DESCENT INTO DRUG ABUSE IS OFTEN DEEP-ROOTED

Olivia Roberts' childhood - her family, friends, neighborhood and
teachers - all helped form the person she became.

"She entered into a spiral of self-destructive behavior that she saw
modeled for her as a child," said the Rev. Steve Folmar, pastor of
First Baptist Church of Houma. "And statistics said she had a good
chance of taking the wrong road."

Experts say that is the reason a lot of people stay mired in the hell
of drug addiction.

"A lot of people don't grow up in a home with love and acceptance,"
said Cammye Thibodaux, executive director of the Alcohol and Drug
Abuse Council for South Louisiana.

So they turn to the drug culture, which offers a form of acceptance
along with a way to dull the pain of life.

"A lot of people use drugs or alcohol in an inappropriate attempt to
deal with their problems," Thibodaux said. "But it turns on you and
then you're hooked."

While resources are available for those who want to quit, the odds are
that only one in 10 people will successfully beat alcoholism. The odds
are even higher for cocaine addicts.

That's because of the way the drug works on the brain, increasing
dopamine levels in the organ's pleasure regions.

Each time that happens, the brain's receptors open to receive the
increased surge of chemicals that make the user feel good.

But repeated use prompts the brain to protect itself by shutting down
the natural production of dopamine and restricting the artificial
chemical's access to pleasure centers.

Before long, the user needs increasing doses to achieve the same high
and is left with a crippled brain that is unable to feel pleasure at
all without resorting to artificial means.

It can take up to two years, Thibodaux said, for the body to naturally
repair the damage that regular cocaine use causes.

"When a person is an alcoholic, they can enter into a program and
within a reasonable amount of time, there's improvement," she said.

Cocaine users face a much longer climb out of the cavern of addiction.
It's a climb that often seems insurmountable.

"You can recover," she said. "We have the resources, but first you
have to overcome the stigma that's attached to the disease."

Most users who do recover don't want people to know they ever sank to
the place that cocaine can take an addict. And other users, without
role models to emulate, never try to win back their lives.