IN DUPAGE, TEEN ADDICTION DEFYING STEREOTYPES

Jared says drug addictions brought him nothing but misery. He says he was
robbed at gunpoint, arrested for cocaine possession and driven into a
heroin habit that took 35 pounds from his athletic frame.

But Jared didn't fit the stereotype of a junkie headed for early death or
Skid Row.

He was a 17-year-old from Naperville whose parents took him to church and
encouraged his academic and athletic interests. After school, Jared said he
worked part time at an ice-cream store, earning money to sustain his habit.

Jared's dual life represents an unsettling trend that suburban
substance-abuse counselors say they began to notice about five years ago.

Increasingly, they said, the addicts who walk through their doors in the
western and northwestern suburbs are younger, well-educated and more likely
to be using a multitude of substances--from inhaling paint thinner to
snorting crushed Ritalin or injecting heroin.

"Drug use among teens today is much harder and it progresses much quicker,"
said Claudia Evenson, who until recently was director of clinical services
at Naperville's Linden Oaks Hospital, one of the largest adolescent drug
treatment centers in DuPage County.

"I've been doing this for 18 years, and I've never been as concerned as I
am these days," she said. "We have 14- and 15-year-old kids becoming
heavily involved."

Although the numbers are relatively small, the students being hospitalized
or arrested in connection with heroin abuse in the suburbs are indicative
of a larger pool of teenagers abusing hardcore drugs, according to
counselors and law enforcement officials.

The anecdotal evidence is backed up by a 1995 survey by the Illinois
Department of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse, which found increases in
nearly every category of teenage drug use when compared with 1993. About 2
percent of all urban students reported using heroin, up from 1.3 percent in
1993.

A separate 1996 survey of 12,214 students in 6th through 8th grades in the
Naperville Community Unit School District 203 and Indian Prairie School
District 204 showed increases in use of marijuana, cocaine, pills, tobacco
and heroin.

Earlier this year, Naperville police said they had worked with school
leaders and counselors to identify more than 30 teenagers in various stages
of heroin addiction and recovery.

Two months ago, Hazelden Chicago, a private drug rehabilitation and
counseling firm, opened an adolescent outpatient clinic in Lombard. "The
kids here have the money to buy these drugs," said Rhonda Sweedler,
clinical coordinator.

The office opened two months ago and will work with 30 DuPage County high
schools on prevention and education. Sweedler expects to admit 150
youngsters to various treatment programs by the end of the year.

At Linden Oaks, Evenson said, the story is much the same.

As recently as 1995, Evenson said, the center was busy if it had 15 or 20
teenagers in treatment for various addictions. But this spring, she said
Linden Oaks was averaging nearly 40 youngsters at any given time.

Evenson said three years ago no teenagers at Linden Oaks were being treated
for heroin use. Two years ago, an estimated 25 percent of those being
rehabilitated were coming off the drug, she said, and in the first few
months of 1998, half of the adolescents who sought treatment were dealing
with heroin addiction.

Jared, who is now 19 and has moved out of the county, and "John," another
teenager from DuPage, said they began their habits in social settings,
believing they could maintain control.

"Even after I started heroin, I told myself I would never use needles,"
Jared said. "But I did, searching for a bigger high. The drug completely
turns around your way of thinking."

John said he first snorted heroin in 1996 in a car on the Eisenhower
Expressway, an impulsive decision made just a few days before the start of
his senior year of high school. He said he used the narcotic almost every
day for the next 16 months.

"I would wake up and it would be, `OK, how do I score now?' " John said. "I
lost control, and everything else became secondary."

By last summer, John said he was driving into the city twice a day to buy
narcotics, using heroin every 12 hours.

He said he finally forced himself to ask his mother for help after feeling
his spirit was dead and his body was ready to give up. "I just wasn't a
person anymore," John said.

John said he has been clean since starting treatment at Linden Oaks in
February, but others have not been so lucky.

Though DuPage County Coroner Richard Ballinger said his office has not
noted an increase in accidental drug overdoses among adolescents, there
have been a few.

Ballinger said the latest DuPage County teenager to lose his life to drugs
was a 17-year-old from Darien who died in Hinsdale Hospital Jan. 13. The
coroner said the cause was ruled as opiate intoxication, with a morphine
level in his body indicative of a heroin overdose.

Joe Ruggiero, chief of the DuPage County state's attorney's narcotics unit,
said he has seen a marked increase in teenage defendants charged with drug
dealing over the last 12 months. He said the most noticeable increases have
come in cases involving marijuana and LSD. But the unit does not keep
separate records on cases involving teens.

Ruggiero said he is concerned by the growing presence of harder drugs in
cases his office handles.

"Even two or three years ago, we very seldom saw heroin in DuPage,"
Ruggiero said. "But now we're seeing it all the time. Police execute a
search warrant, and it's not unusual at all for heroin to pop up."

Statewide, the percentage of teenagers 16 and younger who are incarcerated
for drug offenses has increased to 13 percent of the total 2,120 inmates in
juvenile detention centers, up from 5.7 percent of 1,403 inmates in 1993,
according to the Illinois Department of Corrections.

In the suburbs, school officials and parents are seeking help from the
community through awareness programs and cooperation with drug treatment
providers. But family denial is a problem that often hinders efforts,
counselors say.

Part of the challenge is that more parents today have experimented with
drugs. Experts say that makes their job tougher.

One DuPage County mother said she was shocked at the availability of drugs
and brazenness of her daughter's friends. She found a card, given to her
daughter for her 16th birthday, that had contained a tab of LSD with the
accompanying words, "Have Fun!"

John and Jared said they may know why teenagers just like them--kids who
live in safe neighborhoods, attend good schools and enjoy supportive
families--can wind up battling hard drugs.

"There's no fear," John said. "Kids don't know just how afraid they should
be. They are still willing to try anything."

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski