'We're Going to Confront It Head-On'

AFTER DEATH, CITY WANTS TO ADDRESS USE OF HALLUCINOGENIC MUSHROOMS

GLOUCESTER - To Mayor Carolyn Kirk and Police Chief Michael Lane, the
revelation that a Gloucester High School sophomore ingested
hallucinogenic mushrooms before his drug-related death last weekend
seemed a rare and startling aberration.

"I'm not alarmed right now," Lane said several days after Dylan
Hill's body was found last Sunday on a beach here. "I'm concerned
that this is an isolated incident among some young people."

But to several youths and community workers interviewed in this city,
the recreational use of reality-twisting mushrooms came as little or
no surprise.

"It's quite a common thing, honestly," said Ashley Ross, 20, a
freshman at North Shore Community College who graduated from
Gloucester High School. "People get drunk on the weekends, and they
do mushrooms."

Following Hill's death, which occurred after the 16-year-old wandered
away from friends last Saturday night during a party at his house,
Kirk and civic leaders pledged to address the tragedy with frank talk
at a community forum Thursday. But in a seaport where suspicions of a
teenage "pregnancy pact" brought unwanted attention and memories of a
decades-old heroin scourge continue to linger, the tragedy has set
this struggling city back on its heels.

"Somebody might say this is a one-off. Sweep it under the rug," Kirk
said in her City Hall office. "But I'm saying, you know what, we're
going to confront it head-on."

For many adults here, a primer on Psilocybin mushrooms, an illegal
Class C drug, will be a lesson that many of their children might
already have heard. One Gloucester High sophomore, whiling away an
afternoon outside a downtown pharmacy, said mushroom use is rampant
among his peers.

"It's just like a normal thing, like weed," said the student, who
declined to be identified. "Nobody thinks anything about it.
Everybody down here does mushrooms."

The risks can be enormous, particularly when taken with marijuana, as
Hill and at least two of his friends allegedly did at the party. The
mushrooms, which have been part of the drug culture since at least as
far back as the 1960s, can cause hallucinations, panic attacks, and psychosis.

"There is a heightened or enhanced sense of perception," said Kevin
Norton, president of CAB Health & Recovery Services, which provides
substance-abuse treatment in northeastern Massachusetts. "Colors are
brighter, sounds are more intriguing. All of that is distorting
reality and leads people to places they shouldn't be."

When used in combination with marijuana, which some of the high
schoolers also ingested at Hill's father's house near Eastern Point,
judgment can be further impaired and inhibitions stripped away.

"There have always been kids we know who use mushrooms," Norton said.
"But it often stays under the radar because they don't get caught,
and they don't end up in emergency rooms."

Mushroom use is fairly easy to disguise, health and youth workers
said, because there are no paraphernalia involved, the drug is not
considered addictive, and there are no painful withdrawal symptoms
that can lead to hospitals or treatment programs.

There was no word from police on where the mushrooms came from
originally. In the aftermath of Hill's death, Kirk said, city
officials will work hard to assess how prevalent mushrooms have
become in Gloucester. "We're going to find out. We have to have the
appropriate level of fear," the mayor said. "If I were a parent today
anywhere in Massachusetts, I'd be asking my kid, 'are you using mushrooms?' "

At Thursday's meeting, she plans to brief the audience on the
investigation and encourage the public to share what they know about
drug use in the city.

One youth worker who operates a teenage drop-in center here said she
has known about hallucinogenic mushroom use for more than a year.

"One youth told me he tried it once and wouldn't do it again, but
that he loved the trip," said Loretta Peres, who runs the Chill Zone,
a large downtown space where dozens of teenagers gather on Monday and
Wednesday evenings from 6 to 9 p.m., do their homework, and receive a
hot meal. "But that led me to believe that he most certainly would do
it again, which he did."

Peres said she never approached city officials with the information.
"I didn't have anything about where they got it from," Peres said.
"It would have been just me saying, 'Oh, youths are using mushrooms.'
They would have just looked at me and said, 'Oh, yeah, OK.'"

Rick Doucette, who directs teenage programs at the YMCA, echoed the
sense that mushrooms are not a new phenomenon. "If you're looking to
find drugs, that network is not hard to find," said Doucette, who
emphasized that he did not believe mushrooms are widely ingested in
Gloucester. "It's not like there's a stand on every street corner."

Lane, the police chief, said he could recall only about a half-dozen
cases of mushroom use in Gloucester in the past eight years. In one
of these cases, Lane said, a person died after jumping from a
four-story condominium.

In Hill's death, the chief said, the combination of mushrooms and
marijuana appears to been an insidious mix that led Hill, a soccer
and lacrosse player, to leave his house and walk to the nearby cove.

A preliminary autopsy showed fluid in his lungs. Police are saying
that a combination of mushrooms and marijuana was a major
contributing factor in events that led to the death.

On a wall near where his body was discovered, friends have placed
candles, flowers, and photographs of their classmate and neighbor.
Jesse Doherty, 33, walked his French bulldog near the wall and
lamented yet another drug-related death in a city that has been
dogged by an enduring perception of entrenched substance abuse.

"Kids are bound to experiment . . . but I would never equate
mushrooms with such a tragic death," Doherty said.

Kirk said she believes drug use in Gloucester is no different from
the rate in many surrounding communities. Norton, the substance-abuse
treatment provider, said he concurs.

But because this is Gloucester, the tragedy has conjured dark
memories of a not-too-distant past that many residents want to move beyond.

For the 16-year-old standing outside the downtown pharmacy, the death
has prompted some hard thinking and a worried resolution.

"Me and my boys were talking the other day, and I said I wouldn't do
mushrooms," the teenager said. "Everybody agreed with me. No one in
this town is going to do mushrooms again."