Next: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n102/a02.html

EVERYTHING'S DIFFERENT

Overdose changes family forever

A year before he overdosed on crystal meth, 27-year-old landscape
designer Mark Scanlon walked into the emergency room.

He knew he needed help for his drug problem, and he wanted to check
himself into the hospital's psych ward.

He waited for four hours, then left. He told his mother that the
paperwork took too long - the second most common reason addicts don't
get into treatment. The first is lack of money or insurance.

A year later, at 10 o'clock one morning, Scanlon collapsed at work. He
was taken by ambulance to the emergency room, where he was
resuscitated several times.

He lived, but he would never be the same.

Costs of abuse:

Most of the economic burdens of drug abuse fall on those who don't
abuse drugs:

44 percent of the costs are borne by those who abuse and members of
their families.

46 percent by federal, state and local governments.

3 percent by private insurance.

7 percent by victims of abusers.

"When drug users are right there seeking help, you have to get them in
a room and do something right now. It is such a short window," said
his mother, Darrelyn Scanlon. "It was easier for him to go out and buy
drugs on the street to relieve his pain than to wait there."

She was speaking for her son, because he can no longer speak for
himself.

Every day, Darrelyn visits Mark at the Mesa nursing home where he
lives. For the past five years, he has not been able to get out bed
without help. He can eat only pureed food.

He is more conscious than in years past, but that also seems to make
him more depressed. Sometimes he cries, but he is unable to say why.

"I don't know if he knows who he is or was," Darrelyn
said.

When Mark first was admitted to the hospital, he had two visitors.
Neither of them would talk to her about her son's drug problem. Nor
would they visit again.

Darrelyn said she had no idea that her son was using drugs until she
saw the hospital lab report. She thought he had been suffering from
depression when he sought hospitalization the year before.

"He was sometimes moody, but he was a busy single man," she
said.

She wonders if she unwittingly helped him buy drugs when she gave him
money over the years. She wonders why she didn't see the trouble he
was in.

Mostly, she works at making Mark's life as good as it can be. The best
she hopes for is that he can be moved to an adult-care home someday so
he can be around younger people.

The toll on her life from one man's drug abuse is heavy. She's single
but doesn't go out much anymore.

"Who would want to deal with me or this problem?" she asked. "I spend
a lot of evenings crying alone."

There are public costs, too.

If Mark had gotten treatment before his crash, even from a private
program, the costs might have been as much as $1,000 a day for several
months or more. Certainly, it would have been less than Maricopa
County and Medicare have paid since his overdose in 1995.

Darrelyn estimates her son's care cost $150,000 the first month alone.
Since 1995, the cost to taxpayers has totaled $500,000 to $600,000,
she said.

Mark's medical insurance didn't pay any of the bills because the
policy excluded drug overdoses. His bills have been paid for under
state programs for the indigent and the federal government's Medicare
program.

Darrelyn is in the medical insurance business; she helps desperate
parents learn whether their policies cover substance abuse treatment.

"The limit on substance abuse is usually about $10,000 or $20,000 per
lifetime," she said. "With treatment (at) about $1,000 a day,
including doctors appointments, that is 10 to 20 days."

She understands why insurance companies don't want to pay for
treatment for something that is self-inflicted. It isn't like paying
for cancer.

"But think of the costs later," she said. "I don't want Mark to be
dead, but I don't wish him to be costing all these hundreds of
thousands of dollars.

"I didn't have a choice in this matter. And now that he is alive,
there is no choice, either."

When Darrelyn has the chance, she tries to persuade others to make the
best of the choices they still have left.

She urges parents whose children are experimenting with drugs to get
them into treatment before they turn 18. After that, they must be
full-time students to be covered under their parents' insurance. Nor
can parents force their children into treatment after age 18.

Twice, Darrelyn volunteered to persuade troubled teens to get help
before it was too late.

She took them to meet her son.

"I want people to know that not all people die from drug overdoses,"
she said. "Some suffer brain damage, are hooked to a feeding tube and
live in diapers."

One of the teens quit drugs and is in college.

She doesn't know what happened to the other.

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