Fighting Back: Part 6a

DRUGS CREEP IN, TAKE HOLD

Long Beach Teen Says Abuse Was Easy To Hide

Sydney snorted cocaine every day for a three-month stretch during her
senior year at Long Beach High School.

She was a cheerleader, an honor student and a drug addict.

"I'm lucky I'm not in jail," she said. "I'm lucky I'm not dead."

Sydney, 19, is now a sophomore at the University of Mississippi where she
is studying business and Spanish. She withheld her real name to protect her
identity.

She plans to go to law school someday.

In August 2001, Sydney binged on Xanax, a prescription anti-anxiety medication.

The next morning, she stumbled into her parents' house in a stupor and
collapsed on the couch.

Sydney slept for 17 hours straight.

"She was out of her mind," her father said. "She doesn't remember anything.
It was unreal."

'School was such a joke'

Sydney first smoked pot when she was 16 years old. Her boyfriend joined her.

Many of her friends already had experimented with drugs.

"It was just there and it was accepted. A lot of people were doing it," she
said. "If I was in a class with 30 people in high school, I can guarantee
you I would walk in and at least six of my friends would be sitting there
stoned. We'd get high before school because school was such a joke."

She started cutting classes.

"I skipped class at least once a day," she said. "I never went for a full
day, ever."

She'd often spend entire school days hanging out at a friend's house
smoking pot and watching movies.

Her favorite "stoner flick" was "Scarface."

The school never contacted her parents to ask why she'd been absent, Sydney
said.

Susan Lhiten, assistant principal at Long Beach High School, said the
school's policy is to contact the parents of each absent student every day.

Lhiten said two years ago the school's secretary was not making the phone
calls, which could be why Sydney's parents weren't called about her absences.

The school has since replaced the secretary, she said.

Not long after trying marijuana, Sydney experimented with other drugs.

"I became good friends with a guy who liked going to raves. That was the
big thing to do," she said. "I was scared to go. I was like, 'I'm not going
to New Orleans overnight. There's no way. That's a crazy place.'

"Obviously I ended up going. That's when I started in on harder drugs."

Raves are all-night dance parties characterized by techno and house music.
They have become associated with the "club-drug" ecstasy, which causes
hallucinations and feelings of exhilaration and euphoria.

Sydney would attend raves at the State Palace Theater in New Orleans, where
she'd use ecstasy and other drugs.

"That was considered a big evening," she said.

During one big evening at the State Palace Theater, Sydney witnessed an
overdose.

"I was in the upstairs balcony and a guy was throwing up and I could tell
that he was rolling (using ecstasy). I could tell that he was really
(messed) up because I had been like that before.

"He was heaving really badly. Then he started throwing up, just constantly.
That's about the point where you need to get him to the hospital before he
starts going into convulsions."

She said the stricken man's girlfriend wouldn't allow anyone to call an
ambulance because she was concerned the police would come and arrest him.

Sydney doesn't know what happened to the guy.

"I wasn't too sober myself," she said. "I was doing the same stuff he was
doing, but he'd obviously done too much. You see that all the time when you
go to raves."

Sydney sometimes attended raves sober.

"Going to a rave sober, it's like you've removed yourself from the spectrum
and you realize what whack jobs most of the people are," she said. "It's a
completely different universe."

'I looked like hell'

Sydney tried cocaine last February. She was with her boyfriend, who had
graduated from Long Beach High School the previous year.

He'd been kicked out of his house and had moved into a place of his own. A
lot of different people would visit him and Sydney didn't always know who
they were.

One night a guy showed up selling cocaine. Sydney sampled it.

She didn't know how cocaine would affect her, but she didn't believe she'd
get addicted to it.

"But after a couple of times of using it you notice the high. You know
where it's coming from. You know how it makes you feel, and you like it,"
she said.

She used coke daily for three months.

"We used to get all coked up and watch TV or sit around and play dominoes
or whatever," she said. "I'd have to be home by 10 p.m. on school nights.
I'd go home messed up on coke and work out in my room, just lift weights
and stuff.

"I was really athletic in high school."

She said she once sniffed cocaine before going shopping with her mother.

"She was completely clueless," Sydney said.

Her father said it was difficult to imagine that his attractive and
intelligent daughter was using drugs.

"My wife teaches - she can spot a druggy a mile away," her father said.
"She couldn't spot her own daughter. When it's close to home it's tough to
see. You don't want to believe that about your daughter."

Sydney's cocaine habit was spiraling out of control and she rarely attended
class, but her grades remained outstanding.

She used the good report card to deflect her parents' questions about drugs.

"I'd say, 'Well, mom, I'm an honor student. How could I be on drugs?'

" she said. "And the whole time I was on drugs."

The cocaine took a terrible toll on Sydney's health and appearance. She is
5 feet 10 inches tall and during her cocaine abuse her weight dropped to 97
pounds.

"I looked like hell," she said. "I had bottomed out. I didn't have a
relationship with my parents. I didn't have a decent relationship with any
of my friends anymore. I was never sober, and that's not healthy."

Sydney had a moment of clarity trying on a pair of shorts in her bedroom.

"They fell off of me," she said. "They were size three. That's small. I
didn't even have to unbutton them to take them off.

"Then I looked in the mirror and I didn't recognize myself. I realized I
had to stop using coke. I couldn't do it anymore, I had to stop."

'That was my night'

About the time she quit using cocaine, Sydney's boyfriend started smoking
crack.

She dumped him.

"I had dated the same guy since before I started doing drugs," she said.
"We did them together and our relationship had completely fallen apart. It
had been a great relationship."

Despite the train wreck drugs had made of her life, Sydney continued
abusing prescription medications, such as Xanax, after she stopped using
cocaine.

"We would take Xanbars. Xanbars are four Xanax tablets. A Xanbar messes
with your mind. You can't remember anything," she said. "Everything seems
like a dream when you wake up. Eventually you piece things together, but it
takes awhile."

She said she blacked out a lot while using drugs.

"I was notorious for it," she said. "That was my night."

The day she came home in a state of Xanax-induced delirium alerted her
parents to the seriousness of her drug problem.

They brought her to a therapist, who said she needed a change of environment.

"We had to remove the splinter," her father said. "The splinter was Long
Beach, Mississippi."

The Xanax episode also convinced Sydney that she had to kick the "hard" drugs.

She smoked marijuana to help her cope with quitting.

"Weed saved my ass when I first stopped doing coke," she said. "I got the
worst mood swings. My hands would peel. I'd feel sick and wouldn't want to
eat. I had really bad anxiety and was just emotionally distraught and
physically distraught."

Treating withdrawal symptoms with marijuana is not a good idea.

"That's called cross-addiction," said Albert Stallworth Sr., an addictions
counselor with Memorial Behavioral Health. "She's simply substituting one
drug for another. She probably had fewer negative consequences using
marijuana than cocaine.

"Eventually it's just a matter of time before people go back to the more
potent drug."

Sydney said it was stressful to be thrown into college while battling her
drug problem, but she said being away from home has helped.

"I'm happy to be away from the Coast and start over again in an environment
that was healthier than the one I grew up in," she said.

She said she has not used cocaine, ecstasy or prescription drugs since
starting Ole Miss.

Her parents encourage her to stay in Oxford as often as possible.

"I didn't want her back on the Coast," her father said. "I was nervous. It
happened once and it could happen again."

Sydney said she is enjoying college.

She said high school had not prepared her to handle the college workload,
and she struggled at first in her classes.

She has made a lot of friends and has not tried to conceal her drug-addled
past from them.

"It makes up a big part of who I am," she said. "It's part of my life."