FAMILY, FRIENDS MAKE IT EASIER FOR ADDICTS TO GET HIGH

It's the wife who calls the office and says her husband has the flu and
won't be at work, while he sleeps off a night of drinking.

It's the employer who lets a worker repeatedly show up late because she's
good at her job.

It's the parents who don't report missing jewelry to the police even though
they know their son has been stealing from them for the past year.

It's called enabling, behavior by family and friends that allows addicts to
continue abusing drugs without consequences.

Friends enable drug users when they drive them to get drugs. Business
owners enable users when they buy stolen merchandise.

And if all that enabling ceased, said Hope House drug counselor Susan Levy,
drug addiction would be more difficult to sustain.

While laws ban drug use, society does not demand strict enforcement, said
police Capt. Edward Katona of Mount Olive. Drug problems can start when
parents ignore use of so called "gateway drugs" such as cigarettes or
alcohol taken from a home liquor cabinet, he said.

"We are a pretty permissive society," Katona said.

Julia Lange's son, Jason, died five years ago after inhaling nitrous oxide.
Drugs apparently helped Jason deal with the pain of his parents' divorce
and the embarrassment of his learning disability, she said.

"I never knew," said Lange of Washington Township, explaining that her
ignorance helped her son use drugs. "I knew nothing about inhalants. I
didn't know what a whippet (a small canister of nitrous oxide) was."

She said the tank of the gas that killed her son had been stored in her
cellar several days, prior to a party. She thought it might be helium for
blowing up balloons, she said, although she had taken Jason a few months
before to a clinic because he had used nitrous oxide. He was tested and
found clean, so she let it slip.

"That's the American way," she said. "We have a problem, we deal with it.
We don't talk about it with friends and family."

Shame, she said, keeps parents and friends silent.

She has since taught herself about drugs and was a founder of Washington
Township's Municipal Alliance Committee, an anti-drug organization.

With heroin, she said, parents often don't believe their children are using
because it's considered a skid row drug.

Levy deals with denial daily in classes aimed at teaching people how to
deal with drug addiction in the family. It cuts across all ages, social and
economic standing and parenting styles, she said.

"Good parents can have addicted children," Levy said. "Getting them to
realize that is the start of ending the addiction. ... An addict is
addicted to the substance. An enabler is addicted to the addict."

Roles change, relationships collapse

Curing the enabler is often harder than curing the addict, said Gail
Cassese, director of substance abuse counseling at Hope House.

Enablers often take on responsibilities for addicts: shopping, cleaning,
bill paying and caring for children. That leaves the addicted more time for
drugs.

Counselors work to get people to admit they are covering up for the
addicted one, Levy said. "You have to teach them it's OK to say enough is
enough," Cassese said.

But they also have to be ready for the consequences, she said. "Recovery
has broken up more marriages than addiction," Cassese said.

That's because roles change. As the addict takes on responsibilities, such
as bill paying or child care, the other spouse often feels left out and may
become resentful.

Edward Jeffrey, a 25-year heroin user, said his family helped him use drugs
by allowing him to stay at their homes and not insisting he get help. They
knew something was wrong, Jeffrey said, but never talked to him about it.
When they found out he was doing drugs, he said, they cut him out of their
lives.

He stole money from his parents and burglarized homes. He said there is an
active black market for stolen merchandise, and buyers congregate wherever
drug addicts gather.

Jewelry and bicycles top the list of stolen goods, police Lt. Rick
McConnell of Denville said. But families often do not report missing money
or items to the police, he said.

"People have got to get those people some help," he said.

While store owners who buy stolen merchandise face criminal charges, few
are arrested, Dover police Sgt. Frank Coppinger said.

A Denville jeweler, Jim Messinger, said teens come in twice a month with
what appear to be stolen goods. He holds all merchandise for 24 hours
before a sale is final, which gives him a chance to check the quality of an
item and whether it's stolen.

Stolen merchandise often is easy to spot: the old, expensive gold watch
that a teenager says was a gift from her boyfriend.

Though Messinger reports the missing items, their owners often would rather
file an insurance claim than a police report.

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski