TEEN'S YEARS OF ADDICTION EXACT A HIGH PRICE FROM FAMILY

The battle scars pock the suburban home, the suburban life, of the Gertig
family.

There are the patchedover holes in the walls where their son landed
punches and the gouges he left on a table with a kitchen knife. There is
the basketball hoop, where his banished friends hid drugs in the base for
him.

There also are the empty 401(k) accounts, drained of more than $50,000 in a
sixyear campaign that delivered a druggedup 12yearold to a safe, and so
far, sober 18.

Before the worst was over, the family had foreclosed on its financial
future and was emotionally spent, as well, said June Gertig.

"You feel like you have been fired from the middle class," said Gertig, 54,
a lawyer from Fairfax, who with her husband, Joseph, 54, spent more than
$80,000 in all on treatment to wrest their son from drugs.

In the suburbs, drug dealing plays out with less of the violence associated
with urban areas, but it still brings mayhem, destruction and often
paralyzing shame.

"When you hear the word drugs, you think of the inner city," June Gertig
said. "It evokes stereotypes. You would like to use the word they. You
don't want to use the word we. But it is us."

To help put a face on the suburban problem, Gertig agreed to be interviewed
and identified. She said she wants families like hers to move beyond denial
and know that the threat to their children is real.

Yet she could not overcome her motherly instinct to protect her son and
asked that he not be identified. She does not want him publicly labeled a
drug addict, she said, though an addict, she believes, is exactly what he is.

Given his addiction, she said, the threat to him is constant with so many
drugs readily accessible.

"Families are dying out here," Gertig said. "You want life to be good for
your child. But you watch your child doing things that would predestine
their demise. It is so profoundly saddening to a parent. It's paralyzing."

Fairfax teenagers can easily obtain LSD and inhalants, as well as new
versions of marijuana, which are as much as 10 times as potent as many
parents remember from the 1970s.

And there are hundreds of dealers — both teenagers and adults — ever ready
to meet the demand. Or to tempt. They deliver to malls, fastfood joints,
movie theaters, parks and motels. They'll even deliver to your home, or to
your child's school.

"It's a way of life, and it's sort of crept up on us," said Rosemary Lynch,
50, first vice president of the Fairfax County Council of PTAs. "The most
difficult problem is parental denial, especially in Fairfax County. They're
willing to admit that, yes we have a drug problem, but it's not my child."
In the last four years, 6,000 children have been referred to county drug
treatment programs, with an equal number pointed to private programs.

In the homes where drug use has been detected, many parents have become
wardens, trying to direct their children's every move while struggling to
free them from the grips of chemical dependency or keep them from getting
hooked.

Gertig's son began using drugs when he was a seventhgrader in private
school. "He got marijuana from a friend who got it from his older brother,"
Gertig recalled.

Then, her son's best friend was caught with drug paraphernalia.

Her son said he was not using marijuana, and while Gertig suspected that
might be a lie, she accepted his denial because she wanted to believe him.
A year later, she and her husband, a social science researcher, had their
suspicions confirmed.

When they returned home one evening, they discovered that their son, then
13, two of his friends and an 18yearold who supplied them with drugs had
been smoking marijuana in the house. "I told the 18yearold that if I ever
saw him again at my house, that I'd call the police. I was furious."

But her son became angry. He was worried about what his friends thought.
"I'm not trying to say my child was led astray by other children," Gertig
said. "He chose to do what he did. But there's almost nothing you can do to
compete with their peer groups."

The more she and her husband tried to control their son's schedule the
tenser the household became. "There was shouting," she said. "Us shouting
at him. Him shouting at us." And she was getting scared. Instead of
lessening, her son's use of marijuana intensified. He smoked daily and also
began using LSD, the Gertigs later found out.

They grounded him.

He sneaked out in the middle of the night, while they slept.

His friends brought him marijuana during the wee hours of the morning,
neatly tucking it at the base of the family basketball hoop.

There was more shouting. He punched holes in the wall. He broke chairs. He
drove deep knife cuts into furniture.

His attendance at school became sporadic, his grades plummeted, and the
Gertigs received reports of behavior problems.

They wondered whether their child had a mental disorder and sought
counseling. Initially, a therapist focused on that possibility. But for all
of the expensive advice, their son continued to smoke dope.

Eventually, when her son was almost 14, Gertig sent him for a substance
abuse assessment at a private firm. They concluded that his problem was
drugs, not a psychological disorder. "I didn't appreciate the connection
between drugs and the erosion of behavior. You have to deal with the
substance abuse first."

Even after her son was placed in a private daytreatment program, he
continued to smoke marijuana and became so much more belligerent that she
feared he might hit her.

The rage escalated until the day her son called her "(expletive) bitch."

She snapped.

"I said to myself, 'I don't have to live this way,' " Gertig said. She
threw his coat out the door and screamed, "You follow.

"He hadn't reached bottom, I had."

He went to a friend's house but, within the week, agreed to go to a
shortterm residential treatment facility for 30 days.

When his time was up, he returned home but couldn't stay away from his
friends or his drugs. Finally, he wound up in the juvenile detention
center, held on a property offense charge.

The Gertigs decided they wanted their son to sit there for six weeks. He
spent his 15th birthday in the center. "That got his attention," she said.

He enrolled in his fifth drugtreatment program — this one a sixmonth
program — listened to his counselors and dropped his drugusing friends.

Now, at 18, he has not used drugs in more than two years.

The Gertigs are glad they did not give up on their son, who graduated from
high school and is working. They have an adult relationship now, based on
mutual respect.

But their son lost a big piece of his childhood, and the Gertigs know a
relapse is always a danger.

"When I drive around Fairfax County now, I look at a subdivision or a row
of town houses, and I know that in a lot of these homes, exactly this kind
of battle is raging," June Gertig said. "Five years ago, I didn't have a
clue."