CAUTIONARY TALES FROM 'GENERATION RX' PEERS

Seventh-Graders Hear Details Of Slide Into Addiction To Latest Drugs Of
Choice -- Prescription Pills

A new kind of drug addict is emerging nationally and locally, as more
teenagers turn to their medicine cabinets to get high. Call it Generation
Rx. In a trend that an addiction specialist, Dr. Punyamurtula S. Kishore,
founder of the National Library on Addictions, says he has seen firsthand
in suburbs south of Boston, pills are replacing alcohol as the drug of
choice -- and teens are replacing the 30-somethings that used to make up
the majority of his patients. A nationwide survey released last month by
the Partnership for a Drug-Free America found that members of "Generation
Rx," as it dubbed them, are using prescription painkillers such as
Oxycontin or stimulants such as Ritalin as much -- or more -- than other
illegal drugs.

Last week, Kishore visited Cohasset Middle School with three "drug
ambassadors," fresh-faced young women who began drinking alcohol or popping
pills when they were about the same age as the 135 seventh-graders in the
auditorium. The students' parents filled the back rows.

At first, when Kishore opened the discussion about the medical dangers of
abusing prescription drugs and urged the students never to share their
medications, the audience members were hesitant to participate. But when
the drug ambassadors began to speak, the students listened intently to
their cautionary tales. And then they started asking questions.

Christine, 21, of Lowell, said she started using marijuana and
hallucinogens when she was 11, and then switched to cocaine. She discovered
the painkiller Oxycontin when she was 17, "and from there, everything went
down hill." She barely graduated from high school, then got kicked out of
college. Soon she was so incapacitated by the various prescription drugs
she was taking that she was unable to get out of bed. She snubbed her
friends, and stayed in her room. To get the $85,000 that she spent on drugs
each year, Christina says, she lied and stole. The stories of prison and
passing out on the street seemed a world away from the giggling students,
with their braces and ponytails. Questions ran the gamut, from "What is
Oxycontin?" to "How did you get around security at your school?"

"I didn't even graduate from high school, to be honest," said Stella, a
19-year-old from Everett who, like her two fellow ambassadors, asked that
her last name not be used. She says she started on marijuana and Oxycontin
at age 13, and then went to heroin when she could no longer afford an $80
pill every day. "I've been two weeks clean, after trying for two years,"
she said, her voice trembling. Kishore said such cases are becoming more
and more common in his decade-old addiction treatment practice, which has
offices in Bridgewater and Sandwich. "Teenagers have become very savvy," he
said, with many fluent in the language of pharmaceuticals, tossing around
names like Percocet, Adderall, and Vicodin with ease.

Many mistakenly believe that prescription pills are safe because they come
f rom doctors, and they often are easier to get than illegal drugs, he said
- -- an observation echoed in the recent national survey.

And young people are being affected at a time when they are most
vulnerable. "There are a lot of stresses and pressures that middle-school
students face" that sometimes slip under the radar, said Nancy Oddleifson,
a parent who attended a program on the topic last year and campaigned to
have the drug ambassadors join the discussion.

Those stresses -- and not just peer pressure -- can lead to the beginnings
of addiction because "we have a performance-oriented society," Kishore
said. "We want kids to do better and better in school," which leads to
common diagnoses of attention deficit disorder, and prescriptions for
Ritalin or other stimulants, which may become the first drugs kids share.
According to the recent survey, 10 percent of teenagers, or 2.3 million
people nationwide, have tried drugs prescribed for ADD without a doctor's
order. Kishore is hoping that the ambassadors may connect with students on
their own level, in an unforgettable way, to help them understand what is
at stake. "My brain stopped growing when I was 13," Stella told the
students. "If I sat in your history class and your teacher said something,
I probably wouldn't even know what they were saying."