HEROIN: ATTACKING THE PROBLEM

With Two Friends Dead, 'Good Kid' Enters Rehab, Finds Hope for Future

When one of Stacey's close friends died last fall of a drug overdose,
her reaction was "to go out and get high to numb the pain." So when
heroin killed another close friend in the winter, friends and family
hid the fact from her for two months. By that time, Stacey was in
rehab herself, and they didn't want anything to divert her from the
program.

"It was devastating," said Stacey, 17, about finally finding out last
month about her 18-year-old friend's death. "But right away, I stood
up in group and talked about it. And that night when I went home, I
hugged my Dad for the longest time. I never would have done that before."

Stacey, so far at least, is considered one of the success stories in a
commu-nity's efforts to fight an outbreak of heroin use.

Heroin, once considered a "dirty" inner-city drug used primarily by
hard-core junkies in dark alleys, has gradually become more popular
among a younger crowd, with dangerous results. Coroners concluded
earlier this year that heroin overdoses killed as many as eight people
in Campbell and Kenton counties in a year's time.

In many ways, it's just a national trend: The extremely addictive drug
has become cheaper to buy, easier to find and more pure. Its use is
way up, especially among youth.

But in rural Campbell County, the concern -- and use -- is especially
great.

About 450 people attended a public meeting Feb. 5 to talk about heroin
and its hold on the community. The uproar has died down, but a core
group of a dozen parents have formed a local chapter of the national
group Residents Attacking Drugs as a way to define, understand and
solve the problem.

Informational meetings have been held at Campbell County and Bishop
Brossart high schools, and another meeting is set for 7:15 p.m. May 5
at Bishop Brossart.

"Our goal right now is to keep the focus on educating the public and
increasing awareness," said Pam Kinney, a volunteer coordinator at St.
Luke Hospital.

Subcommittees are being established to work on legislative issues and
to explore ways to work with insurance carriers to provide more
effective drug treatment plans for teens and young adults.

Alexandria Police Chief Mike Ward, who convened the first public
meetings, said the parents group has helped police form 11 separate
neighborhood block watch groups.

"Parents are arming themselves with more and better information than
they had before," he said. "The feedback we're getting from the kids
who will talk to us has been, 'Geez, I can't even go to the mall
without Mom or Dad asking me 50 million questions about where I'm
going and who I'm going with.' That's what we need to get back to. I
think what we're seeing now is just an awakening."

Some drug treatment agencies also have stepped up publicity efforts to
make sure the community is aware of their services.

One of those is North Key, which operates one of a small group of drug
and alcohol rehab programs for adolescents in Greater Cincinnati.
North Key opened a Falmouth office nine months ago as a pilot program
and is primarily aimed at serving teens in rural Pendleton and Grant
counties. Thirteen teens are enrolled in the program, generally
referrals either from their schools or the Kentucky Department of
Juvenile Justice.

Another is Kids Helping Kids, a Milford, Ohio-based long-term drug and
alcohol rehab for younger users.

It was Kids Helping Kids to which Stacey turned when her drug problem
got too great.

Stacey, whose full name isn't being given because of her age, said she
checked into Kids Helping Kids last November because she knew the odds
seemed against her living to see her 18th birthday.

A month earlier, one of her best "druggie" friends, as she puts it
now, 19-year-old Mark DeMarrero, was found dead at his parents' home
in rural Melbourne of a suspected OxyContin overdose. DeMarrero had a
history of heroin abuse.

Stacey got high to ease the shock and pain.

Then another in her close circle of friends, 18-year-old Adam Messmer
of Alexandria, was found unconscious in a parking lot in Fort Thomas,
near death from a heroin overdose.

Realizing it was only a matter of time for her, too, Stacey dug out
the phone number for Kids Helping Kids passed along by her mother's
insurance company.

A week later, she entered the program.

More than 1,100 kids have been through the program since it began in
1981. The commitment required is considerable, both on the part of
clients and their families; the treatment costs $19,500 and takes 11
to 12 months to complete.

But the success rate is impressive.

Kids Helping Kids says studies of its graduates -- done by independent
market research firms -- in 24-month increments show that 70 percent
maintain a drug-free lifestyle, report improved relationships with
parents and peers and, overall, lead productive lives.

It's worth noting, too, that nine of 10 kids that check in don't come
willingly. Their parents tell them they're going to the mall or
picking up something to eat or just taking a ride. Instead, they
arrive at a squat brick building with lockdown security and a 10-foot
chain link fence -- a place with all the warmth and personality of a
barracks.

For Stacey, it was a different story. She wanted to come
here.

At its core, Kids Helping Kids is what its name suggests. The clients
work on each other, through a sort of hierarchy provided by a
five-phase program.

At the same time, they're put in a rigorously structured environment,
stripped of their privileges and, bit by bit, given opportunities to
earn them back.

In the first phase, which generally takes 10 to 14 weeks to complete,
newcomer clients don't go to their own homes in the evening. Instead,
they spend the night at the home of a client who has achieved the
second phase or higher.

"Obviously, parents have to make a big commitment," said Penny Walker,
director of Kids Helping Kids. "They have to agree to provide a safe,
secure home for other kids when their kids enter treatment."

The idea, in part, is to keep the client in a family-type environment
while removing them from settings that contributed to their problem in
the first place.

Indeed, Stacey said one of the reasons she was drawn to Kids Helping
Kids is that "I needed to go someplace away from where I was having
trouble."

Said Ms. Walker, "It's also important in that a big part of how kids
progress through the program is through modeling from kids who are
farther along in treatment.

"It gives new clients a chance to see a more advanced client interact
more appropriately with his or her parents."

In the second phase, as in the first, clients spend nearly 11 hours
during the day in group sessions, one after another. They're also
allowed to spend the night at their parents' home and are given
responsibility for the newcomers who go home with them.

"The goal in the second phase is to work on family relationships," Ms.
Walker said.

It takes most clients another month to advance to the third phase. At
this point, they go to school or to a job during the day, report back
to the program in the afternoons and evenings and, by 8 p.m., return
to their homes -- along with any newcomers assigned to them.

In the fourth phase, a client is given time away from the
program.

"These are kids who were out of control when they came here," she
added. "By the time they're in phase four, they've developed coping
skills, they've learned to think things through and they understand
the concept that their actions have consequences."

Clients gradually are allowed more and more time away from the center
in phase five.

"We relax some of the structure, and they focus on giving back -- to
new clients, to the community, to doing speaking engagements for youth
groups," Ms. Walker said.

Stacey is in the fourth phase, which takes a minimum of 91 days to get
through. She's attending classes at Milford High and planning to
graduate this year.

April 20 marked her fifth month of sobriety.

Said Stacey's mother: "I don't know if we'd still have our daughter if
it weren't for Kids Helping Kids."

Stacey first smoked marijuana as a seventh grader. It was available,
everyone else was doing it, and she was curious.

As a junior, she was on a Campbell County High School cheerleading
squad that placed fifth in the nationals at Disney World. She dressed
like a preppie and acted like a preppie.

Like Mark DeMarrero and Adam Messmer, she came from a loving home with
two parents who supported her and believed in her.

The last thing they would have imagined was that she was a heroin
addict.

"I first tried it my freshman year, but I didn't know what it was,"
Stacey said. "At the time, I was experimenting with different things
- -- Vicodins, Percocets, Xanax, painkillers, mushrooms, whatever was
available.

"My sophomore year was when things really went downhill -- that's when
heroin was all over the place in Campbell County. I was one of the
earlier people into it.

"That's when I started surrounding myself with drugs and druggie
people -- that's when I started getting high right before school and
right after school every day."

At night, she planned how she would get money the next day to get
high. Then she took a job as a waitress because the tips provided a
daily source of cash for her next bag.

"Heroin was the only thing I felt I needed to live," Stacey said. "I
wouldn't spend my money on any other drug."

By last summer, Stacey had gone from snorting to shooting. Her
tolerance had built to the point that she couldn't afford the former.

A few weeks after DeMarrero's death, Stacey's mother got a call at
work from a counselor at Campbell County High.

"He told me Stacey was having a really bad day and that we probably
needed to do a drug screen," Stacey's mother said.

In another few weeks, Stacey and her parents would sign her into Kids
Helping Kids.

She would not learn of Messmer's death until sometime in mid-March,
more than two months after the fact. Her parents chose not to tell
her; she had enough issues to deal with at the time as it was. It's
also policy to steer clear of anything that would divert kids from
working the program.

Stacey is eager to share her story. She wants it to be an example --
and to offer hope.

"Mark and Adam were both really good kids -- we all are," she said.
"It's just something that happened, something that got bigger than we
were able to control.

"But I want people to read it and see that they can get free. I know
they can, because I can."