HEROIN EASY TO GET, HARD TO LEAVE BEHIND

Kelli Heaps knows she's lucky to be alive. In the past six years, the
22-year-old Centerville woman has overdosed seven times after shooting up or
smoking white powder and black tar heroin. She would intentionally inject
too much so she could feel that powerful buzz right before losing
consciousness. Once, while wearing a diabetic necklace to get free needles,
she passed out in her car and awoke to find an ambulance crew giving her
insulin. ``I've done some real crazy things on heroin,'' she says. ``I would
drive all the time . . . tie off in the car and shoot up while I was
driving. . . . My car was smashed, but I was high.'' But sick of living for
her addiction and fearful of the fate of most heroin addicts, Heaps is
trying to fight the heavy allure of the drug just as its use is building in
Salt Lake. ``Most people I've gone through my drug journey with are dead or
have come to [the drug treatment center] Odyssey [House],'' Heaps says. Adds
Stormie Tisdale, Heaps' 28-year-old roommate and fellow heroin addict,
``Most of mine are in prison or dead. See, that's the reality.'' The message
is apparently not getting through to Utahns. Drug use works in cycles, and
Utah experts say black heroin from Mexico-which looks like road tar and
smells like vinegar-is on the upswing.

The drug is cheaper, it's more powerful, and it's easier to get. It all
makes for an addictive combination that is frequently deadly. Heroin is not
the drug of choice in Utah-methamphetamine and cocaine hold that spot. But
heroin is gaining ground, especially among Utah's youth. ``You can go to any
high school in this valley and buy any drug that you want,'' says Capt. Bill
Brass, of the Salt Lake County Fire Department. In a May 1997 survey, Utah
high school seniors had used heroin more frequently in the past month than
their peers across the country- 2 percent vs. .05 percent. Frank Okelberry,
a drug and alcohol counselor at the University of Utah Neuropsychiatric
Institute, says 20 percent of the teens he sees are heroin addicts, some as
young as 11 years old. ``They're getting younger more and more each day,''
he says. ``Adults are sometimes supplying their own kids with drugs.''
Okelberry speaks to what makes heroin so popular- its accessibility.
Tisdale, on scholarship to play basketball at the U. at the time, says she
switched from abusing prescription drugs to smoking heroin in the early
1990s because it was easier to get. ``It's just as easy to drive down to
Pioneer Park and buy a dime bag. . . . I get beeper numbers from [the
dealers] and they deliver.

We meet at Albertson's on 800 East and the next time would be Circle K or
7-Eleven.'' Utah's location contributes to heroin's prevalence. Dealers use
Utah as one of their bases to send heroin out across the country, according
to Don Mendrala, the Drug Enforcement Administration's (DEA) Utah agent.

The reason, he says, is that Utah and other states far from the Mexican
border have a reputation of being easy on drug pushers, partly because of
lack of jail space. ``There's a certain attitude that once this stuff clears
the border states, it's like, `Now I'm home free,' '' says Mendrala.
``That's why you see the increase.'' Heaps has asked her dealer friends why
they focus on Salt Lake when larger cities with larger markets are so close.
``Why Utah? Why not Las Vegas or Los Angeles? [The dealers say], `We go
there, we go to jail. We go here, we get busted and we go home to get
more.''' Heroin's potency is also part of its appeal.

By the time they are ready to try heroin, users have taken other drugs, says
the U.'s Okelberry. Teens are talked into trying it by their friends, who
call heroin- which reaches the brain in seven to 30 seconds -the ``ultimate
high.'' ``They're looking for a better high, a bigger high,'' he says. ``The
tolerance builds up, and they require more and they end up doing it.'' Once
a user starts heroin, it's hard to stop. The drug alters parts of the brain
that regulate emotions, dulling pain and enhancing pleasure. Tolerance
develops quickly, so users need more just to deaden the misery of
withdrawal, which comes within three or four hours of a heavy user's last
hit. And because how they manage pain is out of whack, the cramps, diarrhea
and shakes associated with withdrawal seem unbearable. Heaps threw up 13
hours straight the first time she injected heroin at age 16. By the time she
decided to quit, she was doing $200 shots just to get high. ``I went from
using it once a week to every day. I never was able to stop.'' Heroin found
on Utah streets today is about as potent as it comes.

The bulk is hand-delivered from the makers in Mexico, according to the DEA,
so it hasn't been cut with fillers like sugar or powdered milk. It can be as
pure as 75 percent. With increased purity comes a bigger risk of death. Salt
Lake City Sgt. David Thurgood says each week he sees four to six overdoses.
At least one patient dies. ``You're taking the biggest chance of your life
shooting up heroin, and there's nothing you can do about it.'' Heaps has
overdosed so often she's what paramedics call a repeat customer, although
she didn't always get help from the medics.

She overdosed once while with her friends, who instead of calling for help,
stripped her naked and dumped her in a bathtub of water. Heroin overdoses
pose a difficult challenge for rescue workers.

Once a person stops breathing, crews have four to six minutes to administer
what they call their ``miracle drug,'' or else brain cells start dying. When
they find an unconscious patient and they don't know the cause, rescuers
have three options: pump the person with vitamin B, glucose or Narcan. It's
clear Narcan is needed when medics spot the track marks or the syringes or
spoons filled with brown syrupy liquid.

A full dose, two milligrams, of the narcotic antagonist will knock heroin
off the brain's receptor sites within minutes. ``We'll have a person that's
all but dead,'' says Thurgood. ``They're not breathing. Their heart's still
beating.

They're one minute from death. They'll [the fire department] shoot them with
Narcan and they're up in two minutes. . . . It brings them out of the
overdose.'' Brass says firefighters used to empty a vial, containing five
doses, once every couple of months.

Now they go through a couple of vials a week. His patients are not always
grateful. ``We picked up a guy in South Salt Lake,'' Brass says. ``He was
furious at us. . . . We took his high away from him and he took it out on us
in the back of the ambulance.

We just couldn't believe it.'' There is a way out of addiction, though it
usually comes with a police record. Heaps found her way to Odyssey House
after she was caught selling heroin, spent 3 months in jail and was
sentenced to treatment.

Police arrested Tisdale for robbing rest homes and says she was sent to
Odyssey House instead of prison on a ``fluke.'' Their time at Odyssey- 6
months for Heaps and 5 for Tisdale- is the longest they've been straight
since they started taking drugs.

But they fear relapsing: Experts say 60 percent of addicts usually succumb.
Both Heaps and Tisdale have tried quitting before but came back to
heroin-for Heaps, the day she graduated from her first treatment program.
But the women have hope. The person who introduced Heaps to heroin works at
Odyssey House, and Tisdale says since she's been in rehab she's learned to
deal with her problems without resorting to drugs. ``I'm making better
choices,'' Tisdale says. ``I know there's something better than waking up to
that next shot.''

Luciano Colonna Utah Harm Reduction Coalition
81 O Street, Salt Lake City, UT 84103
phone: (801) 532-5081
fax: (801) 532-5081
lcolonna@xmission.com

Checked-by: Don Beck