Pubdate: Sun, 29 May 2005
Source: Indianapolis Star (IN)
Copyright: 2005 Indianapolis Newspapers Inc.
Contact: http://www.indystar.com/help/contact/letters.html
Website: http://www.starnews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/210
Author: Shari Rudavsky
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/pot.htm (Cannabis)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)

RECOVERING ADDICT RECALLS PATH TO ADDICTION

A Recovering Multi-Drug Abuser, 17, Tells How Inhaling Common Household 
Items Led To Cocaine Use

The sunburst face tattooed on Jessie Stotz's back serves as a rainbow-hued 
resume of her junior high and high school experience with drugs.

A white snowflake under the nose signifies cocaine. The green refers to 
marijuana. The eyes are red, as were hers through much of her teens. And a 
mist suffuses the image, connoting inhalants.

Jessie's drug use over the past four years -- alcohol, marijuana, pills or 
cocaine -- started with inhalants, common household substances like air 
fresheners, whipped cream or permanent markers that kids sniff for a quick, 
dangerous high.

"Inhalants are what I call my 'steel' drug. They were the first thing I 
did," says Jessie, 17, an Ohio teen now in a residential treatment program 
in Indianapolis. "Before I started drinking or smoking, I was using inhalants."

Similar to anesthetics in effect, inhalants slow the body's function. This 
can result in a loss of inhibition, sensation of stimulation or even loss 
of consciousness. It's thought that they cause brain cells to die off. 
Long-term use can damage the liver, kidneys and reproductive and immune 
systems. Inhalants also can cause a fatal heartbeat irregularity known as 
sudden sniffing death syndrome.

While inhalants did not prove Jessie's ultimate downfall (that was left to 
cocaine), Jessie knows firsthand what experts on teen addiction are 
beginning to fear: Youngsters who start out with inhalants jeopardize their 
safety and are more prone to graduate to illegal substances.

In fact, inhalant use at a young age may be even likelier than early 
marijuana use to lead to abuse of hard drugs, studies suggest.

"There's a common notion that inhalants are a 'gateway' substance," says 
Harvey Weiss, director of the National Inhalant Prevention Coalition, a 
non-profit organization based in Austin, Texas.

Statistics suggest that more youngsters are walking through that gateway.

A 2004 report by the Partnership for a Drug-Free America found that one in 
four eighth-graders had tried an inhalant at least once. Inhalant use among 
sixth-graders increased by 44 percent in just two years, from 18 to 26 percent.

Sixth-graders in Indiana in 2004 were more likely to use inhalants than any 
other drug except tobacco and alcohol, a survey by the Indiana Prevention 
Resource Center found. Nearly 6 percent reported using inhalants at least 
once annually, and 3.6 percent reported monthly use. By contrast, 3.7 
percent reported annual use of marijuana, and 2.5 percent reported monthly use.

While reported inhalant use among sixth-graders was higher a decade ago, 
the numbers have started to rebound, provoking concern among experts.

Easy to get, hard to detect

Unlike other abused substances, inhalants cannot be detected through drug 
screening, a fact not lost on young users -- nor, incidentally, those in 
the military, where there's also a reported increase in use, Weiss says. In 
addition, inhalants are cheap and legal, and for the most part, easy to 
purchase.

"Kids don't typically smoke before they go to school, or drink or use other 
drugs because there's such a concentrated effort on keeping kids 
drug-free," says Rachelle Gardner, director of adolescent services at 
Fairbanks, a nonprofit addiction treatment center on the Northeastside. 
"Now they're switching to something different so they can still get high 
but avoid consequences."

Still, there are always consequences. Because inhalants can give people a 
headache or taste bad, kids who use them often move on to drugs that 
provide similar highs without the side effects, says Gardner, who sees 
about 400 kids a year, at least 60 percent of whom have used inhalants.

When Jessie Stotz started using inhalants as a sixth-grader in Defiance, 
Ohio, she didn't think about where it might lead. All she knew was that it 
was a cheap, easy way to get high.

Soon she learned that when she was high on inhalants, she would try those 
other drugs she might otherwise decline.

"I just got this real sense of strongness," she recalls.

Sober, life was not as easy. In the middle of eighth grade, Jessie 
transferred from parochial school to public school at her own request. 
There, she straddled two cliques -- the "good" kids and "the rough crowd."

Family clashes escalate

"I started to realize I didn't know who I was. I didn't know where I fit 
in," Jessie says.

Her mother, who pushed her toward sports and religion, became an adversary. 
Eventually, the family agreed that Jessie should live with her father.

By this time, Jessie had tried cocaine but decided she didn't like it. 
Still, she didn't shy away from a good party.

"I only wanted to go out and try new things," she says. "I would say, 'I 
don't care, I don't care.' "

At first, however, she took advantage of her fresh start in a new town. She 
quit getting high. She joined the basketball and volleyball teams and 
Spanish club. She held down a 15-hour-a-week job at a pizzeria.

Then, she started hanging out with older students who brought drugs back 
into her life. On the weekends, they hosted field parties or bonfires.

"We didn't just go out to movies and out to eat. Who would do that?" Jessie 
says. "It didn't occur to me you could go to the movies or a basketball 
game and just come home."

The partying intensifies

What did occur to Jessie was that she could be the life of a party. Under 
the influence of alcohol or a drug, she thought of funny things to do -- 
and found an appreciative audience.

Partying structured her life.

"Thursday night we planned what we were going to do, drinking and getting 
high. Friday night we did, and Saturday night we did it all over again," 
she says.

Sophomore year the parties grew, as Jessie puts it, "more intense." Her 
co-revelers were out of high school, and could afford cocaine for 
themselves and Jessie.

Jessie's grades plummeted; one by one she quit her extracurricular 
activities. Her relationship with her parents also deteriorated. She fought 
often with them, battles that sometimes escalated into the physical.

As her classmates headed back to school for junior year, Jessie continued 
this downward spiral. She got her tattoo, an homage to her lifestyle. She 
dropped about 40 pounds and stopped attending school.

She ignored the bumps that had begun to form on the tattooed area of her back.

"I was abusing everything I could find," Jessie says. "Now I didn't have to 
use to fit in. I had to use to continue to feel high or feel any way I 
wanted to feel."

After a weekend-long party during which Jessie did so much cocaine she 
could not sleep for three days, her body turned against her. She imagined 
people were chasing her. By Monday, she could not feel her body anymore. 
The red spots on her back had grown angrier.

Her grandmother intervenes

Finally, her grandmother came by to check on her, took one look and ordered 
her to go to the hospital.

There, Jessie learned she had a raging infection that had entered her 
bloodstream. Doctors began to treat the infection and tested her for drugs.

Of course, the results came back positive. Jessie's parents had skirted the 
issue of her drug use for months. While they had known deep down that she 
was doing drugs, they did not recognize the scope of her problem, they 
said. Now it stared them full in the face.

On Nov. 23, they sent Jessie to Indianapolis to the Pathway Family Center, 
a program that aims to help teens with drug problems. Pathway emphasizes 
parental involvement and therapy, housing participants with other families 
that have gone through the program.

At first, the teens spend more than five hours a day in group and 
individual therapy, coming to terms with how they wound up addicted, says 
Flora Wilsker, community liasion for Pathway. Over the course of about a 
year, the teens start to move back to community life, gradually returning 
to school and then setting up support systems to rely on in their new, 
clean lives.

The changes that the program has wrought in Jessie in half a year are 
incredible, says her mother, Deb, who marvels at the transformation.

"She's an entirely different daughter than when we brought her in," she says.

Jessie isn't making too many promises about what her future will hold. She 
knows she's trying her best, though she's already faltered once, smoking 
cigarettes -- also prohibited -- while in the program.

But she does know that she'll have a future, and that it may include 
counseling others who face tough times, as she once did.

For now, she's happy being in the program and speaking out about the danger 
of inhalants, hoping that message will trickle down to younger kids.

"I think it's every junior high student's first drug and they don't know 
it," she says.
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MAP posted-by: Beth