DRUGS ARE THE REAL DEAL FOR MIDDLETON STUDENTS

Recreational Drugs Come into Play at Park

MIDDLETON - On a rainy afternoon about two months after Middleton High
School junior Julie Zdeblick's March 5 death from a drug overdose, a group
of some 15 students are spending the lunch hour under a shelter in
Firemen's Park.

A 15-year-old girl pulls a small wooden box from her backpack. After
removing the lid, she passes the box under the noses of her friends. Each
one looks at the contents before sniffing eagerly.

"What you got there?" asks a student who has just arrived.

"Tobacco," the girl says, grinning slyly.

Dubbed "Pharmacy Park" by students long ago, Firemen's Park is a buffer
between the Middleton High School and Middleton Alternative Senior High.
It's a convenient place to catch a buzz - close enough to get to class on
time, far enough away that contraband is easily concealed if and when
authorities are spotted.

And the kids in the park are always alert. When a squad car rolls by, which
it does twice, the rambunctious teens fall dead silent.

Cigarettes drop to the ground; no one moves until the threat passes. Then
it's back to business as usual.

The death of Julie Zdeblick - gifted, beautiful, smart - had rattled them.
But not enough for them to give up drugs.

When asked about Zdeblick, several students expressed contempt toward the
school for not doing more to educate kids on the "real dangers" of using drugs.

"They should at least educate kids not to mix pills," said a 16-year-old
boy, referring to rumors that Zdeblick died after ingesting a cocktail of
prescription drugs and alcohol. (The criminal complaint issued Wednesday in
the case mentions only an overdose of the painkiller OxyContin.)

"How the f--k was she supposed to know? She wasn't educated on the s--t."

Others said they thought Zdeblick knew her drugs too well for that to be true.

Middleton High School social worker Kristen Wilson called the attitudes
"remarkable but not surprising.

"Many students think, 'It won't happen to me. I'm too smart. I know my
drugs,'" she said. "The psychological defenses take hold. For humans to
change, we have to feel the pain."

The students in the park talked candidly of their drug use. They all said
they smoke marijuana and drink alcohol. Some said they dabble with
psychedelic mushrooms and prescription drugs like the amphetamine Adderal
and the painkiller OxyContin.

One 16-year-old boy said he snorts "the white stuff" - cocaine - on
occasion. Acid - LSD - is hard to come by, they said. Ecstasy, on the other
hand, is an easy score. "But everyone is kind of burned out on it," one
student said.

But despite their faade of nonchalance, many expressed apprehension about
drugs beyond marijuana and alcohol. Several claimed they would never go so
far as to use cocaine or heroin.

"Pot doesn't do anything to you," said one student. "It might destroy a few
brain cells here and there, but it only gets you high."

The scene at Firemen's Park is much as Kate Ludt remembers it before she
graduated from Middleton High School four years ago - lunch hours spent in
the same shelter using the same drugs, on the lookout for the same cops.

"We got high so confidently at lunch because we knew we weren't going to be
spotted. It wasn't like they had drug crime fighters in the halls," she
said. "Unless they could smell it, no one ever looked at us funny. It's
amazing how much we got away with."

Ludt, who lives in Madison today and works at a book store, said her
parents also were oblivious to her forays with drugs. Small parties were
thrown in her parents' home when they went out of town, or at the homes of
friends when their parents were gone.

"They thought they raised me better," Ludt said. "But it wasn't about
raising, it was about accessibility. A lot of people do things because they
can get away with it. People underestimate a white, middle-to-upper-class
kid's ability to f--k up their life."

Kristen Wilson, the high school social worker, agrees and said she is
amazed at how dismissive parents can be even when they know about their
children's drug use.

"I'm always surprised by how parents can believe their kids in the face of
overwhelming evidence," she said. "It's always discouraging for parents to
come forward and say, 'He was really holding it for someone else.' And
they'll sit, appeal after appeal, even after the student has admitted to
it, and accuse the school of targeting their child."

Zdeblick's parents were not in denial about their daughter's problems. She
went through NewStart and other treatment programs. But as her mother noted
in a conversation with an editor of The Capital Times, "programs come to an
end," while addictions persist.

The casualties of Middleton's teen drug culture have made a series of
headlines.

In October 1999, 17-year-old Eddy Tallard died from a heroin overdose, a
month into his senior year at Middleton High School.

A month later, a 15-year-old student was found lying in a street near the
high school drugged on LSD.

In September 2001, police targeted 17-year-old Nick Beese in Dane County's
largest Ecstasy sting, netting 1,000 pills valued at $25,000.

Police charged another teen last October with killing a jogger while
driving under the influence of psychedelic mushrooms that he reportedly got
as a birthday gift from friends.

And this Wednesday, 19-year-old Derek Hansen, who attended Middleton High
School, was charged with first-degree reckless homicide and other
drug-related crimes in the overdose death of Zdeblick. Another teenager,
18-year-old Mackenzie M. Retelle, was charged with three counts of perjury
for alleged lies to a John Doe inquiry into Hansen's alleged drug-dealing.

A reporter's survey of suburban high schools in Dane County found that none
has had to deal with an overdose death of a student in recent memory. Only
Middleton has.

Kate Ludt remembers that when Eddie Tallard, her friend since kindergarten,
died from the heroin overdose in 1999 it did little to quell her appetite
for drugs.

She believed Eddy's death was about excess and moderation, responsibility
and carelessness.

"All the kids I knew except Eddy did things in moderation," she said. "They
were street-smart about their drugs. Like, we used to do Ecstasy in groups.
It's not like we'd get all screwed up and drive around. Usually we were at
someone's house in a safe environment."

Seven months after Eddy's death, his senior class spent a day at Green
Lake. Many of his friends, along with his mother, gathered beneath a
shelter and shared memories of him. Many of those who partook in the
memorial, about 50 students, did so while high on acid or Ecstasy, Ludt
recalled.

"It didn't feel weird," said Ludt, who took Ecstasy that day. "A lot of the
partying I did was with Eddy. If he'd been there, he would've done
something, and he would've wanted everyone else to do something.

"It was normal."