Pubdate: Mon, 07 Apr 2014
Source: Cumberland Times-News (MD)
Copyright: 2014 Cumberland Times-News
Contact:  http://www.times-news.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1365
Author: Sharon Cohen, Associated Press
Note: Part 3 of 3

AT 21, RECOVERING HEROIN ADDICT MAKES A NEW START

[Cumberland] EDITOR'S NOTE - The death of actor Philip Seymour Hoffman
underscored a troubling development: Heroin, long a scourge of the
back alleys of American life, has spread across the country. Last of a
three-part series.

AURORA, Ill. - Just out of Cook County Jail after being arrested with
15 bags of heroin, Cody Lewis had all of $11 in his pocket. But not
for long.

Almost immediately, he spent $10 on yet another bag of smack, making
the buy on the Chicago streets last May as he headed to a police
station to retrieve his cellphone. He shot up in a grocery store
parking lot, and continued on his way.

By then, Lewis was a $100-a-day addict. Heroin was no longer fun. He
needed it to get rid of the sweats and the shakes, the body cramps,
the aches in his bones. "I had to use," he says, "to feel normal, like
a regular person."

Lewis was consumed by heroin. Every day was the same: Get up sick if
he hadn't used in 12 hours. Figure out how to get money. Drive 35
miles from his suburban home in Aurora to Chicago to score. "My whole
existence," he says, "was just finding ways to get high."

In many ways, Lewis represents the changing face of heroin in America.
He is in his 20s, lives in the suburbs - two traits that fit a growing
number of users - and graduated to heroin after years of getting high
with other drugs.

When Lewis snorted his first line at age 18, he'd already used almost
every imaginable drug: Marijuana. Cocaine. LSD. Ecstasy. Mushrooms.
Pills. Heroin, though, was much more seductive.

"It was just like someone had wrapped me in a blanket," he recalls.
"I'd found the drug I was looking for ... all the depression and
anxiety and all that stuff that I was going through ... heroin kind
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