A MOTHER'S 'COURAGE TO SPEAK'

Special Program Exposes Students To The Horrors Of Drug Abuse

PEABODY - Ginger Katz is putting another name and face to the dangers of
drug addiction. Her own son, Ian, was killed by an overdose in 1996 at age
20 after a breakneck descent into drug abuse that began with marijuana and
moved on, eventually, to the heroin that killed him - one day before he was
due to enter a rehabilitation clinic.

In a talk called "The Courage to Speak," his mother recounts her family's
futile struggle to save his life. After eight years, Katz still grows
hoarse with grief as she relates the story. It might seem a punishing
mission, but before she takes the stage at Peabody High School she
explains, "Every time I look into the audience I look in their eyes. The
kids' eyes. And I see Ian's eyes." Keeping silent is not option, she adds.
"Silence is death." Yesterday afternoon address to ninth-graders and
seniors was the latest chapter in a harrowing drug education for students.
Recently, Salem Superintendent Herb Levine and his son, Joel, a Peabody
High graduate, recently told of the younger Levine's recovery from
OxyContin addiction.

Just as Levine did in the earlier forum, Katz challenged the students to do
something if they find themselves hooked on drugs. "Get three or five
adults that you can say anything to. ... If you have a friend in trouble,
have the courage to speak."

Katz's story is different than Levine's, more typical and more alarming.
There's no happy ending, no recovery - only death. Students didn't fidget
or whisper or turn away as she described losing Ian by stages, at first
letting herself be comforted by his easy denials: "I don't even like
marijuana, Mom."

And regretting it afterward. Pictures of Ian flashed on a screen behind her
as she spoke, familiar images of a little boy going from soccer to family
gatherings to the prom. "His fifth-grade teacher told me he was loved.
Especially by the girls. He had that charisma, even as a young man."

But this comfortable middle-class family in Norwalk, Conn., soon found
itself entwined with drug dealers and violence. Once they fire-bombed a car
in the driveway. Once they spread gasoline over the side of the house and
threatened to light it ablaze.

"Everybody that's addicted either steals, deals or somebody's enabling
them," she explained. "Guns and violence and drugs are connected." Ian
turned up with various injuries. There were excuses. "Part of this disease
is deception," said Katz. "Ian was very good at deception. Drugs make you
crazy."

It got worse when he went to college. "Ian told me, 'Mom, there's a
smorgasbord of drugs in college, and if you don't have the money they give
them to you for free so you're hooked."

On the last night of his life, he told his mother he was sorry. They
checked on Ian that morning because the television was blaring. "He laid
there as if he was in a very deep sleep. ... I never thought I would have
to bury my son."

After Ian's death, says Katz, she was so grief-stricken that she didn't
want to attend the funeral. Then, suddenly, in her sorrow, she saw some
purpose in all this. "And I knew I'd be speaking out. If this was happening
in my family it was happening in other families.

At times, Katz read from the journal she kept after her son's death. "It's
five months since Ian's death. ... It's painful without you. ... You were
the most beautiful child I ever laid eyes on. .... I lost you before you
died. The drugs changed you."

Secrets emerged. Friends reported that Ian had told them of being abused by
a female baby-sitter when he was 11. His prom date approached Katz and
explained that she'd given Ian an ultimatum - the drugs or her. "He chose
the drugs," she said.

Ian's lone sibling, Candy, an older sister with Down Syndrome, had to be
told. She comes home now on weekends, her mother explained, sleeping in
Ian's room and setting out cushions and a blanket on the floor for when her
brother comes down from the clouds to visit.