Waking up to heroin

By Rena Pederson / The Dallas Morning News

What stood out was that they looked so ordinary.

They looked like people who might be eating with their kids at Wendy's.
Only these people were sitting in a church in Plano looking very worried.
They were there on a Tuesday night after work because they are scared to
death their children are going to get hooked on heroin. Or are addicted
already.

The parking lot and the small sanctuary at Preston Meadow Lutheran church
were packed. Hundreds of people showed up for the quickly organized drug
awareness meeting.

Leslie David, a high school senior, had gone to the church leaders and said
something needed to be done about the drug problem. Another teenaged member
of the church had been unconscious for days in the hospital as a result of
a heroin overdose. At least seven young people have died of heroin
overdoses in Plano this year.

"It's scary because it's kids our age who are dying from the heroin
overdoses," Miss David explained later. "It could be us. These are just
regular kids. We need to know what to do about our friends. And how to say
no."

Church leaders responded by organizing the event Tuesday. "We can no longer
say 'It's not my problem'," said Carol Lausch, one of the lay leaders who
stepped forward. "It can and does happen to anyone."

"Derrick," a local college student, told the audience Tuesday that he
started smoking cigarettes at 13. He said he had honest, loving parents who
taught him morals and values. He made good grades, but like many teenagers,
he still lacked confidence. "I wanted to be grown up. Like the adults. And
drink and smoke."

He and his friends started raiding their home liquor cabinets for booze.
Then he started mixing the alcohol with marijuana. And by the time he
started attending Baylor University in Waco, he was using cocaine and
drifted into snorting heroin.

"I know it's a good Baptist school, but there are drugs there, lots of
them, just like any college campus," Derrick said.

His parents were "clueless" because he was bright enough to keep his grades
up. Money wasn't a problem at first because drugs were cheap. A capsule of
heroin was only $10. But the high from snorting faded, so he began
"shooting up" with "black tar" heroin.

Soon he had a $200aday habit. If he did not have heroin every day, he was
wracked with sweat, shakes, convulsions, nausea. "My body woke me up every
day," he said.

He started selling marijuana and then heroin to get money for his own drug
use. But even after a drugdazed car wreck put him into intensive care, he
didn't want to break the habit until the day his mom caught him stealing
$50 out of her purse. He defiantly pushed past her. Only later when he was
shooting up, did it sink in that he had become so addicted he would walk
over his own mother to get high.

After treatment in Minnesota and halfway house stays in Arizona, he has
been "clean and sober" for 15 months. He's an honors student now and
attending recovery meetings.

"I had forgotten how to live. I forgot how to get my ass out of bed in the
morning, if you'll pardon my language. I'm having to learn how to be
courteous to other people instead of thinking about myself all the time.
Now I am becoming the kind of kid my parents raised me to be. I was curious
as a kid, always getting into mischief. But the main problem was I had a
hole inside of me. I didn't have God inside."

Then Dr. Paul Hull, a Plano physician who has decided to make fighting the
drug problem a personal mission, said the addiction problem is as painful
as any disease he has seen. "If these people had cancer, they would receive
compassion. Instead, they are shunned," he said.

Chris Fisher, the president of the church youth group, stood up to say he
had become concerned because he had seen many of his peers "either already
into the drugs or starting." He said most young people still do not realize
the power of drugs and that drugs were attracting those who "cannot accept
reality for what it is." He said the adults needed to help because "society
does not hold high what man ought to be and ought not to be."

Dr. John Talmadge, a clinical psychiatrist, described the teenaged use of
heroin as a "terrible and grave crisis which defies description. It is a
cunning, baffling and powerful disease which affects all races, incomes,
creeds." He said it will take a changing of hearts as well as treatment to
fight the disease, but he said faith can make a change of heart possible.
"After all, transformation is about waking up," he said.

It was a powerful and gripping evening.

Word apparently spread in Plano. Later in the week, Mrs. Lausch, who
coordinated the Tuesday program, said, "My phone is ringing off the wall.
People want to put on a similar program for their organizations or church
group. I'll be glad to help. This was not a oneshot deal. We are committed
to facing this thing."

And to show how serious she was, she offered to give her home phone number
to anyone who needs information.