Nation: Kids and Heroin: The Adolescent Epidemic

• Share

(4 of 10)

"I don't know if I would have been accepted by my friends if I hadn't used drugs. My feelings are that I wouldn't have been. I wanted to be like them. They were all using drugs because they got bored with things. My parents never spoke to me once about drugs before I got involved. After I got involved, I used to see my father, but my father wouldn't say anything. My mother used to lay down a few rules. I talked to them about it. I used to go and tell my mother, kind of hoping that she'd say to me 'Stop and that's final.' But she never did."

TED, 15, tall and somewhat gawky, is in serious trouble with the law: several burglary charges in a Chicago suburb where he lives, possession of narcotics, and truancy. He has taken overdoses twice in recent months; his parents found him sprawled out, unconscious. "In eighth grade I started glue sniffing. It was the only thing around and it was pretty widespread, but I got bored with it after the first few times. Drugs were starting to catch on then, and some older guys turned me on to marijuana." Then it was LSD and amphetamines, and finally heroin. "I knew people who shot, and I wanted to see how it affected them. I wanted to get stoned. I shot smack nine or ten times. After the first quarter of freshman year, I didn't care. I didn't have the will power and I just cut out. I was going for anything that would give me a high. I've shot a lot of cocaine and gotten stoned on smack. I never really worried about a habit because I'd known people who'd taken a lot more than me and stopped. After a while, though, kids don't care if they get hooked. I feel I can learn a lot from all this. It's like burning your hand. Now I really have no desire to go back on drugs. I want to stay clean."

Ted's father, a conservatively dressed public relations executive: "We asked about drugs, but he denied that he was taking anything. He's been burning incense for years, reading books about the East. And I thought he was going Oriental. In late January, I saw needle marks in his arms. I'd say 'Those look like needle marks,' and he'd answer 'Just a bruise.' There just isn't any help —not the family doctor or the hospital or the police or the school."

Ted's fortyish, attractive mother: "It was like he was bewitched. People kept saying he'd grow out of it. It took a while to sink in. You just don't want to believe it. It's the helplessness that's the worst part. You're scared to get up in the morning. You don't know what you'll find. The real need is where to get help, someone to talk to, somewhere to turn."