Pubdate: Sun, 10 Dec 2006
Source: Newsday (NY)
Copyright: 2006 Newsday Inc.
Contact:  http://www.newsday.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/308
Author: Andrew Strickler, Newsday Staff Writer

YOUNG & STRUNG OUT

Alarming Trend Of Younger Users, Like Matt, On LI

When Matt locked himself in the bathroom of his  parents' East Meadow
home last year to take his first  shot of heroin for the day, he knew
immediately that  this hit was different.

The cooked heroin, packaged under the name Pyramid  Papers, was
unusually thick and oily. He cinched a belt  around one arm to ready a
vein and turned on a hot  shower to intensify the effect.

As he pressed the dope into his vein, he felt all the  blood rush to
his head: "I heard, 'Whomp whomp whomp'  and then I was done, just
out."

Matt came to on the bathroom floor - an hour later?  two? - with the
belt still on his arm, the empty  syringe beside him.

"I guess it was a small miracle I woke up at all," he  said. Matt said
he was terrified by the overdose - but  shot up again anyway within
hours. "If anything, I was  more excited because the heroin was so
good," he said.

Matt, who asked to be identified by his first name, was  one of what
police say is an alarming number of young  people on Long Island using
- - and overdosing on -  heroin and prescription painkillers.

Matt is 20 years old, with pale blue eyes, a wide smile  and a quick
laugh. He's been clean four months, the  longest he's been off drugs
since he was in middle  school.

"I spent years learning to depend on drugs, and now I'm  learning to
cope with life," he said. "I'm getting  ready for the real world again."

Sitting on a sidewalk bench in East Hampton last week,  Matt drew
deeply on a Marlboro and spoke about his  nearly fatal heroin
addiction with the fragile  confidence of a person in the first flush
of recovery.

Teen's Downward Spiral

Matt first tried marijuana and alcohol when he was 14  years old and
hanging out with an older crowd in his  middle-class neighborhood in
East Meadow. He said he  was frequently in trouble at school and he
got his  first taste of opiates two years later when a hospital
doctor gave him morphine and Vicodin after he was  injured in a
school-yard fight.

Matt says the drugs had an immediate effect on him,  soothing his
insecurities and enveloping him in  "complete warmness."

"All the anxiety, all the depression I had, it was all  swept away,"
he said. "I thought, 'This is it. I feel  complete.'"

After leaving the hospital, Matt began taking as many  as five pills
of Percocet or Vicodin a day, at $4 a  pill. Occasionally, he splurged
on a $20-to-$40 hit of  OxyContin, a potent painkiller that kept him
high for  hours.

Despite his rapidly advancing drug use, Matt says he  maintained a
facade of normalcy by keeping his evening  high school grades up and
holding a steady job.

But Matt said he soon lost the job for dealing  marijuana to
co-workers to pay for his pill habit. His  parents caught him stealing
from their home several  times but knew little about Matt's drug use.
That  changed in July 2003 when he was nearly arrested for  forging
prescriptions from a stolen doctor's pad.

With the support of his family, Matt entered a drug  treatment center
in Hampton Bays, where another patient  introduced him to heroin.
Eighteen months later, Matt  had an $80-a-day intravenous habit and
quickly relapsed  after a second trip to rehab in 2004.

"I knew I was in trouble but I still thought I could  quit without
anyone's help," he said. "Those times in  rehab, they were more like
little breaks than recovery.  I mean, I met all kinds of people I
could do drugs with  in there."

At 19 years old, Matt's life revolved around his four  or five daily
injections of heroin. He knew where to  sell stolen jewelry and
electronics, had learned to  switch injection spots to minimize track
marks, and  kept a supply of methadone ready to ward off withdrawal
symptoms on the rare days he couldn't score.

If he tried to go a day without heroin, he was wracked  with nausea,
anxiety and depression. "I couldn't do a  thing, couldn't even get out
of bed. If anyone came to  my door, I'd just scream at them," he said.

Desperate for help, Matt says last May he broke down  and asked his
father yet again for help. After a  five-day drug detox at a Nassau
hospital, they went  together to check Matt into the year-long rehab
program  at Phoenix House II in Wainscott.

Like many addicts trying to kick drugs, Matt's recovery  was almost
derailed when he relapsed two months into  the program. He downed
several painkillers offered by  an unsuspecting hospital nurse.

"I thought I was strong enough to say no but I guess  not," he said.
"I took them fast, before I gave myself  time to talk myself out of
it."

Ever-Present Temptations

But Matt says he has been clean ever since. He does  maintenance work
around Phoenix House II, recently got  his final high school credits,
and has a job helping  new arrivals learn how the rigorous recovery
program  works.

"I never thought I'd be responsible for anything, and  look at me, I'm
responsible for all sorts of things,"  he said.

Phoenix House administrator Kate Quigley, who confirmed  many details
of Matt's story, is guardedly optimistic  about him. She says Matt,
like many young addicts,  never learned to cope with responsibility or
deal  honestly with others or themselves.

"He's so charming and funny, but he can use that to  manipulate you as
well," she said. "He's still got to  learn to get deep with himself."

After he finishes rehab in the spring, Matt says he  wants to get a
well-paying job; he's not sure doing  what. He also plans to move to
his parents' new home in  Ohio, in part to help him avoid some of the
temptations  he knows await him.

"I don't ever see going back to East Meadow and being  sober," he
said. "Everything is just an arm's length  away." 
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