GENERATION RX

Adrift In A Sea Of Psychotropic Pharmacology, It's Easy For A Kid To Drown

You couldn't miss him: a teenager dressed always in black, with Elvis
sideburns and a hard-charging way of bounding up the stairs, as if life
were moving too slowly for him. In the same class as my oldest son at the
Science and Engineering Magnet at Townview, occasionally at our house for
all-night LAN parties, Luke Stone was likable, smart and had an appetite
for adventure, the guy willing to try anything once. He was a natural
leader, a person who drew people from all walks of life into his orbit with
his energy and enthusiasm.

He also had a sweet side. He'd grown up going to church and carried a
picture of Jesus in his wallet. He was drawn to beautiful, troubled
girlfriends who needed rescuing. Luke Stone was your basic good kid.

But on May 14 a year ago, when Luke was a 20-year-old student at the
University of Texas at Dallas, his daring nature killed him. The coroner's
verdict: accidental drug overdose.

This isn't another "drugs are bad for you" story. It is a trip into another
world, one far different from that of Luke's parents--even though they'd
grown up in the '60s and '70s and had their own encounters with illegal
drugs. David and Sondra Stone viewed their experimentation, particularly
with marijuana, as a normal part of growing up. They didn't want their kids
to become addicts, of course, but as long as they stayed away from "hard
drugs" like cocaine and heroin, they figured the kids would come out all
right, just like they had.

Luke Stone's parents know that isn't true anymore. They didn't realize the
landscape of substance abuse has radically changed.

Today, kids Luke's age swim in a sea of psychotropic pharmacology--pills,
potions and powders legally prescribed for everything from depression to
attention deficit disorder. When they want to get high, they're more likely
to turn to benzodiazepines, a class of drugs like Valium that treat anxiety
and panic attacks. Instead of shooting heroin, they score synthetic opiates
such as Vicodin, Percocet, Dilaudid or Tylenol with codeine. To get a buzz
or pull an all-nighter for an exam, they pop pills like Ritalin and
Adderall, amphetamines that treat ADD.

It makes sense. You don't have to find a drug dealer to get Xanax. You just
have to rummage in Mom's medicine chest. You don't need to sneak around to
score Adderall. A pediatrician prescribed it because you were driving your
teachers crazy. Why not trade a few Adderall to your roommate, under the
care of a psychiatrist for panic disorder, for some of his Xanax?

If you get caught--well, parents who discover a kid snitching a Lortab
react differently from those who find a crack pipe or syringe.

The explosion in pharmaceuticals has been magnified by the Internet. Not
only are there more psychotropic drugs to choose from, it's easier than
ever to learn what to take, how much to take and what effects to
anticipate. Luke scoured sites like erowid.org--"documenting the complex
relationship between humans and psychoactives"--for information and "trip
reports" on everything from peyote to Percocet. From there, teens are one
click away from an illegal online pharmacy, a cyber medicine cabinet
offering quick, discreet delivery.

A 2004 study at Columbia University found that only 6 percent of 157 Web
sites selling medications actually required a prescription. And last month
the DEA arrested 20 people, from Tyler, Texas, to Bombay, India, as part of
"Operation Cyber Chase," targeting an illegal international ring that used
more than 200 Web sites to distribute prescription narcotics, amphetamines
and steroids.

Web sites to replace them will pop up overnight like psilocybin mushrooms
sprouting in a cow patty.

Fascinated by illicit pharmaceuticals, Luke created a "drug log" of those
he'd tried and their effects. He wasn't alone. Most of his friends at UTD
used pills--in addition to the college mainstays of pot and alcohol--and
turned to Luke for information. He knew what medications could be taken
together and what to stay away from. "Luke was so smart," one friend says.

Intelligence, experimentation and a young man's belief in his own
immortality seduced Luke into believing he knew what he was doing and could
control the outcome.

But dead people don't post trip reports on the Internet.

At age 13, Luke Stone spent 17 days in Australia and New Zealand, one of
the kids chosen for a "student ambassador" program. "He came home a
different kid, a world traveler, you know," says his mother, Sondra Stone
Fishman, who works out of her Oak Cliff home doing computer billing for
doctors. Talking about Luke, Sondra flashes between pride and sudden grief,
in a place she calls "beyond tears."

The older of her two sons, Luke had never been ordinary: whip-smart,
reading before he went to kindergarten, playing chess at 7. They finally
put Luke in a Montessori school to challenge him more. An athlete built
like a brick outhouse, stocky and strong, Luke was the kid who had to be
the pitcher in baseball or the goalie in roller hockey. He thrived on being
in the pressure point, the one who made the difference in the game.

"Luke had tremendous drive," says his father, David Stone. "Wherever he was
going, he was going there like a steam engine. I was proud of him."

But David says his oldest son was always a challenge to raise.

Luke would debate anyone about anything. "His mind was so quick," David
says. "Luke believed he could outthink you. That's what got him into
trouble. He wasn't as smart as he thought he was."

David and Sondra married in 1983. After Luke was born a year later, Sondra
became a stay-at-home mom and loved it. Sondra--not Luke--cried the first
day she dropped him off at preschool.

The couple divorced in the mid-'90s after years of discord. One conflict,
David says, was disciplining their strong-willed son. David, a military
veteran, thought Luke needed tough love. A self-described former hippie,
Sondra believed in a softer approach.

Luke's computer and math skills got him accepted at the Science and
Engineering Magnet at Townview, recently named by Newsweek the sixth-best
school in the nation for its percentage of students passing Advanced
Placement or International Baccalaureate tests. Luke wanted to study
computer science and get an internship with Texas Instruments. If Luke was
a bit of a nerd, though, he was also recognized as an outspoken leader.

Girls loved him. He was self-assured, cool, the guy who would instigate
trouble at the back of the room then sit back and enjoy the fallout. By
ninth grade, Luke had adopted a man-in-black persona. He got a couple of
piercings and spent evenings flailing away on his drum set as rap or
alt-metal music by Static-X and Rob Zombie blasted from his room.

He also went to a Disciples of Christ church with his mother and younger
brother every week, and it was at church camp the summer after his freshman
year that he first got caught with pot. Luke claimed the marijuana found in
his backpack belonged to another kid. Though their minister and the camp
director vouched for his story, Luke and the other boy were charged with
possession. Luke and his mother had to attend counseling sessions once a
week for a while.

Sondra and David had grown up in the '60s and were no strangers to drug
use. They sometimes marveled that they were lucky to have made it through
their teenage years more or less unscathed. Though she was upset, Sondra's
attitude toward Luke's transgression was more laissez-faire than David's,
"because I did it and enjoyed it thoroughly." Luke seemed to be maintaining
his grades, so if he was getting high, he was handling it well. She was
more worried about him smoking cigarettes.

David, who says he abused alcohol as a young adult, took a zero tolerance
attitude. "Luke knew I had smoked pot," David says. "We'd sit down to talk
about it. To me, pot can lead you on to other drugs. I never got through to
him." Luke's argument: Marijuana is natural, no big deal,
you-did-it-so-what's-the-problem. David looked for opportunities to
challenge his son about his drug use, but only once or twice did he suspect
Luke was high.

"I needed hard evidence before I confronted Luke," David says. "He only
responded to hard evidence." Luke always had a one-word retort: hypocrite.

Even so, David saw Luke as a casual user. Like most parents, he didn't have
a clue. Besides, Luke seemed to be on track to get into a good college,
especially after passing a handful of AP tests and scoring a 1380 on his SAT.

His friends tell another story. By the end of high school, Luke was smoking
pot regularly and occasionally doing mushrooms or sipping over-the-counter
cough syrup containing dextromethorphan (DXM), like Robitussin. Luke loved
altering his reality, not because he felt unhappy--though he was angry at
his father about the divorce--but because life was amazing. He admired the
edgy, dangerous life of his idols: rappers and rock stars, alive and dead.
"Luke glamorized that whole lifestyle," says "Dennis," one high school
friend. (All the names of students have been changed.)

"He wanted to try everything," says "Corey," another high school friend who
smoked pot in high school to deal with academic pressure. "He did it
first--and more."

Sometime after graduation in May 2002, Luke first snorted heroin, courtesy
of "Tina," a girl he met through a friend at church.

Described as a "very hot chick" by Luke's buddies, Tina lived in North
Richland Hills and was a year older than Luke. During high school, when
neither could drive, they talked for hours online. After Tina got her
license, she'd pick Luke up on Friday and he'd spend the weekends with her
family. Sondra didn't know that Tina was a heroin addict who dropped out of
high school.

"I thought she was real sweet," says Sondra, who remarried in 2002, about
the time her son started dating Tina. "I thought she was a stable influence
for Luke. I never suspected she had a drug problem. What I didn't like was
that she wasn't doing anything. She didn't work or go to school. She lived
with her parents."

Every now and then Tina dropped out of sight; Sondra would later learn her
son's girlfriend had been in rehab during those times. She now believes
that Luke learned a lot about drugs from Tina.

Luke didn't tell most of his buddies about trying heroin. They looked down
on people who used heroin, cocaine and methamphetamines. Stuff that junkies
use, that can get you addicted. Though one close friend believed Luke
turned to drugs because of depression, most of the others thought he just
enjoyed getting high.

"I don't think he was addicted," says "Rosemary," who dated a friend of
Luke's. "I think he was bored and cocky."

Among his circle of friends at UTD, Luke became known as the expert on
illegal and legal drugs, which was saying something. All of them had
bookmarked erowid.org, the Web site known for its broad and deep "vaults"
of information on recreational drug use. Operated out of California by two
people known only as "Earth" and "Fire," Erowid taps into the collective
knowledge, experience and enthusiasm of users all over the world.

Plano police Detective Courtney Perot, who investigates overdoses--both
fatal and nonfatal--consults Erowid regularly. "You have people using the
drug talking about the effects right there," Perot says. "Some of the
information obtained on these Web sites is beneficial--talking about the
dangers of using various drugs. But there are so many different sites out
there that advocate and encourage usage."

You can search Erowid for information on plants, herbs, psychoactives,
pharmaceuticals, chemicals and new "smart drugs" that supposedly sharpen
your brain. Consider this enthusiastic report from an OxyContin user: "The
drug...gives me the most euphoric high I've ever felt. I have had a lot of
experience with other substances and none compare to OC. I never take more
than one 40 mg pill crushed and taken orally. The effects usually hit
around 45 minutes...The euphoric high will last until I pass out. Smoking
weed while on OC intensifies the opiate 'buzz' for me. I won't take OC
without weed."

Many of the experience reports, however, are warnings. And the range of
substances seems endless. Take this from a guy who crushed up morning glory
seeds (yes, flower seeds), mixed them with water and drank the potion:
"From my experience I CANNOT recommend their use, it was probably the
single most unpleasant experience of my life. Ten hours of intense panic,
(imagined) suffocation, seemingly endless, painful hurling accompanied by
crazy delusions that you are going to die and that your organs went through
a blender are not my idea of a good time."

Other popular sites for illicit use include dancesafe.org, which caters to
the rave/Ecstasy crowd, bluelight.nu, junkylife.com, pillreports.com,
shroomery.org, ecstasy.org, thedea.org, Lycaeum.org, crazymeds.com and
maps.org (Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies). These Web
sites weren't meant to be a source of trivia. Teen users and abusers do
their research here, in the privacy of their bedrooms.

In a study released in April, the Partnership for a Drug-Free America
reported that, for the first time in 17 years, teenagers were more likely
to have abused prescription and over-the-counter medications than illicit
drugs like cocaine, Ecstasy, methamphetamines, heroin and LSD. About one in
five teens has abused a prescription painkiller to get stoned. Eighteen
percent reported nonmedical use of Vicodin, 10 percent admitted they'd used
OxyContin and 10 percent Ritalin or Adderall.

"The current favorite is Xanax," says Gayle Jensen-Savoie, director of Seay
Behavioral Health Center, an adolescent psychiatric and chemical dependency
unit in Plano. "It has a numbing effect. If you are overstimulated in so
many areas, with Xanax you can handle it all. In the last three months, for
the first time we had to detox several kids of Xanax, which we never had to
do before. They were probably taking 16 a day. That's a huge amount. That's
deadly, and then they drink."

In 2004 there were 10 fatalities from mixed-drug overdoses recorded in
Collin County, surpassing those from cocaine or heroin.

One fascinating source of information is posted by the Drug Enforcement
Agency: the Microgram Bulletin, which for 36 years was secretly published
for forensic chemists and narcotics officers
(www.usdoj.gov/dea/programs/forensicsci/microgram). The monthly newsletter
issues intelligence briefs and alerts describing seizures of street drugs,
as well as methods of manufacture and smuggling.

The DEA decided in 2003 to make the Microgram Bulletin public after
recognizing the explosion of information and misinformation about illegal
drugs on the Internet. The DEA now advertises on Google. Plug in Percocet
or Valium, and a sponsored link to the DEA pops up: "Read Our Consumer
Alert Before You Buy Drugs Online. Learn The Law!"

Luke scoured the Internet to study medications and their effects and
interactions. "If you wanted to know something, you asked Luke," says
"Roman," a business major. "He was always known as the experimenter among us."

Luke's first introduction to pills apparently occurred between high school
graduation and the start of his freshman year in college, when he got a job
at UPS. It was hard physical labor with attendant muscle aches; Luke hated
the work but liked being around the blue-collar guys who he thought were
tough, real, ghetto. UPS cohorts introduced Luke to Percocet, a combination
of acetaminophen and oxycodone, an opiate-based painkiller.

Oxycodone has been around since the '20s, but its use exploded after 1996,
when Purdue Pharma began producing the controlled-release pill OxyContin,
which is highly addictive. (In 2003 talk-show host Rush Limbaugh went
public with his addiction to OxyContin after his name surfaced in a
narcotics investigation.)

Percocet quickly became Luke's drug of choice. Though Luke was still dating
Tina, he quit using heroin--cold turkey. He was proud of his willpower. And
the pills allowed him to rationalize, minimize and justify his use of
narcotics. Percocet isn't as bad as heroin. I'm not addicted like Tina. I
need something to handle the pressure.

Like Luke, who was majoring in electrical engineering, his friends at UTD
were very smart, pursuing degrees in physics, math, engineering and
computer science. All of them popped Adderall, an amphetamine, to stay
awake through marathon study sessions. Despite its image as a study drug,
no more potent than No-Doz, Adderall is a psycho-stimulant, says
Jenson-Savoie of the Seay Center. "It increases heart rate, increases blood
pressure. If you are snorting it, it goes right into your blood. You could
blow your heart out."

"Jason" says "you don't do Adderall for fun. It just helps you concentrate
and stay up two days, drinking energy drinks." But after the tests were
over, Luke had to take something to bring him down enough to sleep. For
many of the students, that was the major appeal of the drugs that offered
sleep such as Soma and Ambien.

Corey, a physics major, was prescribed Adderall in high school for ADD but
rarely took it then. "I hated the way it made me feel," Corey says. "It
deadens the creative side of you but sharpens the analytical side. I need
it to do things like physics, but I hate having to do it. For AP [test]
week, I took it and stayed up for three or four days straight. Then I
wouldn't take it at all."

During his freshman year at a college out of state, Corey quit taking
Adderall, but he filled his prescriptions and sold or traded them to other
students. A three-month supply netted 100 pills that he could sell for $3
each. Adderall was more highly prized than Ritalin. "Adderall lasts six or
seven hours," Corey says. "It gives you a little high, which can be
dangerous if you like it. Ritalin lasts two or three hours and doesn't give
you a high."

When Corey moved back to Dallas and enrolled at UTD, the pills went for
only $2 each. "The market's so saturated," Corey says. He sold it to his
buddies for $1 apiece.

Luke was getting a variety of pills from several UTD students and a Dallas
drug dealer whom everybody called "Porn": Percocet, Valium, OxyContin,
Xanax, Lortab, Soma. He preferred opiates and benzodiazepines (sedatives,
muscle relaxants and anti-anxiety medications), but Luke would try almost
anything once.

"If you wanted it," Corey says, "Luke could get it." Luke wasn't trying to
make a lot of money, just support his own use. "He wouldn't give us
anything he hadn't tried himself."

Pills had several advantages over cocaine, heroin, meth and other drugs:
easy to take, easy to hide and relatively cheap. Xanax and Valium could be
purchased for $2 to $3, with the higher-dosage pills going for a few
dollars more. You could buy an evening of Percocet euphoria for $5, though
some pills could cost more, depending on supply and demand.

At first, Corey was afraid of the pills Luke was using, which often had
been cut with filler and repackaged by his dealer into generic capsules.
"Then I tried Percocet," he says. "I really liked it. You take it and
there's no grogginess. I could forget about the anxiety, the depression.
That little thing in the back of your head goes away."

By the middle of their freshman year, many of Luke's friends, even high
school holdouts, were smoking pot, eating 'shrooms, drinking alcohol and
doing pills. Luke only rarely drank. The same bottle of Chivas Regal sat in
his refrigerator for months. Luke knew the dangers of mixing pills and booze.

"We all researched drugs," Corey says, "but Luke was especially vigilant
about it. There's a whole underground, really, of Internet drug users who
give their opinions. You learn to trust each other, because they are
usually right."

After injuring his hand at UPS, Luke was out of a job. His mother gave him
$100 a week for spending money so he wouldn't have to work; his father was
paying his tuition and rent. Though he bought Luke groceries, David
resisted giving his son money, trying some tough love to get him to buckle
down.

"He wasn't going to class," David says. After getting his grades, David
tried to take Luke's car away from him. When Luke refused to give him the
keys, David grabbed his son from the front seat and tried to pull him out.
Luke backed down. David made Luke sign a contract that he would take at
least 13 hours and pass 10, or Dad was ending the room and board.

The ugly confrontation distressed Sondra. "It got his attention," David
says. "But Sondra thought I didn't love Luke."

Luke used his father's supposed stinginess as an excuse when he bumped up
his sales of pills and weed, mostly schwag, low-grade pot purchased through
a guy at UPS. Then Luke converted to selling hydro; one ounce of the
high-grade pot could sell for $350 to $400. It meant higher profit and
lower risk. (Possession of less than two ounces is considered for personal
use, not distribution.) But pills were the most profitable.

Luke and all his buddies heard they could buy pills on the Internet, but
none of them did it. "Anthony" once ordered pot on the Internet from
Canada; it worked, but he didn't repeat it. He didn't want a drug charge on
his record.

A business major, Anthony finally tried Percocet out of boredom. "It didn't
seem to be hurting Luke," Anthony says. "He said it made you feel great. He
was so knowledgeable. He'd rattle off bad combinations and chemical
structures. He was a walking pharmacist. That was part of the appeal to
him. The other appeal--you're not supposed to do it."

But Anthony didn't want to get in too deep. "People aren't meant to feel
that good all the time."

Luke at first struck "Christopher," an art and film major who transferred
to UTD in September 2003, like a character in a comic book: larger than
life, with a goatee, spike earrings, sideburns and an
"I'm-a-tough-drug-dealer-don't-mess-with-me" pose.

"Then I realized he was a pretty smart guy," Christopher says. Luke could
talk about anything, tailoring his conversation to whomever he was with:
art, music, traveling, math, film and computers.

Luke turned Christopher on to Percocet. "I took my first one and painted
for the better part of a day," he says. "It was like being stoned but not
lazy." A day and a half later, Christopher took another one, but his body's
reaction turned sour. "The entire world felt like different shades of gray,
like a dull ache in my head."

He kept using it anyway. "It was almost like a ritual," he says. "You smoke
pot, you do Adderall to study, then do pills, then alcohol on top of it."
Nobody worried about overdosing, Christopher says. "Anyone in command of
their faculties can keep from overdosing."

After partying his way through freshman year, Luke had focused on his
studies with the help of Jason, a highly motivated student who tutored him
in calculus and several other courses. "He was very intelligent," Jason
says. "His only delusions were chemical."

By the end of 2003, Luke started making good grades and liked the feeling.
Before winter break, he broke up with Tina for good. She'd been in and out
of rehab, in and out of jail. "She used to love me," he told one friend.
"Now she loves heroin." (Again in jail for possession of narcotics, Tina
was unavailable for comment.)

Luke and a friend from high school spent a week over winter break in
Amsterdam, stoner Shangri-la for its shops where pot and mushrooms are
legally sold. Luke thought it would be fabulous to travel to a place where
he could openly indulge in his favorite pastime. His mother knew that was
one reason he was going, but thinking it was a once-in-a-lifetime travel
experience, she gave him money anyway. She didn't want Luke smoking pot in
the United States because it was illegal, but in Amsterdam, that wasn't an
issue.

At the time, neither Sondra nor David saw any sign that Luke had a serious
drug problem. When he told his mother about Tina's addiction, Sondra asked
point-blank if he was using hard drugs. He denied it.

From Amsterdam Luke brought back photos of rainy streets, bars, old
buildings and some of their purchases--leggy 'shrooms and marijuana buds
with names like Super Silver Haze, Poison, AK-47 and Buddha's Sister--to
show the guys back home. He wasn't scoring any pills, though: too risky, he
thought.

A vacation video shot by a friend shows Luke firing up fat blunts, smoking
and laughing, smoking and laughing. He seems to be having a great time,
except for a hacking cough and one vomiting episode. Too much booze, or
withdrawal symptoms? In Dallas, Luke was taking two to four Percocets a
day. When he couldn't get the drug or something similar, Luke experienced
bouts of vomiting, stomach pains, cold sweats and migraines.

When he returned to Dallas, there were other signs that his pill habit was
getting out of control. "He'd start gradually and take one Xanax," Rosemary
says. "Now one doesn't feel as good, so he'd take two." Rosemary noticed
that Luke was popping different drugs at the same time to see how they
interacted with each other. He once passed out with a cigarette in his
mouth and burned himself and a couch.

Still, none of his friends confronted him. Their attitude was: He's Luke.
He knows what he's doing. "I don't think any of us felt it was our place to
say something," Jason says. "Luke was going to do what he was going to do."

And most of his friends were doing it, too.

When Luke asked his father for funds to go to Mexico over spring break,
David refused. "The only reason to go to Mexico," David told him, "is sex
and drugs." Luke responded with "Well, why did you let me go to Amsterdam?"
David had no answer.

"It hit me like 'wham,'" David says, hitting his forehead with a smack. "I
knew we had a big problem."

Christopher remembers thinking sometime after spring break in 2004 that
Luke, Jason and "Shelley" were taking so many pills, it was like they were
in a "race to see who would screw up first."

Shelley had been Luke's close friend for four months before they started a
romantic relationship in April. Drug use brought them together at first. On
Friday nights, everybody would hang out, pop Percocet and play video games
like City of Heroes. Shelley liked Luke because he was so straightforward
and happy-go-lucky. But like some of the drugs they'd tried, Shelley and
Luke were a volatile combination.

From a small town near Austin, Shelley had struggled with depression most
of her life. When she was 9, her mother shot herself to death, leaving
Shelley to discover the body.

Though very anti-drug in high school, Shelley had since struggled with
addiction. During her first semester at UTD, she and her roommate smoked
pot one night. "That's what started it," Shelley says. "I have an addictive
personality."

That led to a brief fling with cocaine abuse. In 2002 Shelley, her roommate
and their boyfriends were arrested and charged with possession. The terms
of her probation--monthly drug tests, staying away from other users--kept
Shelley sober for almost a year.

But when she started hanging out with Luke in January 2004, Shelley was
again using multiple drugs--some illegal, some prescribed for her by a
psychiatrist. Diagnosed as bipolar at the beginning of her sophomore year,
Shelley was taking Xanax for panic attacks; Lamactil, a mood stabilizer;
Ambien and other sleep aids for insomnia and night terrors; and a high
dosage of Seroquel, an anti-psychotic. Sometimes she took them as directed;
other times she would crush a pill and snort it for a more immediate
reaction. If she had a month before her next drug test, Shelley might smoke
pot.

"I used to have hallucinations," Shelley says. "I kept darting my eyes
around because I was seeing things. There were times when I had to throw
away my car keys or I'd fly away."

When she got to know Luke, he was regularly using Valium, Percocet,
Adderall, Xanax and, of course, smoking pot.

"I saw him take at least nine Adderall a day," Shelley says, "some in the
morning, then a couple of Valium, then more Adderall." Luke used some of
Shelley's medications, too. And when no Percocet was available, he sipped
liquid codeine, the active ingredient in prescription cough syrup,
sometimes called "sizzurp" and popular in hip-hop culture. One night before
they hooked up, Shelley saw Luke crashed on his couch during a party, wiped
out by Valium and sizzurp. The next day he didn't answer his phone. Shelley
finally drove to his apartment and pounded on the door until he answered.

"He was so white, so pale," Shelley says. "He looked terrible. I think that
was the first time he might have accidentally OD'd."

Shelley later urged Luke to go to the university counseling center. He
brushed her off. "I don't think it was a physical addiction that drove
him," Shelley says. "It was psychological. Stopping would bring him down,
so that he'd think there was something wrong with his head. He thought he
might have a disorder like mine."

Both knew they needed to quit. Adderall suppresses the appetite, so they
weren't eating, and their sleep schedule had turned upside down. If they
could just get through the end of the semester, then they could make some
changes.

In early May, Luke took Shelley to a doctor's office for a routine
appointment. After grabbing a bunch of cards from a Rolodex-type dispenser
that described various medications, he cut and pasted the cards into a
flip-type notebook, creating a log of seven drugs he had taken and more he
wanted to try, complete with each medication's purpose, dosages, dangers
and how they affected him.

At their Mother's Day lunch on May 9, Luke gave Sondra a lovely vase filled
with yellow roses and a sweet card. Happy and full of enthusiasm, Luke
talked about changing his major to law. With Jason's tutoring, Luke was
making better grades.

Sondra saw no sign of drug use. But finals started the next day, and Luke
was popping Adderall like M&Ms.

David Stone got the phone call from a Dallas police detective at about 2
p.m. on May 14. "You've lost your son," said the officer, calling from the
Collin County Medical Examiner's Office. "It's a drug overdose." David had
no idea what he was talking about.

"It's not Luke," David insisted. "How do you know it's my son?" The officer
had found a drivers license in a Richardson apartment. The photo of Sean
Lukas Stone, age 20, matched the body found there.

Still in disbelief, David called Sondra, who was in her car, and asked her
to pull over. When he told her, Sondra's reaction was the same: "It can't
be Luke."

David picked up her and their younger son, and they drove to the medical
examiner's office in McKinney. Seeing Luke's body on a gurney through the
morgue window, Sondra screamed. She refused to believe Luke had
accidentally overdosed. Someone must have done it to him.

Over the next few weeks, his parents heard more details from Luke's friends
and pieced together what had happened in their son's final days.

On May 12, Corey, Jason, Roman, Anthony and Luke had lunch together at The
Abbey, their favorite pub. "We were talking about graduating and what we
wanted to do," Corey says. "Luke was serious about [Shelley], as happy as
I'd seen him in months. A real happy, not an opiate happy."

Luke pulled an all-nighter, studying with Jason for his calculus and
history exams. In addition to Adderall, Luke was using Xanax and Valium.
His on-campus connection hadn't been able to get Percocet for weeks.

"You could tell he'd been studying and was strung out a little," Jason
says. "At that point, you see shadow people." Recently Luke had been acting
paranoid, saying that three undercover cops lived in his complex.

The next day, Luke aced his calculus final. He made two trips to Wal-Mart,
the second with Shelley. His mother had given him about $180 on Sunday.
They bought some cleaning supplies, a small table and some DVDs. Late that
afternoon Luke dropped Shelley at his apartment and apparently made a run
to see Porn.

While Luke was gone, Shelley cleaned the apartment--it was the end of the
semester, and Luke's lease was almost up--then took a Seroquel, her
prescribed medication for bipolar disorder, and zonked out.

She was still asleep on the couch early that evening when Christopher and
several other guys dropped in. Luke had returned with lots of weed and
three fat gel caps of morphine, a drug he didn't much like because it gives
a "dirty" high, making him feel rotten after it wears off. But morphine was
the best his dealer could offer. He later told Shelley it took his last
$30. No matter; he'd recoup it quickly by selling the pot.

Wearing a black tank top and deep into the game City of Heroes, Luke looked
gaunt and hollow-eyed. "He had been on Xanax the entire week," Christopher
says. "He had gone from swallowing it to dissolving it in water or snorting
it. It hits your bloodstream all at once." Christopher bought some weed but
declined Luke's offer to share the morphine.

At 10 p.m., Shelley woke from her nap. Luke emptied one gel cap of the
morphine and separated it into two lines. He snorted one, and Shelley
snorted the other. It hit Shelley hard, and she stumbled to bed.

Shelley roused around 9 a.m. on May 14 and found Luke half on, half off the
bed. She pushed him back onto it and draped his arm around her. It fell
limp. Alarmed, Shelley pressed her ear on his chest. His heart was beating,
faint and slow but not irregular. She went back to sleep.

Later that morning--she doesn't remember the time, but it was probably
close to noon--Shelley got out of bed and started to tidy up. They were
going to UPS that day to look for work. A few minutes later, when she tried
to rouse Luke, he didn't respond. Shelley pulled the covers off the bed,
joking around. She saw with a shock that the top of his body was deathly
pale and the bottom half looked bruised. Shelley flashed back to
discovering her mother's body; her blood had settled on the side where
she'd fallen, making her appear bruised. Shrieking, Shelley ran through the
apartment and found the three gel caps on the counter, empty.

Hysterical, Shelley called Jason's cell phone. When he didn't answer, she
dialed his roommate Christopher and screamed at him to wake Jason. "He's
not breathing!" she sobbed to Jason. "Get over here now. Luke's dead!"

Jason raced to the apartment. One look was all it took. Weeping,
incoherent, Shelley insisted they had to get all the pot and paraphernalia
out of the apartment. She didn't want his parents or the police to know
Luke was dealing drugs.

"Luke's dead," Jason told her. "He's not going to jail." He realized,
however, that Shelley's probation could be revoked for being around illegal
drugs. Jason gathered up the dope, bongs and scales--inadvertently leaving
behind a tube containing mushroom spores from an unsuccessful attempt to
grow 'shrooms--and carted the stuff out.

Shelley called 911 about 12:30 p.m. Two Dallas police detectives arrived in
minutes with the paramedics.

The news of Luke's death flashed through cell phones, leaving his friends
shocked and bewildered. With their limited knowledge of pharmaceuticals,
they debated the cause. Did the Adderall, an amphetamine that can cause
heart irregularities, interact with the morphine, which can suppress
respiration? Finally aware how little they really knew, the tragedy snapped
them out of their own pill habits.

For a while.

As they awaited the autopsy results, Luke's parents lived in a kind of
suspended disbelief that lasted seven weeks. "I couldn't fathom that it was
a drug overdose," Sondra says. "Luke was so smart." She was convinced there
had been foul play.

Sondra agonized that Luke might have survived if Shelley had immediately
called 911. Shelley's grief and drug use had resulted in different stories.
There's no doubt, however, that when Shelley woke up the second time, Luke
was beyond rescue.

The autopsy results surprised everybody.

Dr. William Rohr, the Collin County medical examiner, ruled that Luke died
of mixed-drug intoxication--the combined effects of morphine, amphetamine
and at least three benzodiazepines. While the morphine alone wasn't a
lethal dose, the chemical cocktail in Luke's body shut down his respiration.

His blood showed traces of diazepam (Valium), temazepam (a sleep aid) and
oxazepam (anti-anxiety). Had he taken the benzos that day? The night
before? Perhaps Luke had gotten to the point where he couldn't remember
what he took when, and even his carefully organized drug log couldn't save him.

Six of Luke's longtime friends served as pallbearers at the funeral. After
Tina told Sondra the name of one of Luke's suppliers, she was shocked to
find the dealer's signature in the funeral home guest book.

Luke's drug-using friends were there, too, and some of their lives have
changed. In the last 12 months, Shelley has moved to a university out of
state. Using journal entries from their month together, Shelley wrote a
short one-woman play about falling in love with Luke and then finding him
dead and performed it for her theater class. She no longer takes any
psychotropic medications. "When I stopped abusing my prescription drugs,"
Shelley says, "I was able to stop using them [altogether]."

Most of Luke's friends say they've stopped using illicit medications. "None
of us ever thought the pills were that dangerous," Christopher says. "I
didn't want to be part of it anymore."

Corey says he's stopped smoking pot but still does Percocet. "I think we're
all more cautious," he says.

Jason was scared, but also angry. "It seemed like such a waste," he says.
"It scared me, and it still does. I have a lot of friends who are doing
what he was doing. They moderated it at first. But Luke understood.
Moderation isn't possible."

Anthony feels like he grew up a lot in the last year. "It was like I left
'La La Land'--drugs are fun, they won't hurt us, we're so young--and
realized death was real," he says. "I think about Luke every day."