OUT OF PLACES TO TURN, SHE LOST ADDICTION BATTLE

LOS ANGELES - Heather Marell Meza, a one-time model and suburban high
school standout, ended her life among society's castoffs on skid row.

The 34-year-old mother of two succumbed to a heroin overdose in
February 2005, ending a 14-year cycle of recovery and relapse.

Her parents had searched in vain for help for her addictions and her
mental illness.

They never found a cure.

"I can't tell you how many hospitals and rehabilitation centers we
have been in," said her mother, Myrna Marell. "There is not a place
for people like her. If she had cancer, I could find a place for her
in a heartbeat."

Often homeless and resistant to treatment, mentally ill substance
abusers present the greatest challenges to drug treatment programs and
face the most obstacles to getting help.

Despite a decade of attempts at improvement, drug treatment experts
said most programs and staff remain poorly equipped for the 60 percent
of California's mentally ill believed also to suffer from addiction.

"We are behind the curve because our drug treatment counselors are not
trained adequately in mental health disorders," said Angela Stocker,
College of San Mateo counselor certification program director. "And
the mental health staff is not educated adequately about addiction."

In 1995, former Gov. Pete Wilson ordered the departments of Mental
Health and Alcohol and Drug Programs to work together to develop
services for mentally ill substance abusers.

The agencies put together demonstration projects, studies and more
training. More than a decade later, they still haven't solved the problem.

"We have made incremental progress on this every year," said Kathryn
Jett, director of the Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs. "We are
very close to having a screening tool that we will require every
provider in the state to use, both in mental health and drug abuse."

For therapists like Dr. John McCarthy at Bi-Valley Medical Clinic in
Sacramento, this is more of the same talk they've been hearing for too
long.

"I am getting tired of talk," McCarthy said. "It is really
sad."

His facility provides mental health care to recovering addicts but
loses money because the state doesn't pay enough to cover the cost of
psychiatric help.

Some counties, like Sacramento, include mental health professionals in
the initial evaluation of those entering treatment through Proposition
36, the voter-approved initiative that sentences drug offenders to
treatment instead of prison.

But Proposition 36 pays for only 18 months of help, so the mentally
ill must find some way to cover the cost of medication and therapy
after the state money runs out.

Jett said state officials are working closely with counties to develop
programs to ensure the mentally ill get the help they need without
having to search for it.

Until then, however, most doors remain closed to them - even when
they're like Meza and have the money and the desire to get help.

Growing up in a wealthy Los Angeles suburb, Meza graduated from high
school a year early and won a full scholarship to a nearby art and
design college.

She was modeling and became so obsessed with staying thin that she
developed an eating disorder, anorexia nervosa.

She turned to alcohol to try to cope, her mother said. "Unfortunately,
that spiraled out of control."

Within a short period of time, the drugs, alcohol and mental illness
transformed a beautiful young woman into what her mother described as
an angry, irrational and sometimes suicidal person.

She gave birth to two daughters, leaving the youngest with the child's
father and the oldest, Quinn Marell, in her parents' care.

Her parents spent an estimated $200,000 for rehabilitation programs.
With each bout of sobriety, the loving daughter they'd known before
would return. Then the eating disorder would resume and she would relapse.

"She was caught between these two horrible addictions," her mother
said.

Marell recalls her daughter sitting for hours, dialing the phone,
searching for a drug treatment facility that would accept her.

Even when Meza found a program, she was often kicked out for either
relapsing or, in one case, suffering a seizure caused by drug and
alcohol withdrawal.

Her mother said there was then no place for her to
go.

"If she had had a treatment plan and hadn't been thrown out on the
street to fend for herself, I think she might have gotten better," her
mother said.

At Meza's funeral, the minister tried to comfort the grieving family
by saying she was finally free of the demons that tormented her on
earth.

But it was little comfort for parents who will never be free of the
pain and the loss of their only daughter.

"It's devastating," her mother said. "It will be with you forever,
every minute of every day. A minute doesn't go by that I don't think
about her."