HEROIN DANGERS LINGER AFTER HABIT

While home recuperating from a liver transplant that he had about six
weeks ago, Ed Fresquez is spending a lot of time wracking his brain
for some way to make young people understand:

A wrong choice made today can come back to haunt you years from now.
Ed said he kicked his drug habit almost three decades ago and cleaned
up his life. He took up golf and running and, through the years, ran
in nine marathons.

But there was a time bomb inside him, one he had put there himself. It
went off a few months ago, and Ed said he began to experience fatigue
and internal bleeding. He said doctors told him he had hepatitis C,
that his liver was in extremely serious condition with extensive
damage that had occurred over a long period.

"The years of my sharing needles with other people, I guess that's
what put me in touch with hepatitis," Ed said.

Learning from his mistakes

Too many young people just don't think far enough ahead, he said. Ed
certainly didn't. He was 16 when he started using heroin. If only
others could learn from his experience. If only Ed could figure out a
good way of reaching a lot of them, some way to make sure they know it
could easily happen to them, too, then maybe ...

You might think it would come easy to Ed, getting a message across to
substance abusers and potential abusers. After all, that is pretty
much what he has been doing for nearly half his life.

Ed is 57 now. He was about 30 when he managed to quit heroin with the
help of Cenikor, the nonprofit, Houston-based drug-treatment program
that Ed has headed since 1984.

Addicts that he has counseled number in the thousands, he said. And he
believes that his words have helped a great many of them change
course, helped them break their drug habits, helped them make the
lifestyle changes needed to keep off drugs and stay out of the pen.

But he has not managed to find any key phrase, any magic combination
of words that work with everyone. And his failures have proven
especially frustrating in a few cases.

Ed said two of his brothers died as a result of medical complications
caused by their drug abuse. A third brother is in prison in Colorado
with about five years hard time to serve.

This brother is 42 and has been on methadone since he was 18, Ed said.
He has tried to find the right words to convince this brother to
change, but "he just says he can't get off the stuff."

In a physical exam when he arrived in prison, it was found that this
brother also has hepatitis C, Ed said, and it is difficult to summon
much optimism about his brother's situation and future.

Ed knows prison well. He said he spent more than nine years there in
four visits between age 17 and 30. He said that one of his brothers
would visit and bring him heroin, and Ed would use some and sell the
rest to other prisoners.

Luckily, however, while he was locked up, a fellow inmate came by Ed's
cell asking him to sign a petition showing support for starting a
self-help drug-treatment program.

Ed signed, even though he had no intention of getting involved. A few
years later, after he'd gotten out and returned to Denver and his old
bad habits, Ed was picked up for burglary again, and that was when he
turned to the program he'd helped to get started. He convinced the
judge to let him substitute long-term residential treatment at Cenikor
for returning to prison.

Finding the right words to say

Ed went through the program, and then he stayed to help others, and

then he became president of Cenikor. In addition to the Houston-area
facility in Deer Park, the program has facilities in Fort Worth and
Denver, and Ed said one will be opening soon in Baton Rouge, La.
Together, they can accommodate about 500 people, Ed said.

He said he is feeling pretty well now and "chomping at the bit" to get
back to work. He wants to speak to some appropriate groups of young
people and groups of parents, as well as talk with participants in the
Cenikor program. And he is forever trying to figure out the best way
to communicate his message.

"Sometimes, I wake up, or I will be going through my day," he said,
"and it will hit me: `What can I do different to make them understand
me a little bit more?' "