DRUGS AT REED

Louisa Callery knows addiction. It runs in her family, so she's
familiar with the denial, the excuses, the magical thinking that
normal rules don't apply.

She knows the first step to battling a drug problem is admitting you
have one. She thinks Reed College has one. And she wishes Oregon's
most prestigious private college would confront the problem openly, as
a way to protect more students and to honor her 18-year-old son, Alex,
who died earlier this month of an accidental drug overdose in his dorm
room.

Both she and her husband, Carlos Lluch, wonder if their son might be
alive today if colleges were more honest about drug use and addiction.

"There are a lot of people responsible here, ourselves included,"
Lluch says. "And I'm not a temperance guy. I understand there are
rites of passage. But there needs to be zero tolerance for hard drugs.
Heroin, meth, you have to draw the line somewhere. Or is Alex the
price we have to pay? What is the price?"

Alejandro "Alex" Lluch died alone on April 5 of an accidental heroin
overdose. He was a memorably kind person, a lover of history and maps,
an avid reader. Reed was the perfect place for him, his mother says --
but also the worst, because of the easy access to drugs.

In high school, Alex had what his parents call "one unholy encounter"
with heroin. From then on, he lived parallel lives: the promising
student and the guy trying to keep a monster at bay.

Alex's parents thought their son had the monster beat when he arrived
at Reed from California. They also thought of Reed as mostly an
alcohol-and-pot kind of school. They didn't know about the hard drugs
bubbling beneath the surface. Not until their son's death this month
did they learn that another student had suffered a near-fatal heroin
overdose in December.

They don't blame Reed for their son's death. If anything, they're
beating up themselves, going over old conversations with Alex,
wondering if they could've done more. They mostly wish colleges would
be less worried about their reputations and more candid about
problems, so that families could be more helpful and aware.

"This is an era of open information," Lluch says. "If the cardiologist
has to publish data about heart surgeries and so on, colleges should
disclose, too."

Drug use is up on campuses nationwide, according to the National
Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University. One in
six college students report smoking pot at least once in the last
month, and one in 12 say they've used a hard drug other than pot in
the last month, such as heroin or hallucinogens. Abuse of prescription
opiates and stimulants such as Vicodin, OxyContin and Adderal is up,
too.

Drugs are prevalent everywhere, Reed student Andrew Wilder says in an
e-mail about his friend Alex. "If anything, Reed is one of the only
colleges in the country that doesn't hide its problem."

This is true -- but at Reed, the drug use is higher than average,
according to data released by the college. In a 2007 survey, 41.6
percent of Reed students said they used pot at least once in the last
month, and 25 percent said they've either used a hard drug other than
pot or abused a prescription drug at least once in the past month.

As Jay Mellies, Alex's former biology professor, says, Reed has work
to do.

"It was, for example, not common knowledge among students and faculty
that a young woman overdosed on heroin this past December," Mellies
says. "I am appalled at the permissive nature of the college toward
the use of drugs, and the lack of transparency when it comes to these
matters."

College President Colin Diver says Reed takes a medical approach to
drug use. The college routinely asks students to go on medical leave
if they're battling addiction, he says, and it will continue to do
so.

"You have to confront this as a health and safety issue, not as a
moral issue," the president says.

Diver adds, however, that Reed must find a better way to fight drug
abuse -- perhaps through better information on campus, more parental
notification and clearer discipline, plus a tougher message about the
risk of street drugs.

This is not about politics or zero tolerance, he says. "We have to
focus on the main problem, which is that these drugs are highly
variable and they can kill you, or permanently screw up your brain
chemistry, on the first try."

Alex's mother spends a lot of time at home these days, reading her
son's old essays and trying to connect with him. She says Alex wrote a
college application essay about history repeating itself when people
don't try to improve on the past. She laughs at his grand enthusiasm,
and later cries when she describes life without him.

"I hope the students who have talked to us about Alex will help make
some changes," she says.

This won't be easy for Reed -- or any other college.

Colleges, like people, have reputations to protect. Culture is always
more powerful than law. And when it comes to addiction, as Alex's
family knows, the smartest people are most eager to believe that they
alone, somehow, can outsmart the odds.