Heroin: Small cities, even rural towns face growing problems

Heroin use is still relatively modest. According to the most recent National Survey on Drug Use and Health, 8.7 percent of Americans had recently taken illicit drugs, mostly marijuana and cocaine. Only a quarter of 1 percent over the age of 12 said they had used heroin. But heroin raises additional concerns because, like other opiates, it is considered powerfully addictive and difficult to give up.

“I’ve been working at this for 29 years,” Mr. Duncan says. “I’ve seen people addicted to many things, and heroin is always the hardest to deal with.”

Heroin’s rising popularity reflects what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last year described as an “epidemic” of overdoses from prescription drugs, especially painkillers like OxyContin and Vicodin. Users often switch from painkillers to heroin because it’s cheaper and more readily available, experts say. A tenth of a gram, enough for two or three uses, sells for as little as $20. Moreover, heroin has become increasingly available in refined forms that can be sniffed or snorted. Many young people are introduced to heroin in a powder form but eventually switch to injections.

William Patrianakos is one of them. Mr. Patrianakos, who grew up in Lockport, just outside Chicago, tells people that “if there was a graduating class of first addicts to heroin around here, I was one of them.” He started by taking OxyContin pills he got from a girlfriend, and he switched to heroin when he no longer could get the pills. He had struggled with depression, he says, an drugs made him happy.

To finance the addiction, Patrianakos stole from his family, borrowed from friends, and taught himself to counterfeit $100 bills. Like many addicts, he entered treatment programs several times, only to return to heroin. He finally was arrested for counterfeiting and spent a year in a court-mandated drug program. Even then he relapsed for three months before, he says, he finally quit heroin for good.

Today Patrianakos, who is in his mid-20s, works as a computer programmer, makes speeches about drugs, and works with support groups for parents whose children are struggling with addiction or have died from overdoses.

In many places, heroin is still a hidden problem because of the stigma attached to the drug, parents and drug experts say. “There’s still an unwillingness to talk about it in some communities,” says Ms. Kane-Willis of Roosevelt University. “There’s a sense of shame and a ‘it’s not here’ mentality.”

That may be changing, with communities trying to deal with the problem more openly. “We’re trying to raise the curtain,” says Janice Harris, the mother of a 22-year-old heroin addict in Tucson, Ariz. Ms. Harris is founder of the There Is No Hero in Heroin Foundation, which held its first “community awareness forum” in Tucson in November.

The response to such endeavors has often exceeded expectations. Two years ago NCADA, a leader in anti-heroin efforts, planned three public meetings. It ended up holding 27. Schools that initially “didn’t want to have anything to do with us” began asking for help, Duncan says. Organizations outside Missouri wanted advice, too. “We’ve had calls from all over saying, ‘What did you guys do? We need to do something here,’ ” he says.

Recently, 11 high schools and middle schools in the Chicago area began teaching students about heroin using new educational materials from the Robert Crown Center for Health Education, a private organization in the Chicago suburbs. The center developed the materials because existing antidrug education wasn’t working, says Kathleen Burke, the center’s chief executive officer.

“Students didn’t know about heroin,” she says. “They were not aware of what addiction was.” As part of the new curriculum, students are guided through an interactive computer program based on the true story of an addict their own age.

For young people who become addicted, there’s often too little help available, parents and others say. “The problem is getting the kids into treatment quickly,” Duncan says. Some parents recount desperate struggles to find help for their children. Patty DiRenzo of Blackwood, N.J., just outside Philadelphia, recalls how, after her son was turned down by rehabilitation centers and away from hospital emergency rooms, she gave him vodka so he could be admitted to a rehabilitation center with beds available only for alcoholics.

Previous

1 | 2 | 3

Next