SURVIVING DRUGS

Teens in treatment battle many problems

The four teenagers, three boys and a girl, are trying to kick drug
habits. Blake, 17, has his hair buzzed close to his scalp and looks like
he's in his mid20s. Arron and Joseph are both 16 and complete
opposites. Arron is slender and distracted; Joseph is heavyset and
attentive. Maria, 17, wears brown lipstick, darker lip liner, black
fingernail polish and black oversize jeans and a black Tshirt.

The four are enrolled in the Dallas County Juvenile Department's
yearold day treatment program. The 50person program is housed in a
tired brick building near Parkland Memorial Hospital. It includes four
hours of academic classes daily, 10 hours of counseling and therapy each
week and activities such as sports or art. Each youth is subjected to
random drug tests and must work through a system of privileges and
responsibilities to graduate. Joseph, Arron, Maria and Blake are at
different steps of that process.

Among them, they have used tobacco, alcohol, marijuana, cocaine, toluene
(as an inhalant), speed, acid and heroin. "I was a junkie," Maria said.

For reasons no one seems able to explain, Dallas County has not suffered
the slew of fatal heroin overdoses that Collin County has. That may
simply reflect a recordkeeping problem; not all Dallas County medical
examiners list exactly which drugs caused a drugrelated death. (They
should.)

Or there may be a difference in how kids in different neighborhoods view
the drug. These Dallas County teens didn't see heroin as glamorous.

Said Blake: "I knew too many people who did heroin, and they were always
depressed and sat in the dark."

Arron said cocaine has higher status than heroin.

"If she came into my neighborhood, we'd make fun of her and call her a
junkie," said Arron, glancing over at Maria. "But if you use cocaine,
you're cool."

Joseph said he tried snorting heroin because he didn't like how his
friends became after injecting "like they were gonna die."

Yet Blake and Maria said they liked using a needle. Just the feeling of
injecting something was a rush.

The kids in Dallas County's juvenile substance abuse unit are, on
average, less affluent and more ethnically and racially diverse than
teens in Plano. Their drug use, however, is similar:

* They have used drugs for months or years before they land in
treatment.

* They are usually with friends when they use drugs.

* They like taking risks.

* Their parents didn't know about their drug use, didn't want to know,
knew but didn't know how to intervene, or just didn't care.

* They all said they'd stayed clean for a while but wound up using
again.

For these kids, just as for kids in Plano or anywhere else, staying away
from drugs will be a long, hard struggle. The substance abuse unit only
has enough staff to check on each kid once, one month after he or she
graduates. The only other monitoring comes from the youths' probation
officers, who can order drug tests. Lynda Williams, the unit's leader,
would like to be able to increase that monitoring.

"I'd like to know whether what we're doing is working," she said.

Day treatment workers have begun taking kids close to graduation to
Narcotics Anonymous meetings. The goal is to match them with a sponsor
they can call anytime they are tempted to use drugs.

Joseph has already found a sponsor through his aunt. He's ready to
change his life. Maria, who will probably stay in treatment a few more
months, says she knows she'll have trouble staying clean.

"It's real hard for me to quit because I'm always around heroin," she
said.

If these young people are to succeed, it will take strong inner
direction and more support from a community that understands the
problems they are battling.