Pubdate: Sun, 25 Jan 2004
Source: Portsmouth Herald (NH)
Copyright: 2004 Seacoast Newspapers
Contact:  http://www.seacoastonline.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1157
Author: Susan Morse

DRUG COUNSELOR KEPT BUSY AT WINNACUNNET

HAMPTON - Floyd Jozitis, Winnacunnet High School's part-time drug and 
alcohol counselor, says he has a caseload of 49 students - enough to keep 
him busy full-time.

"Forty-nine is a case load for two mental health counselors," said Jozitis 
who works at the high school just on Fridays. "They need a full-time 
counselor."

His office is located in a small closet of space behind the teachers' 
cafeteria and student cafeteria.

"In this job, I'm just planting seeds," he said. "I don't have an hour with 
each child. I have 15 minutes."

Principal Ruth Leveille wants to fund the position full-time through grant 
money, said Jozitis, a position confirmed by the principal.

"He does a great job with kids," Leveille said. "We could keep him busy 
full-time."

This Friday, Jozitis had a case load of 12 students. Some are referred on 
CHINS (Child In Need of Services) petitions ordered by the court. Others, 
such as Joe (fictitious name), 16, have voluntarily come forward. Joe is on 
a CHINS petition, not because he was arrested on drug charges, but because 
of truancy caused by drugs, he says.

Joe started smoking pot in seventh grade; doing speed in ninth. He couldn't 
get his hands on cocaine, he says, so he got the prescription drug Adderall 
from friends.

"I thought, this isn't enough," Joe said. "Then I got introduced to crack 
cocaine. The first time I smoked, I said, 'what's the big deal?' I was so 
high I didn't know.

I was awake for two days. When you're wired, when you come to your 18th, 
19th hour of being awake, you lose it. I finally reached my breaking point."

Joe told a school counselor who hooked him up with Jozitis. He later told 
his mother.

His mother had caught on early to Joe's marijuana smoking, but Joe managed 
to hide the rest.

"It's not that parents are dumb," he said. "Kids are finding more and more 
ways to get around it."

Joe was also using heroin and ecstasy, Jozitis says.

School work obviously suffered. Joe stole money from his mother's 
pocketbook and elsewhere.

Being wired leads to dangerous crimes, Jozitis says.

"If not for Floyd, I probably would have kept using," said Joe, who admits 
to an occasional relapse.

Addiction crosses all socio-economic levels. Jozitis sees students from the 
wealthiest neighborhoods to the poorest.

An estimated 10 percent of the students Jozitis sees have tried heroin, he 
says. A much greater percent are addicted to Vicodin, OxyContin or 
Percocet, prescription drugs Jozitis labels as opiates.

All are easily available.

The Seacoast is the corridor for heroin coming up from Massachusetts. The 
heroin out there now is very strong and is cheaper than ever, an estimated 
$5 a bag, Jozitis says. It's also smokeable and snortable, taking away the 
stigma of injection by needle.

OxyContin, Jozitis says, is "a greater high than heroin, ten times more 
powerful."

Jozitis, who spent four years working at Hampton Academy Junior High 
School, has seen students as young as 11 hooked on drugs.

"I'm seeing it at the junior high," he said. "They experiment at that age. 
Some kids have moved into addiction."

This includes alcohol, which he considers a drug. Some students get started 
on "baby cocaine," the term for Ritolin and other stimulants used to treat 
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Those on the drugs - and 
he believes up to 50 percent of children have been misdiagnosed - have an 
easier time switching to other drugs, he says.

Jozitis says there is a new nonstimulate psychotropic drug for 
hyperactivity coming on the market called Stratera, which will help break 
addiction.

When Jozitis sees a student, he or she is usually at the abuse or addiction 
stage, the third and fourth levels of addiction, from experimentation to 
use, abuse and addiction. At least 70 percent have been turned on to drugs 
or alcohol by an older sibling, parent or relative, he says.

"If there's a genetic predisposition, they're four times more likely to 
become addicted," he said.

Ending addiction is more than just quitting, Jozitis says. New behaviors 
must be learned.

"It really is an addiction of the brain," he said. "We all have our reward 
centers," whether it be for food, sex or warmth.

"Kids find out really early if they smoke pot or drink alcohol, it will 
reward the brain center for stimulus better than eating food, keeping warm 
by the fire or going sledding down a hill."

They say, "Hey, nothing happened to me like the DARE (Drug and Alcohol 
Resistance Education) officer said."

Kids think of themselves as "10 feet tall and bullet-proof" anyway, Jozitis 
says.

He started working at Winnacunnet in December 2002. Before coming onboard, 
students on the court-ordered CHINS petitions had to seek private 
counseling, he says.

His job is paid by Seacoast Youth Services, formerly called the Seacoast 
Diversion Program, which in turn gets state and county grants.

Seacoast Youth Services, on Lafayette Road in Hampton, is open to all 
students and families in the SAU 21 district. This year, Director Victor 
Maloney approached individuals in SAU 21 towns to submit a petitioned 
warrant article to help fund the program.

Jozitis conducts a Thursday night group session at the Lafayette Road 
office for many of the Winnacunnet High School students he sees in school. 
He meets with the students individually on Saturday.

Jozitis says he also runs an anger-management program at Seabrook Middle 
School.

Jozitis, who holds a master's degree in human services, has worked in the 
field for 29 years. For 23 years, he was the director of Odyssey House, a 
home for at-risk teenagers and adults in Hampton.

For the past six-and-a-half years, Jozitis has worked with people released 
from the Rockingham House of Corrections on probation parole. Eighty-five 
percent of people in jail are there for drug- and alcohol-related problems, 
he says.

He worked part-time at Hampton Academy Junior High before the grant money 
for that program ran out. Funds for drug and alcohol counseling, like much 
of human services, are drying up, Jozitis says.

"It just blows my mind. ... "Over 29 years. I've seen the cascade flow of 
'do more for less.'"
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MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart