Part 1 of 3

BREAKING HEROIN'S GRIP

Needle marks covered the inside forearms of the man who first injected her
with heroin. "It looked like he'd taken a cheese grater up and down his
arms," Elise Neel recalls.

Neel needed that veteran drug-user. She had snorted heroin when she was 16.
But she knew that, with a needle, the drug would enter her bloodstream
immediately. The high would be quicker, deeper, better.

She feared needles, but hungered for the high. So, Neel and a friend found
a practiced heroin user to help them.

The user had only one request: free heroin. When they went to his apartment
in Rochester, they brought the heroin they'd scored not long before.

First, he injected Neel's friend, sliding the needle into the young man's
forearm with the precision of a physician.

"I watched the high hit him," Neel recalls. "I was crying the whole time."

Then it was her turn. She held out her arm and turned her head.

"I didn't feel a thing," she says. "I didn't feel the needle at all. Then
it just hit me."

She would crave -- and she would find -- this high again. "When it hits you
don't feel love, you don't feel hate," she says.

"You don't feel anything."

But that temporary numbness would bring enormous and lasting pain -- for
herself and for those around her.

Drug addiction is democratic in its grip. Black, white, rich, poor, urban,
suburban, old, young -- it has no single face.

Elise DeLaine Neel is white, petite, with long blonde hair and an innocent
face. She spent her high school years in Geneseo. She is 19. She is an addict.

Neel is part of a troubling trend -- younger people turning to heroin. Some
blame the resurgence of this hard-core, illegal drug on the "heroin chic"
exemplified by rail-thin models. But there is also a simple economic
reason: Heroin is far cheaper than it was in its heyday two or three
decades ago.

The narcotic is also far purer and more potent. Even faced with the dangers
of HIV and AIDS, teens and young adults are finding it to be an affordable,
powerful high.

"It's cheaper to use than cocaine," says Cheryl Martin, coordinator of
in-patient services at Park Ridge Chemical Dependency Services. "You use
heroin, you're good for a few hours. You smoke cocaine, you're good for 10
minutes."

'It was hell'

"You start doing drugs for a reason, for acceptance," Neel says. "You take
every little problem you have and you medicate it. And then it becomes a habit.

"But as you use, you add to the pain, with all of the people you hurt."

As Neel talks, she is at Main Quest, the Health Association's alcohol and
drug treatment center on West Main Street in Rochester. It is April, and
she has just emerged from the physical torment of detoxification.

"It was hell. I used the walls to support myself. I couldn't get up the
steps. I couldn't talk. I wanted to leave. I thought, 'This is too painful.
I can't do this.' "

Addicts typically spend five to seven days in detox. The goals are basic:
Get the addict stable, mentally and physically. Digging deeper -- to find
the roots of addictive tendencies -- comes later.

Addicts live two to a room in small bedrooms with little more than beds and
closets. Medical staff is at the ready in case there are complications.

For some, the first 24 hours of detox will be spent in bed. After that,
staff ensures that clients become more active by attending meals, group
sessions and other activities.

"The longer they just lie in a spot, the more the body will tense," says
Robert Kingston, Main Quest's assistant director of primary care services.

Some will remember the aches, the pangs, the occasional hell. It will scare
them.

But for some, it will not scare them enough. They will revisit it again.

"The funny thing is, you think people would remember that pain," Kingston says.

'Cross that line'

It is difficult to pinpoint the causes of addiction, especially for those,
like Elise Neel, who experiment at an early age and end up on a runaway
roller coaster.

She first used marijuana when 13 -- with a boy on a church mission trip,
she says. Each high brought an urge to experience something new.

Six years later, the drugs she has used read like a litany of illegal
substances: marijuana, cocaine, LSD, ecstasy, and, her drug of choice, heroin.

There were tough times in Neel's life. When she was only months old, her
mother, Patti Neel, left Elise's father, fearing the relationship was
destructive. Elise has had no contact with him since.

When Elise was 2 years old, her mother remarried, joining her two children
with the two children of her husband, Al Neel.

Elise Neel's 18-year-old brother, Shannon, died from ingesting poison when
Elise was 7. His family believes Shannon did it not to kill himself, but to
scare a girlfriend whom he thought was unfaithful.

But when Neel discusses her addiction, as she did through a series of
interviews, she does not dwell on the hardships. Instead, she acknowledges
an allure to the drug lifestyle, an excitement she finds nowhere else.

As a teenager, she would drive into Rochester to buy drugs or to hook up
with friends who always had heroin or cocaine handy.

Late one night, Neel found herself alone, nearly out of gas, driving
through a Rochester neighborhood that grew more frightening at each turn.
She could not find a service station.

Finally, she stopped to talk to a man on a street corner who was selling
drugs. He led her directly to a gas station, then gave her some advice:
Don't be so stupid with your life.

"I started getting weaker, sicker, and getting careless," she recalls. "It
just all started catching up with me. You think you're invincible and
you're not. Then you cross that line ... and you know you're not
invincible, but it doesn't matter any more."

Her teen years were filled with tumult at home. She and her mother
constantly argued. Elise could be hurtful and disrespectful. Her mother
sometimes attributed the constant turmoil to teenage angst.

"I don't know if we just didn't want to believe," Patti Neel says. "...I
don't really think we saw this coming at all."

Elise Neel left home during her junior year, and lived with a friend's
family. Nevertheless, when she graduated from Geneseo High School with the
class of 2000, her parents gave her a huge picnic.

Although the day was celebratory, Patti Neel's distinct memory is from that
evening, when she and Elise were at the high school watching a slide show
of graduates. "She put her head on my shoulder and said, 'I don't know how
to be happy.' "

'All kinds of trouble'

Three months later, Elise entered Monroe Community College to study
photography.

"At college, I smoked pot every day," she recalls. "I was getting into
ecstasy. Within the (first) week, I started using every day. College was so
boring. I thought it would help, being high in class."

It didn't. She quit school and got a series of retail jobs.

"I was always high at work. I got fired from all my jobs. I would go in the
bathroom all the time. Sometimes I would start nodding off (at work)."

She says her drugs cost her $120 on some days -- and that she has stolen
goods to pay for them.

In December, while working at a Henrietta department store, Elise used a
customer's credit card number to rip off merchandise. She was caught, and
charged with petit larceny.

Her parents had told their children, when young, that if the kids were ever
arrested, they would not bail them out. The parents stuck to their word.

"When they're little and you tell them that, it's easy," Patti says. "You
think this precious little angel-face will never get in trouble with the
law. And now my precious little angel-face is in all kinds of trouble."

The family with whom Elise had lived during her junior year did bail her
out, however. As a court date approached for her crimes, she continued to
use drugs, turning more to the needle.

In April, she entered Main Quest. She wanted to beat her addiction -- and
hoped authorities would go light on her because of her willingness to seek
help.

In the previous six months, she had tried treatment twice before: In her
first visit to Main Quest, she left after a few days. After several days at
Park Ridge Chemical Dependency, she was discharged for acting up. The next
morning her mother drove to Park Ridge, not knowing her daughter was gone.

"I had baked her some cookies, and took a little stuffed animal and a
card," Patti says.

Elise hadn't called to tell her mother of the discharge. "The first person
I called was my drug dealer," says Elise, "to come and pick me up."

Moving upstairs

After completing detox in early April, Neel enters Main Quest's in-patient
services. Here, counselors try to unearth the problems that lead to addiction.

When going from detox, which is on the first floor, to in-patient, which is
on the second, addicts typically say they're "moving upstairs."

Here, unlike in detox, bedrooms are tidy, with neatly made beds and mirrors
on the walls.

Counselors prod you to dig into yourself, through journal writings, and
through group sessions in which confessions are common.

The days begin at 7 a.m. and continue with frequent activities until
bedtime. Each morning, addicts are expected to announce a "personal
affirmation" they will carry with them through the day.

One morning, Neel acknowledges that she too often curses and erupts in fits
of pique. Her affirmation: "I need to act more like a lady."

Some days, the lessons resonate with her; other days, she finds them trite.

"We planted seeds outside today for a leisure activity," she says once. "It
was an activity that had some kind of point to it."

For the first few days upstairs, she rarely releases her feelings. Still,
she befriends some addicts, including Toni Ingram, a 20-year-old Rochester
woman with a cocaine addiction.

"I was prostituting to get my money to get my drugs," says Ingram, who
figures her habit cost her hundreds of dollars a day. "All of my money was
going to my drug dealer."

In regular meetings of female addicts, Neel often hears horror stories like
Ingram's. "People talk about molestation and rape and prostitution. Even
though my story, to me, hurts me terribly, I feel like I didn't suffer
enough to share," says Neel.

She ends up arguing with some black female addicts who question how much
hardship she has endured. She aggravates their resentment by maintaining
that she is different -- and better -- than they are.

They point out the obvious: She is at the same place they are.

Some days she says she is comfortable at Main Quest. Other days, she simply
wants to leave.

"Each day you wake up and you feel a little better," says Neel. "I still
sometimes feel the knots in my stomach. I want to go out and use."

Her plan, once she completes in-patient, is to return to her parents' home
in Avon. But that prospect scares her.

"I don't want to be here but I don't want to go home. I'm afraid of the
boredom."

She is scheduled to complete in-patient treatment April 27 and to appear in
Henrietta Town Court June 11. If she shows she completed treatment, she
will likely be able to avoid jail and instead go on probation, she says.

As her release date approaches, she considers moving to Georgia -- if
probation authorities allow it -- and living with her brother's family. She
has no friends left in the region, she says, and her parents likely cannot
trust her if she stays in their home.

"There's nothing left for me in Rochester. I've burnt all my bridges."

SIDEBAR

Elise Neel takes a cigarette break outside Main Quest in Rochester, where
she is being treated for heroin addiction. Neel, 19, says she began using
drugs at 13. "You take every little problem you have and you medicate it.
... But as you use, you add to the pain. ..."

How to keep kids from drugs

Set clear rules, discuss the consequences of breaking them -- then enforce
them. Be sure punishments have mild, not severe, negative consequences. Set
curfews and enforce them. Call parents whose home is to be used for a
party. On party night, stop by. Make it easy to leave a party where drugs
are being used. Listen to your instincts. Don't be afraid to intervene if
your gut reaction tells you something is wrong.

Warning signs of drug use

Fatigue, red eyes. Personality changes and mood swings. Decreased interest
in school; attendance problems. Friends who show little interest in school
or school activities. Problems with the law.

More on the Web

Additional material about teen drug use -- and the local and national drug
scene -- is available at:

DemocratandChronicle.com.

Features include a test to help adults assess a child's risk of using
drugs, a virtual youth center with discussion boards and a survey, an
extensive list of drug-related Web sites with hyperlinks, results of a poll
showing America's shifting attitudes toward illegal drugs, and previous
installments of this series.

To access this information, click on "News" and "Extra" at
DemocratandChronicle.com.

About this series

This is the seventh report in the Democrat and Chronicle's ongoing
investigation, "The Big Deal: Illegal Drugs in the Rochester Region." The
second half of this story will run tomorrow.

This week, we will report on anti-drug efforts in the aftermath of the
slaying of a 10-year-old Rochester boy.

Later this month, we will tell how a local man destroyed his basketball
career through cocaine. And we will look at stalled efforts to reform New
York's Rockefeller drug laws.

In the coming months, we will explore other communities' approaches to the
drug wars, drug trafficking in the inner city, drug use and the workplace
and drug treatment courts.

This project aims at exposing the local drug problem and searching for
solutions.

To share ideas and information, contact Sebby Wilson Jacobson, assistant
managing editor for special projects.

Phone: 258-2233. Mail: Democrat and Chronicle, 55 Exchange Blvd.,
Rochester, NY 14614. Fax: 258-2237. E-Mail: sjacobson@ DemocratandChronicle.com

To share your opinions, contact the Editorial Board:

Phone: 258-2510. Fax: 258-2356. E-mail: dceditpage@ DemocratandChronicle.com