DRUG COUNSELOR KEPT BUSY AT WINNACUNNET

HAMPTON - Floyd Jozitis, Winnacunnet High School's part-time drug and
alcohol counselor, says he has a caseload of 49 students - enough to keep
him busy full-time.

"Forty-nine is a case load for two mental health counselors," said Jozitis
who works at the high school just on Fridays. "They need a full-time
counselor."

His office is located in a small closet of space behind the teachers'
cafeteria and student cafeteria.

"In this job, I'm just planting seeds," he said. "I don't have an hour with
each child. I have 15 minutes."

Principal Ruth Leveille wants to fund the position full-time through grant
money, said Jozitis, a position confirmed by the principal.

"He does a great job with kids," Leveille said. "We could keep him busy
full-time."

This Friday, Jozitis had a case load of 12 students. Some are referred on
CHINS (Child In Need of Services) petitions ordered by the court. Others,
such as Joe (fictitious name), 16, have voluntarily come forward. Joe is on
a CHINS petition, not because he was arrested on drug charges, but because
of truancy caused by drugs, he says.

Joe started smoking pot in seventh grade; doing speed in ninth. He couldn't
get his hands on cocaine, he says, so he got the prescription drug Adderall
from friends.

"I thought, this isn't enough," Joe said. "Then I got introduced to crack
cocaine. The first time I smoked, I said, 'what's the big deal?' I was so
high I didn't know.

I was awake for two days. When you're wired, when you come to your 18th,
19th hour of being awake, you lose it. I finally reached my breaking point."

Joe told a school counselor who hooked him up with Jozitis. He later told
his mother.

His mother had caught on early to Joe's marijuana smoking, but Joe managed
to hide the rest.

"It's not that parents are dumb," he said. "Kids are finding more and more
ways to get around it."

Joe was also using heroin and ecstasy, Jozitis says.

School work obviously suffered. Joe stole money from his mother's
pocketbook and elsewhere.

Being wired leads to dangerous crimes, Jozitis says.

"If not for Floyd, I probably would have kept using," said Joe, who admits
to an occasional relapse.

Addiction crosses all socio-economic levels. Jozitis sees students from the
wealthiest neighborhoods to the poorest.

An estimated 10 percent of the students Jozitis sees have tried heroin, he
says. A much greater percent are addicted to Vicodin, OxyContin or
Percocet, prescription drugs Jozitis labels as opiates.

All are easily available.

The Seacoast is the corridor for heroin coming up from Massachusetts. The
heroin out there now is very strong and is cheaper than ever, an estimated
$5 a bag, Jozitis says. It's also smokeable and snortable, taking away the
stigma of injection by needle.

OxyContin, Jozitis says, is "a greater high than heroin, ten times more
powerful."

Jozitis, who spent four years working at Hampton Academy Junior High
School, has seen students as young as 11 hooked on drugs.

"I'm seeing it at the junior high," he said. "They experiment at that age.
Some kids have moved into addiction."

This includes alcohol, which he considers a drug. Some students get started
on "baby cocaine," the term for Ritolin and other stimulants used to treat
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Those on the drugs - and
he believes up to 50 percent of children have been misdiagnosed - have an
easier time switching to other drugs, he says.

Jozitis says there is a new nonstimulate psychotropic drug for
hyperactivity coming on the market called Stratera, which will help break
addiction.

When Jozitis sees a student, he or she is usually at the abuse or addiction
stage, the third and fourth levels of addiction, from experimentation to
use, abuse and addiction. At least 70 percent have been turned on to drugs
or alcohol by an older sibling, parent or relative, he says.

"If there's a genetic predisposition, they're four times more likely to
become addicted," he said.

Ending addiction is more than just quitting, Jozitis says. New behaviors
must be learned.

"It really is an addiction of the brain," he said. "We all have our reward
centers," whether it be for food, sex or warmth.

"Kids find out really early if they smoke pot or drink alcohol, it will
reward the brain center for stimulus better than eating food, keeping warm
by the fire or going sledding down a hill."

They say, "Hey, nothing happened to me like the DARE (Drug and Alcohol
Resistance Education) officer said."

Kids think of themselves as "10 feet tall and bullet-proof" anyway, Jozitis
says.

He started working at Winnacunnet in December 2002. Before coming onboard,
students on the court-ordered CHINS petitions had to seek private
counseling, he says.

His job is paid by Seacoast Youth Services, formerly called the Seacoast
Diversion Program, which in turn gets state and county grants.

Seacoast Youth Services, on Lafayette Road in Hampton, is open to all
students and families in the SAU 21 district. This year, Director Victor
Maloney approached individuals in SAU 21 towns to submit a petitioned
warrant article to help fund the program.

Jozitis conducts a Thursday night group session at the Lafayette Road
office for many of the Winnacunnet High School students he sees in school.
He meets with the students individually on Saturday.

Jozitis says he also runs an anger-management program at Seabrook Middle
School.

Jozitis, who holds a master's degree in human services, has worked in the
field for 29 years. For 23 years, he was the director of Odyssey House, a
home for at-risk teenagers and adults in Hampton.

For the past six-and-a-half years, Jozitis has worked with people released
from the Rockingham House of Corrections on probation parole. Eighty-five
percent of people in jail are there for drug- and alcohol-related problems,
he says.

He worked part-time at Hampton Academy Junior High before the grant money
for that program ran out. Funds for drug and alcohol counseling, like much
of human services, are drying up, Jozitis says.

"It just blows my mind. ... "Over 29 years. I've seen the cascade flow of
'do more for less.'"