A Stranger In The House, Part 2c

PORTRAIT OF A TEEN-AGE ADDICT

Drug Abuse Went Undetected For Nine Years

Ann's methamphetamine addiction brought her close to death.

She was 12 years old when she first smoked marijuana, and a week later, the
petite dark-haired Edmond youth was hooked on methamphetamines.

Oklahoma's use of stimulants, such as methamphetamines, is about 42 percent
higher than the national average, according to the Department of Mental
Health and Substance Abuse Services. The problem is worse among Oklahomans
age 26 to 34, who use the drugs at a rate 78 percent higher than the rest
of the country.

Now sober for eight months, the 21-year-old recalls not particularly
enjoying smoking her first "joint" offered to her by another young girl.
She had only a slight sensation of being stoned. That tender impression
changed a week later when smoking marijuana was more pleasurable because
she also snorted a line of crank -- her drug of choice.

"From that moment on, I was hooked," said Ann, who asked that her real name
not be used.

Immediately, she panicked when realizing she had snorted the entire batch
she had purchased. So she used the little bit of money she had left to
purchase more. The long-term effects of the chemicals were never considered
at the time, she said. Instant gratification was all that mattered.

"It made me very talkative, very social," she said of the meth. "The group
of people I was around -- I didn't know them very well. But by the end of
the night, we had all been talking so much. It made me fit in a whole lot
better with the people I was with."

She and her parents had moved from what she termed "the backwoods" of North
Carolina to Edmond in 1992. Leaving her friends behind caused loneliness
and cultural shock, Ann said.

"And the ones I was quickest to make friends with (in Edmond) were of
course the ones who were also shunned by everybody else." Her new friends
were drug users and "troublemakers."

When Ann was 16, her parents started to see the changes. She began wearing
dark clothes, dark eye makeup and lipstick. Activities she thought were
important went by the wayside. She began missing school.

Like an invisible cloak, her substance abuse went undetected while ravaging
her body and spirit. Drug addicts and alcoholics are expert liars, her
mother Liz said. She and husband Rick were convinced that substance abuse
was not at issue.

"We didn't really know at what point she started using drugs," said Liz,
who works as an accountant while her husband is a teacher.

Even though Ann's parents had taken her to see therapists and a
psychologist, none of them had mentioned the possibility their daughter was
a drug addict. Instead, she was prescribed antidepressants. At 16, her
parents became alarmed she had lost 20 pounds. Twice, they took her to be
evaluated by a physician and to be tested for drugs. She tested positive
only for marijuana.

"I know a lot of people in this community feel that their children can do
no wrong because of their economic status or position in the community,"
Ann said. "Lot's of people in this community need to open their eyes to
what's going on in the youth around here."

Accepting Blame

Ann's grades worsened at Edmond Memorial to near-failure by the time she
graduated three years ago.

It seemed to her most students smoked marijuana and were drinking during
her senior year. Her peer group was known as the "stoners-slacker clique."
Substance abuse extended far beyond her friends into other cliques such as
"the jocks, the preps and the hicks," she said.

"I can't blame the schools, although I wanted to for awhile." No one is to
blame except herself, she said. She was told of the consequences of drug
abuse with the DARE educational program during middle school. And she said
she ignored the drug-related education information provided to students by
the Edmond Police.

About 60 percent of state high school seniors have used illicit drugs or
alcohol, according to a survey conducted by the Oklahoma Department of
Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services.

Although Ann smoked pot, and ingested narcotics with her friends on school
grounds -- school authorities never caught her using drugs, she said.

Today, she has found sobriety after spending 21 days at Valley Hope, an
in-house treatment facility in Kansas, she said.

"It took me nine years to figure out that I was an addict. I think that
everybody can recover.," she said.

'You don't think I'm an alcoholic, do you?'

Ann reached an utter degree of desperation before admitting she needed help
in January.

"I was in outpatient treatment and I kept using. And I went into in-patient
treatment and got kicked out and kept using," she said. "It wasn't until I
had several people come up to me -- patients and counselors -- telling me
that I wasn't going to see the age of 22."

While under the influence, she didn't understand the impact her addiction
had on her family.

"I thought it was just a dysfunctional family -- which it wasn't," she
said. "It was the drugs and alcohol that got in the way. But I didn't know
it then."

She would rely more heavily on alcohol and cocaine when trying in vain to
stop using meth. And her parents could smell the warning signs of
alcoholism as their daughter's excessive drinking became apparent.

"(It's) pretty evident," Liz said. "They fall asleep. They pass out. They
throw up."

Ann's drunkenness caused her to pass out, setting off a horrible chain of
events. Someone used her car during a drug-related burglary. Another time,
she awoke to find swastikas drawn on her face and arms. Last year, she fell
asleep in the apartment of a male stranger. He took the keys out of her
purse and totaled her car.

Oklahoma City Police telephoned her parents, telling them of a young man
fleeing from the scene of the crash. Liz and Rick called all the numbers
listed on their caller ID system before waking up their daughter at the
man's apartment.

Ann smelled of liquor when her mother picked her up. Driving home, Liz told
her daughter that she needed to seek help from Alcoholics Anonymous.

"You don't think I'm alcoholic, do you?" Ann replied. Although she attended
AA meetings, she intensified her usage of methamphetamines. It progressed
from snorting and smoking to injecting meth into her blood stream.

'Well, you can't let your kid die.'

Tension grew a year ago when Ann appeared enthused about enrolling in
college, signing up for 12 hours at the University of Central Oklahoma. Her
parents supported her while she worked at a local business.

"She couldn't get to work on time. She wasn't a very good employee and (her
boss) found money missing twice," Liz said. Ann was fired.

For three days at a time, the meth would keep Ann awake and manic.

"She would go and go and go, and then she'd crash," Liz said. Her daughter
slept for 36 hours without ever getting out of bed, except to use the
restroom. Alarmed, Liz again took her daughter to their physician.

"At that point, the doctor should have said, 'That's a symptom of
methamphetamines.' And he didn't," Liz said. Instead, he prescribed for her
an antidepressant.

One class at a time, she progressively stopped attending college and failed
each course. Uncertain that their daughter had a drug-related problem, Liz
and Rick told Ann she needed psychiatric help.

"There's something really, really wrong," her mother said to Ann. "And the
counselors, the psychologist and the family physician are not doing it for
you." She agreed.

Without hesitation, Ann's psychiatrist identified her substance abuse.
However, he told her that he could not treat her psychiatric disorders
until she became sober. She was operating on the emotional level of a 13
year old, he said, and she wouldn't begin to mature until she was off the
drug for at least four weeks.

"When we finally realized -- which was just this last fall -- that she was
a drug addict, it really explained all the things that had gone wrong.
Somebody needed to say to Ann, 'I think you're a drug addict and I think
you need rehab,'" Liz said.

But Ann resisted treatment because she didn't want to separate from her
physically abusive and drug-addicted boyfriend. Ann only agreed to see a
therapist as an outpatient. She relapsed, and in January was referred to an
in-patient program at Valley Hope in Cushing. However, she was expelled two
days after entering the facility for bringing in a syringe loaded with
meth, placing the other residents at risk.

A therapist told Liz and Rick that their daughter had to "hit bottom" in
order to change.

"Unfortunately, the bottom might be death. Well, you can't let your kid
die," Liz said as her eyes welled up with tears.

Rock Bottom

Ann then began disappearing for several days at a time before her parents
could find her. Each time they would bring her home, she would be sicker,
weaker and scrawnier. She would justify her long stretches of sleep as
"purging" her system of the methamphetamine.

Ann wrote $1,000 of hot checks on her parents' bank account and stole
household items to sell to support her addiction.

She was referred by Valley Hope to another out-patient program. And her
counselors recognized she was still using the meth.

"With (Ann), the stuff seeped through her face. You could always tell when
she had been using meth because she had terrible, bloody looking spots on
her face," Liz said. Her eyes would hemorrhage.

Her counselor looked her right in the face and said, "I'm worried that
you're not going to make it to your 22nd birthday. You've got it really bad
and you're going to die if you don't make a change."

The message hit home. Ann told her parents it had never occurred to her she
might die. So in February, she committed herself for three weeks into
another Valley Hope drug rehab center in Atchison, Kan.

Choosing Life

Sobriety is a continual process, Ann said recently, after returning from
Kansas to visit her parents with her new boyfriend and now-fiance, Kyle.
She met the 28-year-old in Kansas at Alcoholics Anonymous.

Feelings of vulnerability resurfaced for Ann when encountering old "stoner"
friends from high school at a local restaurant.

"I was telling (Kyle) that it was strange being there and seeing all of
them. But the strange part of it was that I was sober," Ann said. "I said,
'Hi' to a couple of them but I didn't have anything in common with them
anymore because I knew they were still out there using. I felt very nervous."

However, she discovered her perception had grown more acute, she said, both
spiritually and emotionally. And familiar anxiety attacks she has battled
since childhood have so far vanished.

The best way a loved one can help a teen-age addict is to stop enabling the
disease, she said. Ultimately, her parents took away her car keys, quit
driving her around town and took away her allowance.

"They showed their concern for me. But they didn't step in and make me do
anything. They just kind of let me hit my bottom. And I'd have to say
that's the best way to help people. That's the only thing that helped me.

"I honestly believe I wouldn't be alive today if my parents hadn't quit
enabling me. I'd be dead today."