Series: Wasted Youth -- Cases Of Neglect (Day 4 -- 4 Of 6)

STRUGGLING BACK

Family Of Recovering Addict Gives Thanks For Every Day She Stays Clean

ABINGTON -- Mary D'Eramo kept her pocketbook in her bedroom at night.

Her daughter locked her bedroom door when she showered. Her son left
a note in his pockets when he realized the $20 in change -- his tips
from working at the local Dairy Queen -- kept disappearing. Then
there were the spoons missing from the kitchen. Finally, there was
the admission by then 19-year-old Christine D'Eramo that she was using heroin.

It would plunge the family into a three-year struggle that would
nearly tear them apart.

"It has been a rough road," Christine, now 24, said. "It gets better
every day. Right now, I have to deal with it one day at a time, and I have."

Christine spent months in treatment programs, then at a halfway house
in Boston, using the prescribed drug Suboxone to curb cravings for heroin.

She remains in the Boston area. She and her family are now waiting,
hoping -- and thankful for each day of her sobriety.

"It is a lifelong struggle," Mary D'Eramo said.

It is a different future from what Christine -- and her family --
envisioned when she graduated from Abington High School and headed to
Montserrat College of Art in Beverly.

"I had plans to be an art teacher, to teach elementary school art,"
Christine said.

That dream, at least for now, is gone. Christine's path to heroin is
a well-worn one for a number of middle-class teens and young adults.
She is now hoping her story will have a happy ending.

Christine began using OxyContin her senior year at Abington High
School at age 18.

"OxyContin was everywhere," she said. "All the people I hung out with
were using it. ... I tried it and fell in love with it."

But OxyContin, at $40 for a 40-milligram pill, was expensive.

"I called someone one day and was told, 'I don't have Oxys, but I
have heroin.' I just did it."

She was 19 and a college freshman.

She said she used heroin occasionally. Then more frequently. By her
sophomore year, Christine found herself driving from the Beverly
campus to Brockton to buy it.

"It started off during the weekends when I came home, Friday,
Saturday and Sunday. It progressively got worse.

I started coming back during the week to get high. I started not
being able to sleep at night, getting sick."

She kept her addiction a secret from her family. As she entered her
junior year, Christine was hooked.

"I overdosed that summer at a friend's house.

They had to call an ambulance," she said. Christine decided to tell
her mother the next day.

"I heard the word heroin and I was flabbergasted," said her mother.
"Heroin? Janis Joplin took heroin. Jimi Hendrix used heroin. No one
uses heroin today. I never saw it coming."

Christine returned to school in the fall, insisting she was fine.

"When we first found out, we thought, 'We are going to fix her, and
she's going to be all better and she's going to start her life
again,'" her mother said.

Christine said she sought out a detox program without telling her
parents when she returned to school, convinced she could stay in college.

But heroin had too tight a hold. She left school a week into her
junior year. Christine would eventually go to 26 treatment programs
and halfway houses.

Her father, David, recalls spending hours on the phone, calling
treatment centers, trying to find a spot quickly for his daughter
each time she relapsed.

"I'm not a big fan of letting them hit rock bottom. I think being
dead is rock bottom," he said. "You can't give up."

One private program, in upstate New York and not covered by
insurance, cost the family $14,000. Christine began using again about
six weeks after getting home. Her father blew up.

"I just couldn't believe it," he said. "I was so angry."

Tension in the house worsened as the D'Eramos tried to get Christine help.

"We didn't want anyone to know," Mrs. D'Eramo said. "There is a big
stigma with heroin."

It is that stigma that stops some families from talking about the
problem, from pressuring officials for longer treatment programs,
from getting help sooner, Mrs. D'Eramo said. "If it can happen to us,
it can happen to anybody," she said. "We're your normal
family. There's no reason for this to have happened."

Christine said her family did all it could.

It was the heroin that changed her.

"It turned me into a monster," Christine said. "I didn't care who I
ripped off. ... Every day, it was usually in the morning, I would get
up and I would pawn whatever I could at my house.
It was like a chase every day." S

he would use the household spoons to heat up the heroin before
injecting it. Her sister, Allison, put a lock on her bedroom door
after Christine stole her money.

Then Allison began to spend most of her time at the home of friends.

"I didn't want to be here," she said.

Brother Adam said the tension was always high at the house.

"I hated it when she was home. When she wasn't home, there was
peace," he said.

There was also fear at home. Fear she would die. Christine overdosed
three times, once at home. Her family went to court twice to ask a
judge to forcibly commit her to a treatment program for up to 30 days
for drug treatment -- a process known as a Section 35. That wasn't
enough -- she couldn't stop. Detox treatment typically runs three
days followed by a seven to 30 day in-patient program usually covered
by insurance.

Longer programs -- such as the one in New York -- are paid by families.

Court-ordered civil commitments to the Massachusetts Alcohol and
Substance Abuse Center in Bridgewater for men or to a program that
opened last year in New Bedford for women last up to 30 days.

"The programs were never long enough," Christine said of her first
efforts to get clean.

Nearly two-thirds of heroin addicts relapse after their first
treatment program.

The first time Christine tried Suboxone, a medication used to block
opiate cravings and stave off withdrawal symptoms, she relapsed. "I
wasn't ready to get clean," she admitted.

She tried Suboxone again last year and is still in treatment.

Her brother, who founded the Students Against Destructive Decisions
group while at Abington High School, said he still can't understand
how -- or why -- his sister started using drugs.

"When people saw our family, they said, 'You have the perfect
family,' " Adam, now a college freshman, recalled. "It shows it can
happen to anybody.

It can happen to any family.

People have to realize that."