HOMEMADE DRUG OVERDOSE: PARENTS HOPE SON'S DEATH WARNS OTHERS

'Recipe' From Internet Found Under Teen's Bed

HANCOCK -- Phillip Conklin lay dead in his hospital bed as his friends came
in to say goodbye, just hours after he overdosed from a homemade drug.

"I wanted them to see what it did to him and go back and spread the word,"
said his mother, Penny Conklin. "If I could just save one kid ..."

In what may be the first fatal case of its kind in New York state, Conklin,
18, and Matthew Allen, 20, made their own narcotics after searching the
Internet for drug recipes and ordering research chemicals from an
out-of-state facility, police said. Both were hospitalized after ingesting
the homemade drugs last Saturday. Allen survived.

"It's very dangerous stuff to be toying with," state police Lt. Mark Lester
said. "Depending on the potency and the chemicals, one tablet could be
enough to kill someone."

Police are still not sure what the men took, nor how much they had, but
believe they may have been trying to make Ecstasy. Several clear capsules
containing an unknown white powder are being tested in a state police
laboratory.

Many chemicals can be sold legally and later combined to become narcotics.
Federal charges may be issued after police finish their investigation,
working with postal inspectors and the federal Drug Enforcement Agency.

A computer printout of a drug recipe Web site was found under Conklin's bed
and turned over to police. No charges have been issued yet.

"It's a scary situation," said Michael Allen, Matthew Allen's father. "It
used to be that you had to go to somebody on the street corner to buy this
stuff. And now they're shipping it directly to your house."

Life Cut Short

Penny and Larry Conklin want people to remember their son as someone who
smiled and joked a lot.

"Phillip was not a street kid," his mother said. "He had parents who loved
him. He had a stable life."

His happy-go-lucky demeanor dimmed a few years ago after he broke his leg
and injured his head in an ATV accident. He could no longer play sports and
lost 30 percent of the feeling in his left leg.

Phillip Conklin missed more than a year of school during his recovery and
transferred to Hancock Central School last September to make up for lost
credits. He lived with his aunt and uncle, Terri and Thomas Parsons, in
Hancock, but visited his parents in nearby Sherman, Pa., often. After
turning 18 last month, he sometimes lived with a friend in Hancock.

He started drinking and using marijuana in ninth grade, despite his
parents' efforts to stop it. They grounded him, talked to him, even took
him to a drug counselor in Binghamton. But they didn't know he had
apparently graduated to harder drugs. They blame peer pressure and a
struggle with depression, for which he was taking medication.

"I think maybe he wanted to self-medicate," his mother said. "He just did
what the other kids wanted him to do. He's like any other teen-ager. They
don't want to listen."

Conklin dropped out of school in January but was studying for his GED, his
mother said. He hoped to study at Ridley-Lowell Business and Technical
Institute in Binghamton this fall. His father planned to take him on the
road with him in his job as a mover.

They may never know the full story of what happened last weekend. Neither
parents nor police can say yet who got the information off the Internet or
who cooked the chemicals. The Conklins suspect it was their son, who was so
good with computers he could take them apart.

"I'll admit Phillip made a mistake," Penny Conklin said. "But he's not the
only one involved in this."

Final Hours

Just like the Conklins, Michael Allen and his wife had taken their son,
Matthew, to drug therapy and thought he was clean for about a month before
Saturday's incident.

"He fell off the wagon," Michael Allen said. "It almost cost him his life."

Police said the two men were trying to make Ecstasy or another amphetamine
substance -- a dangerous practice because, among other risks, there's no
good way to inspect the materials.

"There's no way to verify the substances you ordered," said Alan Wilmarth,
director of addictions and outpatient mental services for United Health
Services Hospitals. "Any illicit drug is at best a gamble. You never know
exactly what you're taking."

Making drugs isn't easy, Lester said. It requires careful measurements in
an area where small amounts can produce drastically different reactions.

"They may think they manufactured 5 milligrams when in fact they
manufactured 50 milligrams," he said.

Last Saturday, Michael Allen said, he found Phillip Conklin and his son
coming home from a friend's house. Both were stoned, but kept telling him
it was because they drank beer and smoked pot, he said. Michael Allen
dropped Conklin off at his aunt's house in Hancock about 4 p.m. and told
him to sleep it off, the same advice he gave to his son. He checked on his
son about 6 p.m.

"He was glistening with sweat and shivering," Allen said.

He told his son to take a cold shower and called a friend on the emergency
squad who examined Matthew and said he was running a fever but should be OK.

In the meantime, Phillip Conklin headed to the banks of the Delaware River
behind his house, probably to cool off. Both men were suffering from
hyperthermia, an abnormally high body temperature that often kills youths
who take Ecstasy, Wilmarth said.

"You can take it early in the evening and dance and party all night," he
said. "Your body temperature just keeps going up and you don't realize it
and you die."

A friend found Conklin shaking and glassy-eyed by the river and told his
uncle, Thomas Parsons, who called for help and notified Conklin's parents.
An ambulance took him to Binghamton General Hospital.

One of Conklin's cousins went to Allen's house to warn him about Conklin's
illness. The police came and Matthew Allen was rushed to Delaware Valley
Hospital in Walton.

During a long Saturday night that stretched into Sunday morning, nurses
tried to save Conklin by giving him blood transfusions and packing his body
in ice. Life-support machines beeped and tubes stuck out of his body. Blood
trickled from his nose.

Finally, his parents gave a do-not-resuscitate order. He died Sunday morning.

"I wouldn't stop his heart until I knew it was the end," his mother said.

That's when she let the friends who had stayed and prayed with the family
see his body.

"I don't want him to go through this for nothing," she said. "I am hoping I
can reach them."

The message may have gotten through. Matthew Allen was so frightened and
upset by Phillip Conklin's death that he is now undergoing drug
rehabilitation at Delaware Valley Hospital.

"He's trying to get his life straightened out," his father said.

Some tearful friends who attended Phillip Conklin's funeral Wednesday said
his death was a wake-up call for the community.

"Everyone thinks that this isn't going to happen in a small town, but it
does," said friend Ash Swartwout. "You have got to be aware of it."

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How to Help

A scholarship is being set up in memory of Phillip Conklin. Beginning next
April 14, the anniversary of his death, one senior each at Hancock and
Deposit schools will win the scholarship based on results of an essay
contest about how to keep kids off drugs.

Details regarding how to make a donation will be available soon.