THE HIDDEN FACE OF HEROIN ADDICTION

For the inhabitants of America's vast suburban sprawl, it would be
comforting to think that all heroin addicts live in inner cities,
driven to drugs by poverty and crime.

It would be comforting - but it would be wrong.

In March 1998, MTV News correspondent Serena Altschul hosted and
co-produced "Fatal Dose," a "True Life" documentary about the
resurgence of heroin use among young people. It focused on the
affluent Dallas suburb of Plano, Texas, where more than a dozen young
people had died of a heroin overdose in the previous two years.

At 9 p.m. Sunday, MTV takes a fictionalized look at the problem with
the TV movie "Wasted," which premieres commercial-free. Directed by
Stephen Kay ("The Last Time I Committed Suicide"), it follows three
best friends - Samantha, Chris and Owen (Summer Phoenix, Nick Stahl,
Aaron Paul) - through their senior year of high school in a typical
suburban town.

As a couple, Sam and Owen experiment with snorting heroin, which leads
to addiction, as Chris, a good student and athlete, looks on. A brush
with death sends Sam to Narcotics Anonymous, which she attends with
Chris' support. Sam's withdrawal from the drug lifestyle alienates
Owen, who finds her to be less "fun," and she gradually moves into a
romance with Chris. But, tormented by Sam and Owen's shared experience
with heroin, Chris decides to try it himself, which starts a downward
spiral that ends in unexpected tragedy.

While the clean-cut teens of "Wasted" may not look like stereotypical
drug addicts, Kay knows from personal experience that appearances can
be deceiving. "I came from an upper-middle-class background," he says,
"and went to an Ivy League school, and didn't start using until I got
to the Ivy League school. Some kids, it's boredom; some kids, it's
fascination, intrigue; some kids, literally it's "I don't want to be
average,' which is really sad.

"At one point, Sam, in her voiceover, says, "This is the thing about
addiction, whether it's a guy or booze or drugs or whatever. The
reality is, none of it fills you.' The hope was not just to make a
movie about heroin, it was to make a movie about people trying to fill
themselves with other stuff."

"Drug abuse is not prejudiced against anything," says Phoenix (sister
of Joaquin and the late River), "against social status or race or sex.
It just feeds on fear and loneliness.

"The kids, they don't know what to do. Everybody is in this state of
lack of knowledge and just ignorance and needing guidance, including
the parents."

Speaking of parents, Kay showed "Wasted" to his own. "My folks were
visiting, they watched it and had a lot of difficulty getting through
it. Part of it is, they're looking at me, but it's a hard thing to
talk about, which is why MTV is pretty cool to even try it."

Kay portrays his teens as ordinary kids, which he thinks heightens the
drama. "They're normal kids, not a cinematic stereotype. I just saw a
movie the other night that hasn't come out yet, but it's about
cokeheads. They're not rich. This is about the underbelly, and they're
covered with tattoos. There's something that makes you immediately go,
"Of course that guy's going to die, because that's not me.'

"But if you see a guy in khakis and a button-down Oxford, you don't
have the easy out of saying, "Well, yeah, they're junkies, of course.'
They're high-school kids first."

Asked how she saw her character, Phoenix says, "I started looking at
her immediately just as a kid, a girl that was trying to become a
woman and trying to figure out where she lived in this world, who she
was, what she was going to do, where she came from, just like we all
do as we grow up.

"It's weird. I feel like a lot of the reasons why I related to her are
that she wasn't sure of her ideals and her morals and her principles
and who she was yet. I think I'm still trying to figure that out. I'm
preparing myself for the lifelong journey of this. It's a difficult
road to travel."

"It's not even morality," Kay says, "it's ethics, and to me, that
stuff is so gray. Every now and then (the characters) dip into it and
just have conversations about growing up and how they're not kids
anymore, that they've got to start taking care of stuff. But they
don't talk about the reality of, "You stole stuff from your mom,
that's creepy.'

"The reality is, when you're in the belly like that, I don't think
you're thinking like that. It's a sad reality. These kids are spoiled
to some extent, but it's more about fixing themselves than it is about
even entertaining notions about right and wrong."

As to what she hopes teens will take away from "Wasted," Phoenix says,
"Samantha was lucky. She was strong, too, and she did the work. That's
so important, to see that you can accomplish things if you work toward
them.

"And she was lucky. I hope that comes across, that, "Look, this girl
was lucky. Don't think that you can go through this and come out the
way she did, because you can see what happened to her friends.' "

"Summer's character realizes the true randomness," Kay says, "the
crapshoot of this thing, that it's killing people. It's not making
them better.

"I have a few friends who died from it and left families and friends
and stuff behind, and that will also shake you up enough. It's a hard
battle, but it's an internal battle, and it's a personal battle."