggy containing approx. 15 beers inside," states the police report.
The deputy runs a pen in front of Paul's eyes. Next, the young man is told to walk a straight line. Paul studiously places one foot in front of the other, then pivots, and walks the other way. A moment later, deputies handcuff him.
"Where's the other guy?" Paul asks from the backseat of the police car.
"He's gonna walk the horse home. He's gonna get in trouble, too, don't worry," Dhayer says. "You been in trouble before?"
"Yeah," Paul mutters.
"Then why lie?"
"I ain't gonna admit it," Paul says. "You got me now, but I ain't gotta tell I'm drunk. I did the field test OK."
"You could walk but you couldn't keep your head up," Deputy Dhayer says.
Later, at the sheriff's department, Paul reluctantly agrees to take a blood alcohol test and registers 0.137 on the breathalyzer test. In Ohio, anything over 0.10 is considered legally intoxicated.
"So, how many beers have you had?" Dhayer asks.
"I have no idea," Paul says.
The problem has become so prevalent in Geauga County that Amish church elders have turned to police for help. The Amish religion typically discourages its members from working with government agencies.
"We have the blessing from the bishops and the elders to crack down," says sheriff's Lt. Tom McCaffrey. "They're a religious community and they listen to the bishop."
Dhayer remembers an incident last year when a drunken Amish man resisted arrest, fighting officers on a sheet of ice. "After that fight, we lost tolerance," says Deputy Dhayer. "Now if they're drunk, they go to jail."
Local courts are cracking down, too, sentencing Amish youth to jail, community service and alcohol-awareness classes.
"Amish youth are no different than 'Yankee' youth," says Chardon Municipal Court Judge Craig S. Albert. "They're experiencing life in the same manner our youth do. You see these kids, they get drunk, but when they join the church, it ends."
Alcohol isn't the only fling some Amish youth have with the modern world. Some smoke, cut their hair and wear English clothes. Some experiment with drugs. They attend sporting events, concerts and movies, and visit amusement parks. And young men deck out their buggies with elaborate stereo systems, cranking up the volume as they "cruise" the countryside on Sunday afternoons.
These are the "wild years" for Amish young people, and the time when parents worry most.
"I worry about our young people with drugs," said Atlee Kaufman, an Amish father in Mount Hope, Ohio. "How are we going to keep our young people away from drugs and alcohol? Seemingly, it's so easy for anyone to get."
Yet despite the flings in the "English" world, the number of Amish teenagers who join the church has risen over the past 50 years, says Steven Nolt, professor of history at Indiana's Goshen College and an Amish scholar. In 1940, only about 60 percent remained in the Amish faith. Today, that number hovers around 90 percent and is even higher in some areas.
Amish teens sometimes drink at huge parties, often held in barns or deep within the woods where hundreds gather. Other times, the parties are more innocent: a few teens gathering at someone's home to share a case of beer.
It's a problem that exists within many Amish communities.
"It's probably maybe a little rebellion," says one 21-year-old Amish woman from Middlefield, Ohio. "It's hard. A lot of the older bishops look down on the teens, but I think it's better to let them go out and get it out of their systems. Most of the time, after a few years, they get tired of it and settle down."
The indiscretions of Amish youth shouldn't reflect poorly on the entire Amish community, some English people say.
"They really are one of a number of smaller groups that are really in control of their lives," says Dr. Wayne Weaver, a physician who was raised Amish. "Rings in the nose and eyebrows, the things that come along and change - dress, politics, fads - they're not really affected. They have the ability to sort of adjust, look at things, and continue on as if the storm wasn't really going on."