A PURER, MORE POTENT HEROIN LURES NEW USERS TO A LONG, HARD FALL

After 18 years of marriage, Paul and Kathy Schroeder squabble not about
money or in-laws but about heroin. "She thinks I'm taking from her,"
he said, "and I accuse her of taking from me."

Since 1991, heroin has transformed the Schroeders from comfortable
middle-class homeowners in Wayne, N.J., to addicts living in a
homeless shelter in Harlem, scavenging bottles from trash cans and
shooting up in rubble-strewn lots.

Their story as two of New York City's estimated 200,000 regular heroin
users illustrates the changing face of the city's stubborn heroin problem.

Doctors and sociologists report that more urban blacks are turning
their backs on heroin. But at the same time, they say, the use of
heroin has increased among whites because its unprecedented purity
allows users to obtain a high by inhaling, rather than injecting, the
drug. High purity has made the drug more potent, and thus more dangerous.

The purity has soared since Colombian traffickers muscled into the New
York market, undercutting the longtime Asian suppliers with lower
prices and purer heroin.

Between 1988 and 1995, heroin prices dropped by an average of 50
percent in 19 major cities, including New York, encouraging more
consumption, according to a new study in The American Journal of
Public Health.

"We're seeing a substantial increase in the use of heroin," said Dr.
Stephan G. Lynn, a senior emergency-medicine doctor at St.
Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center at 113th Street and Amsterdam Avenue.
"It is occurring in a younger, more affluent population. And there is
a larger number of white patients than in the past."

New users have been emboldened by the misconception that inhaling
heroin is not addictive.

"In terms of people coming into treatment for heroin addiction, more
than half are sniffing heroin," said Don Des Jarlais, the research
director of the Chemical Dependency Institute at Beth Israel Medical
Center. He said that about 40 percent of sniffers end up like Paul and
Kathy Schroeder, injecting their heroin.

John Galea, the director of the street studies unit of the New York
State Office of Alcohol and Substance Abuse Services, compared New
York's new heroin problem to the explosion of crack cocaine in the
1980's.

"People did not have any idea of what the outcome was going to be," he
said. "They knew about the good times but not about the bad times."
Because younger users cannot remember the damage caused by heroin
during the 1970's epidemic, he added, "they're not afraid to sniff or
snort because they think it's not going to happen to them."

Paul Schroeder, 38, and his wife, Kathy, 37, incongruously well-spoken
and courteous, were encountered lining up to swap used syringes for
clean ones at a sidewalk table run by the AIDS Brigade, a legal
needle-exchange program on 125th Street near Lexington Avenue.

They consented to be interviewed and photographed because, Schroeder
said, "we want to make sure we can save somebody else." He also
harbored a dream that someone might yet whisk them out of their
nightmare into permanent recovery.

"It's not where I planned to be at this time of my life," Schroeder
said. "I'm up to three bags a day, and all it does is make me feel I'm
functioning normally."

A $10 bag of heroin used to suffice for one high, but addicts today
are injecting greater quantities. "If the money was there, I'd do
more," Schroeder admitted.

It was a little more than eight years ago, he said, when a friend
introduced him to sniffing heroin. Schroeder was earning $30 an hour
as an elevator mechanic, working so much overtime that one year his
salary hit six figures, he said. Kathy Schroeder was raising their
three children in the family's three-bedroom ranch house in Wayne. The
Schroeders acquired three cars, they said, and bought into a Florida
condominium.

But when he accepted some of his friend's heroin, Schroeder said, "I
couldn't believe how strong it made me feel -- I was delighted." After
a week, he initiated his wife.

Within a year, Schroeder had lost his job, leaving him unable to pay
the mortgages on the house and the Florida condominium, which were
foreclosed on. The cars were sold off. Their two daughters, now 17 and
13, and son, now 10, have been taken in by relatives.

Land records in New Jersey support Schroeder's account of the
foreclosure on his house, and neighbors said they knew of the couple's
drug use.

Before heroin, the Schroeders had smoked a little marijuana with
friends and had tried cocaine. "I've got to admit, if I hadn't started
smoking pot, I wouldn't have even started using heroin," Schroeder
said. "It is a stepping stone. All our friends were using it."

But once he had a heroin habit, he said, his companions ostracized
him. "These people who were our friends all hated and resented me," he
said.

"It dropped the bottom out when they told me: 'You're no longer a free
man. You're hooked,' " Schroeder said. "It hurt. It changed my whole
life."

With heroin taking center stage in their lives, the Schroeders moved
to Harlem and became full-time street people.

After inhaling heroin for five years, Kathy Schroeder said: "We
couldn't feel it anymore. We couldn't get high sniffing, so we started
shooting."

At first, they were so squeamish that they paid the drug dealer an
extra $5 to inject them. Now they eagerly pump heroin into their own
veins. They credit needle-exchange programs with protecting them from
AIDS. And they no longer share needles with each other.

"I never thought it would happen to me," Mrs. Schroeder said. "I
remember saying at 12 years old, I'll never stick a needle in my arm."

The Schroeders have drifted in and out of programs that dispense
methadone, a synthetic opiate that blocks the effect of heroin. Kathy
Schroeder is taking 80 milligrams of methadone a day. Paul Schroeder's
dose has increased to 100 milligrams, well above average.

"Every time we go into rehab, it doesn't help," he said. "The only
place that worked has been jail. I walked out of it clean and feeling
good." He underwent detoxification at the city jail on Rikers Island
in 1997 when he was locked up for seven weeks on a charge of selling
drugs. But he returned to heroin use within days after rejoining his
wife.

The Schroeders blame P-dope -- as the local heroin is called, because
of its purity -- for their inability to quit, saying they believe that
it overrides the methadone because it is adulterated with lidocaine,
an anesthetic.

"Ninety-nine percent of the stuff is geared up for that extra whammy,"
Schroeder said. "They know you'll come back, not because you want to,
but because you have to."

His welfare benefits are suspended because Schroeder failed to show up
for his workfare job collecting trash. He said he injured his knee.
The food stamps and cash that Mrs. Schroeder collects through welfare
can hardly feed them, leaving them to scrounge and hustle to support a
heroin habit that costs $50 to $100 a day.

"We try not to steal, but we collect a lot of bottles and cans,"
Schroeder said. "I fix fans and TV's. Things that are broke, I fix."
Asked whether he sold drugs, as many other addicts do, he said that he
used to steer customers to dealers, "but it's dangerous."

So is being an addict. For those who can afford it, drug dealers offer
personal service, accepting orders by cell phone or beeper and tacking
on a delivery surcharge amounting to a $50 minimum in Manhattan. But
when street addicts like the Schroeders want to buy, they depend on
surly street dealers, and sometimes are robbed.

Schroeder said he had been mugged more times than he could count. One
day he was held up at gunpoint at Lexington Avenue and 130th Street.
Six hours later and eight blocks away, he was beaten after he gave a
dealer his last $10. He limped to the nearest subway station, where,
he said, "two cops walked down and gave me a ticket for sitting on the
steps."

When enough money is left after buying heroin, the Schroeders try to
go to New Jersey to see their children for birthdays or holidays.
"They want us home," Kathy Schroeder said. "That puts a guilt trip on
me because I know the kids need us." She numbs herself to the guilt
with more heroin.

The Schroeders have pleaded with their children to avoid drugs, Mrs.
Schroeder said, "but we feel it's a double standard, telling them one
thing and doing another."

Yet they sometimes sound ambivalent about being trapped in the coils
of addiction. "I want to get my act together, get out of New York, go
back to New Jersey, get my kids back and have a normal life," Kathy
Schroeder declared. But the prospect of spending a minimum of 18
months in residential treatment, even if the couple could afford it,
made her pause.

"I don't see myself doing that right now," she said, "but there's
always an excuse for an addict not to get treatment."

Paul Schroeder lost two friends to fatal overdoses and said he had
considered suicide. "I'd like to start my life over again," he said.
"I feel my life is useless. I'm still down, and I can't stand up.

"They say you have to hit rock bottom before you can go back up,"
Schroeder mused. "Do you know when you hit rock bottom, there's a trap
door that opens up and drops you down another level?"