Source: Daily Record, The (NJ)
Contact:  http://www.dailyrecord.com/
Copyright: 1998 Gannett Satellite Information Network Inc.
Pubdate: 30 Sep 1998
Author: Michael Daigle Daily Record
Note: Item number 17 of 26 in the series "Heroin: A Clear and Present Danger"

ADDICT OF 25 YEARS HAS NOTHING BUT REGRETS

Edward Jeffrey used heroin at 18 to kill the pain of his lonely teenage years.

At 42, he twice tried suicide to kill the pain of his heroin addiction.

In between, during nearly 25 years of heroin addiction, Jeffrey said he
deceived friends, employers and family, committed crimes, sold most of his
possessions, turned government disability payments into drugs, watched his
brother die of a heroin overdose and his wife die of AIDS.

He said his addiction robbed him of any chance for a normal life. He
regrets that he didn't go to college or have children. "I lived a life that
was constantly going down," he said.

In 1990, Jeffrey cradled his twin brother, Fred, as he died of a heroin
overdose. Jeffrey said he was emotionally detached. "That won't happen to
me," he recalled thinking at the time.

In 1991, Jeffrey was told he was HIV positive. He believes he got the virus
from needles he shared with his wife to inject heroin.

In 1995, his wife, Fran, 41, and two friends died of AIDS, one after the
other, each two weeks apart.

Then in June 1997, as he tried to give up heroin while living in his
stepfather's house in Dover, Jeffrey sliced his wrists open with a knife.

"I was going through withdrawal and was overwhelmed by the guilt and
shame," he said. "What was the bother? I couldn't deal with it. I lost my
place to live. I was HIV positive and saw my wife die of AIDS. Everything
was just so overwhelming. I was sick and tired of being sick and tired ...
I wanted to take away the pain."

His first suicide attempt landed him in the psychiatric unit of St. Clare's
Hospital/Denville for five days. He was moved to a motel room where his
body reacted to the absence of heroin in his system -- withdrawal. That's
when childhood feelings of inadequacy and isolation -- the feelings that
had fueled his early heroin use and then been suppressed by it -- resurfaced.

So he put a small plastic garbage bag with tie strings over his head in a
second suicide attempt, in July 1997.

"A cigarette saved my life," he said, laughing bitterly.

With the bag over his head, just before losing consciousness, he had the
urge to smoke. When he finished the cigarette, he pulled the bag over his
head again but failed to tighten the tie strings, so he had air to breathe.
He woke up several hours later, angry to be alive.

But that's when he began to heal as he recovered at Morristown Memorial
Hospital.

"Two times," he said. "Maybe I can't kill myself. It was a step to recovery."

He said he had been using heroin daily for almost 2 1/2 years leading up to
the suicide attempts. Withdrawal took six weeks because he had so much of
the drug in his system. It was six weeks of nausea, stomach cramps,
insomnia, diarrhea and battling old feelings of inadequacy and isolation,
he said.

Then he entered a rehabilitation program at Hope House, and has been trying
to straighten out his life since. Jeffrey's recovery includes programs at
Hope House, the countywide social service agency, a 12-step program and
health and spiritual programs at the Addiction Recovery Center of Morristown.

"The only thing more powerful than an addiction to heroin is the will of
God helping me beat the addiction," said Jeffrey, 44, a full-time resident
of Eric Johnson House, a treatment center and home for AIDS patients in
Morristown.

Experts say addiction can result from a combination of factors: trauma,
like the death of a parent or divorce; a family history of addiction, the
availability of drugs and low self-esteem.

For Jeffrey, some of those factors started building early in his life.

His father died when he and his twin were 18 months old. His mother, 39
when the twins were born, remarried when they were 4. The family moved to
another part of Dover and Jeffrey suddenly had a teenage stepbrother. And
while his stepfather loved him, Jeffrey said, he never said so.

Jeffrey said the disruption of moving across town, having parents older
than others and a stepbrother 10 years older than he all contributed to his
isolation and feelings of low self-esteem. It didn't help that schoolmates
teased him because he had a different last name than his mother, he said.

"I was OK on the surface, but inside I felt like an outcast. I wore
glasses. My name was Eddie," he said derisively, saying he hated his name.
"I just felt different."

His found refuge in the chaos of the late 1960s and early 1970s, a time of
riots in the cities, the Vietnam War and war protests. Jeffrey wasn't
political but the social scene at the time included drugs.

Feeling insecure and isolated as a teenager, he said he was determined to
be accepted. He tried to fit in at Dover High School by diving into the
rock scene, taking alcohol offered by friends, then drugs.

"I wanted to be part of the in-crowd," he said, and that meant doing drugs.

Smoking pot blurred the world to a soft haze. Dropping acid churned the
world into a whirling maelstrom, fun to ride. A noseful of heroin blocked
it all out.

Drugs were not hard to find when he was growing up. He said he got them
from friends, at school, in bars or by hanging out along Dickerson Street
in Dover in the area near the NJ Transit train station.

Heroin was just one more drug to try, he said. When you're trying to run
away from yourself, he said, it's the drug to try.

The first time, he went to buy it in New York City with a friend whose
brother was an addict. The first hit made him sick to his stomach and he
threw up. But when the drug took over his system, he was at peace.

"You fall into the trap and you don't realize it," Jeffrey said. The trap
is the sense of well-being the drug creates. His problems, the emotional
scars of his youth, disappeared. But the price for that peace was a
physical and psychological need for heroin.

"Your body adjusts to the craving," he said, "and you don't care. You fool
yourself into thinking that you are in control. But the drug is controlling
you."

He traded rides in his car for a couple of bags of heroin and traded drugs
for rides. He sold belongings to get drugs. "You end up with the clothes on
your back," he said.

At one point, he said he was buying $100 of heroin a day. Most addicts buy
$20 to $30 a day, he said.

He worked off and on during the many years of his addiction, he said. "You
can work and be addicted to heroin," he said. "It's not like alcohol where
you get sloppy drunk."

During one period when he wasn't working, he said he burglarized houses for
cash. He held his last job as a furniture mover 10 years ago, he said.

Then the government supported his habit.

He and his wife lived on Social Security disability checks. Jeffrey said he
received $550 a month after he was diagnosed HIV positive.

Then, his wife received $28,000 in a lump sum cash settlement from workers
compensation for a ruptured disc in her back. "A bad combination" he said
of two junkies and all that money.

When he wasn't using heroin, he said, he drank. He tried to quit heroin by
going to methadone clinics -- he met Fran at one seven years ago -- a
couple of times and stayed off the drug once for nine months. But the
craving always returned.

Of his addiction, he said: "The worse thing I can think of. It's not life
the way it should be. What a terrible waste." 
- ---
Checked-by: Mike Gogulski