BOARD TO VOTE ON FATE OF CLINIC

Redwood City Methadone Center Loses Lease

While many of his fellow techies are stopping for a shot of espresso
on the way to work, one young Silicon Valley worker is downing a
different dose.

On the way from his home in Campbell to work in Mountain View, he
makes a quick detour each morning to Redwood City's methadone clinic,
typically dressed in his professional garb of khakis and a polo shirt.

Within a minute, he sips his methadone and heads out of the faceless
building that has served recovering addicts for nearly 30 years. The
scruffy-haired 23-year-old with a six-figure salary climbs into his
Volkswagen Jetta and heads into a day of normalcy that drug addiction
once made impossible.

But the clinic loses its lease this month, and his desperation is
mounting.

Today, San Mateo County supervisors will decide on an alternative site
for Professional Treatment Inc. -- the only methadone clinic between
San Jose and San Francisco -- to serve its 300 clients. Months of
wrangling over which neighborhood will accept the clinic, and attacks
on the formerly addicted at public hearings, have incensed those who
say the clinic has kept them alive and functioning.

``I know they wouldn't just shut it down, but it introduced chaos into
my life,'' the Unix team leader -- who did not want his name used --
said of the discussions. ``I have to know it's there every day,
because if it's not, it's back to heroin.''

Politicians and county employees have spent months scrambling to keep
methadone services available somewhere in San Mateo County, despite an
unyielding real estate market and hostile neighbors. At today's
meeting, supervisors will decide whether to allow the clinic to
operate at the vacant Crystal Springs Hospital site near Highway 92 or
fold methadone treatment into existing county clinics in Menlo Park
and San Mateo.

The supervisors are divided in their opinions, but say they are
legally and ethically bound to continue serving county residents who
rely on methadone, a synthetic drug that dulls the insatiable craving
for heroin but does not produce a high.

The need to quell his on-and-off flirtation with opiates has led the
high-tech worker to testify at a public hearing and agree to newspaper
interviews. But his former addiction is also why he does not want his
name used -- the stigma could cost him his job as a consultant, he
said.

The lanky young man who reads the New Yorker and likes to watch
foreign films on the weekends was once a mountain-biker who loved
going to the beach and hanging out with friends. As a student, he
excelled in private school and dreamed of being a chemist.

That was before he woke up one day in his junior year of high school,
in the middle of college readiness exams, with a fiery pain shooting
down his right leg. What turned out to be a ruptured disc led to
months of Vicodin and Soma, a muscle relaxant. The combination of
pills felt too good to give up, he said. After the doctor stopped
prescribing the medication, the Internet-savvy teen discovered online
how to forge prescriptions, which he filled for a few months until he
was caught and arrested.

Things didn't get much better, longtime friend Mike Braden said. While
Braden pursued the two boys' mutual goal of becoming chemists, his
best friend lost a scholarship at Dow Chemical and a high school love.
He easily got hired at Internet companies, but his addiction leaped
from pill-popping to smoking, snorting and eventually shooting.

``I thought if I researched heroin, if I knew enough about it, how it
worked, the effect on the brain, that I wouldn't be affected,'' the
Campbell resident said. ``I thought, I'm someone from a good
background, I'm not one of those scummy guys on the street. Now I see
how many of those scummy guys on the street started as normal people
too. It's the dope that brings them down.''

In November he found an anchor in the form of methadone, dispensed
from a squat, beige building by the railroad tracks about a half-hour
drive from his home. ``I see him as a much better person now, his
self-esteem is re-established, he's started going on dates and making
friends, whereas before he would just hole himself up in his
apartment,'' Braden said.