CLUB DRUG OVERDOSE SPURS TEEN-AGER TO CHANGE

Drugs Such As Ecstasy Are Gaining Popularity With Young People

Methamphetamine and marijuana were Robert Orr's drugs of choice. Then
someone introduced him to ecstasy last fall.

Orr, 18, and his friend, Jason Roberts, 17, were soon "rolling" at
all-night dance parties, where the so-called club drug flourishes.

"I knew something big was going to have to happen to make me stop," said
Roberts, a student at East High School in Des Moines. "I thought it was
funny, until I almost died."

The teen overdosed Nov. 11 on a combination of club drugs -
multi-syllabic street pharmaceuticals that authorities say are finding
increased popularity with a generation of young people who grew up being
told to "just say no."

"It may be that we're behind the curve, but certainly we've seen with
other drugs that our cornfields don't protect us," said U.S. Attorney
Stephen Rapp. "If it's common in the youth culture in major cities,
you'd expect half as much use here."

Iowans, then, can expect this:

* A survey of 7,290 U.S. students in grades seven through 12 by the
Partnership for a Drug Free America found that 10 percent had tried
ecstasy at least once last year.

* Among U.S. eighth-graders, use of ecstasy increased from 1.7 percent
in 1999 to 3.1 percent last year. Among 10th-graders, use rose from 4.4
percent to 5.4 percent. Among 12th-graders, it rose from 5.6 percent to
8.2 percent, according to a study by the University of Michigan.

* Deaths from the new-generation drugs have been reported in several
states. Gamma-hydroxybutyrate - the so-called "date rape" drug is a
close cousin of ecstasy - has been linked to 58 deaths and more than
5,700 overdoses nationwide since 1990.

U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-IA., called a meeting last summer of a
Senate panel on narcotics control. It was called "Ecstasy:
Underestimating the Threat." More than 200 doses of ecstasy were seized
by central Iowa drug agents in the two weeks that followed Grassley's
meeting.

Rapp estimated that at least 5 percent of Iowa teens have tried ecstasy,
a combination hallucinogen and stimulant typically taken in tablet form.

"Part of the effect people are seeking is the same one with
methamphetamine - great energy and heightened feeling of sexual and
personal power," Rapp said. "They're all looking for that softer feeling
that we all love each other."

Nov. 11, 2000

Roberts said he would smoke or ingest any drug his older friends
offered, starting with marijuana and moving to hashish, opium, crack
cocaine, meth - anything that didn't require "shooting up."

He was at a Des Moines community center when he began "slipping out of
reality."

"I was walking around hearing screams, and I was throwing up," he said.
"I could feel myself thinking."

Roberts said he passed out while waiting for an ambulance, and "when I
woke up, I was hallucinating. The doctors were aliens trying to eat me,
and there were four clocks on the wall - green, red, black and blue.
They were spinning around, and I was controlling them with one finger. I
tried to show my mom, but she didn't understand."

Rapp said a single 100-milligram tablet of ecstasy that costs from $20
to $35 produces effects lasting four to six hours.

"It increases sexual and sensual arousal and increases euphoria. It
makes colors, tastes and sounds more vivid," Rapp said, quoting
government studies. "The driving social cause of this drug is that
people who may not be real popular may find this drug causes them to be
accepted."

Authorities said heavy ecstasy users have their own fashion that
includes infant pacifiers - to stop the grinding of teeth inherent with
stimulant abuse - and candy necklaces.

"You can tell who's doing it at school," said Malachi Wadsworth, 18, an
East High student. "It's a group drug and a peer pressure thing.
Everyone else is doing it."

Frank's House of Rock is a Christian-flavored hangout at SouthRidge Mall
in Des Moines that provides a place for teens - from black-wearing
"gothics" to Gap-wearing yuppies-in-training - to be with their peers
and avoid the pressure to smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol and use drugs.

"Message Of Hope"

"We give the message of hope. Many kids don't have hope. They don't know
why they are living," said Greg TeSalle, founder of Frank's House of
Rock. "We give them an alternative, something to live for. We don't ram
Jesus down their throat."

Frank's is where Roberts and Orr say their lives turned around.

Roberts' mother, Julia Roberts, credits a weeklong drug rehabilitation
program at Iowa Lutheran Hospital, where she and her husband, Greg, put
her son after his overdose.

"We didn't know he had been on drugs. He had told us that he had done
marijuana and ecstasy once, but you hope it's only once or twice, and
they don't continue," she said.

Roberts has hopes for himself, too.

"After a while, one pill is not enough, so you start doing other stuff.
But there are better things than drugs - friends, love and happiness,"
he said. "I still want to roll, but I'm not going to. It's just not
worth it."