Series: Wasted Youth (Day Two -- 1 Of 4)

HEROIN ADDICT REBUILDING LIVES AFTER ALMOST DESTROYING HIS OWN

The gun kept slipping, so Nick Saba slid his sweaty palm across his
shirt and squeezed the metal to where he couldn't tell where hand
ended and handgun began.

He sat low, coiled, in the front of the car and peered over the dash
- -- a predator looking to feed.

Fifteen minutes earlier, he had called his contact -- he needed more
OxyContin, he said. Bring some of the strongest pills. Meet at the usual spot.

Saba, the hockey star and Catholic school student, arrived first, his
buddy alongside. The dealer pulled up, and the two stepped out of
their cars together.

No one talked -- not at first.

This was a silent business. No friends. No names. Big hoods. Little faces.

Nick pulled first, pressing the semiautomatic pistol against the
faceless man's head. Saba had no money -- tonight, he would take what
he needed.

The man grabbed the weapon, which was not loaded. His fist found
Saba's cheek, his knee, Saba's gut.

But Saba threw the man to the ground, stomped his head, kicked his
neck. His buddy helped.

Blood streamed from Saba's head, nose, ear. He would have to go to
the hospital.

But he got the drugs.

Saba crushed one of the pills and sucked it into his bloodied
nostril. Minutes later, nothing hurt.

The predator had fed.

He played hockey, baseball, ran road races, had girlfriends, enjoyed
life -- and Nick Saba, the outgoing and affable teenager, never hurt anybody.

Until addiction overtook him.

"I became a fiend," he said. "It absolutely crushed me. I wasn't even
a person. I felt like I didn't even exist, and I didn't care about
it. This is what this drug did to me."

Nick's story is one of sickness and struggle, of immeasurable loss
and incremental gains.

He was an athlete who rose to stardom at Taunton's Coyle-Cassidy High
School before falling into the netherworld of narcotics. And his was
a home teeming with life, bursting with promise that, in just a
matter of months, teetered on the brink of tragedy.

But in the end, this is about success and survival, because Nick,
unlike so many other young addicts, is healing -- and now he is helping.

His recovery is as inspirational as his sudden slide into addiction
is terrifying.

The boy who became a ruthless street thug has evolved to where he now
counsels youths, runs a sober house for recovering users, and has
even spoken against drugs at a congressional forum in Washington, D.C.

The predator has become a person again.

Nick Saba curled his stick around the puck and carved through the
Bishop Connolly High defenders, reaching deep into their zone before
being forced behind their net.

The Coyle-Cassidy forward had already scored, and was having another
great game -- even though he had snorted OxyContin before suiting up.

He stopped, scanned the front of the net, then flipped the puck to a
teammate who slapped it home.

Final score: Coyle 6, Connolly 1.

Another win for Coyle. Another step for Nick Saba on his road to what
surely would be a college hockey, or even pro, career.

No one knew, however, that the sophomore sensation had long left that
path, having been lured by a new love -- a drug that would soon
replace hockey, and everything else.

OxyContin. OC. The new, near-pure narcotic intended for chronic pain
- -- it's what drove him now.

He was good at hockey -- he was better at sneaking OC. In bathrooms,
his bedroom, locker rooms, before games, afterward -- whenever the
drug called. Whenever he could muster the money.

He'd crush the pill, snort it and fade into his opiate high, never
realizing how low it would take him.

"I think back and I can't believe what I saw and what I did," said
Saba. "I've seen Hell."

The final descent began four years ago -- with one pill.

Having just attended a Coyle dance early in his sophomore year, Nick
and his group gathered at a friend's house.

It wasn't long before the first OC was offered -- 20 milligram pills
were being passed around. For free.

Nick swallowed one without hesitating.

"I had done Percocets," he said, "but this was like Percocets times
10. I loved it. I didn't even drink the whole night."