KIDS PLAYING WITH POISON

So alone.

Even though the teenager had stopped hiding his heroin addiction from
his siblings, his counselor, and his parents, he still felt alone in
his fight. He sought their help, their solace, their understanding,
and he told them of the evil that had engulfed him. But despite all
he shared, only he knew the shame and pain of this odious addiction.

Only he knew how it came to possess him, to where he stole from his
sister, or his parents, to muster the money for the next fix. Only he
knew, when he was confronted, how he lied to the people trying to
save him - how he hurt the people he loved, and how this hurt was
killing him. He knew the intensity of the hatred that festered inside
- - it was hatred for what he had become, what he was doing to himself,
and hatred for this drug that he thought he once loved.

Only he knew, when he looked in the mirror, what he saw - not the
cute teenager with the clean look and inviting smile, but a lying,
stealing, withering wreck. This, even more than the drug, sickened
him. Looking in the mirror, he often wondered which would consume him
first - the heroin or the hatred.

The young man overdosed one night and died in his bed.

In this, sadly, he wasn't alone. Twenty-eight others like him -
young, naive and ensnared by a drug they didn't understand and
couldn't handle - were taken from us last year by this drug.

But people are fighting back. Tired of waiting for the
law-enforcement establishment to open its collective eyes to the
problem, several private citizens have acted on their own,
forming support groups, sponsoring advisory forums, and planning
vital panel discussions such as the one set for Tuesday night in Easton.

The Unity Church will host the latest gathering, which comes in the
wake of two other similar meetings where parents, recovering addicts
and officials - finally - reveal the grip that heroin and OxyContin
have on this region. Have on our kids.

The grip is unrelenting. In fact, at the discussion, participants
will not waste your time by telling you heroin is here and you need
to be watchful. We're way beyond that.

Riding the rising wave of OxyContin abuse, the drug and its dealers
descended on this region a few years ago with affordable heroin. They
have, in a short time, done more damage and brought more tragedy to
this generation of young adults than any other blight.

Twenty-nine dead in one year - and those are the overdoses we know
about. The number, at least for this region, dwarfs that associated
with drunken driving accidents - it's not even close. Yet the
contagion continues unabated, and still isn't receiving near the
attention it warrants.

Police are overwhelmed and are unable to devote resources to
heroin dealers. The Plymouth County district attorney's office,
among others, is both unable and unsure how to respond - it wants to
help teenage addicts, but doing so might make it appear soft on crime.

But the biggest obstacle in combating this scourge remains the stigma
associated with it. Users are often vilified and vanquished - and
their families, ostracized.

How wrong we have been to respond this way, for the heroin addicts of
today are our cheerleading daughters, our honor roll sons, our
coddled and loved teenagers whom, for whatever reason, delved into
something their brains and bodies couldn't handle. Only they, alone,
know what this drug is doing to them - only they know the terror of a
morning without a fix, the numbing reality of having to beg,
borrow and steal to buy drugs, or the shame that eats away at their
insides the same way the drug does.

Only they understand why they still do the drug, even as they watch
their friends die from it. But the rest of us can learn - and try to
understand - so our kids know that all of us want to help them. So
even if they feel alone or feel they want to be alone because of what
they've done or become, they never are. And never will be.