Teen addicts face rough road home

Julian Guthrie
OF THE EXAMINER STAFF

OAKLAND "Louis" did it for love. The love filled him with warmth and
bliss and made him do the unthinkable: Stand in front of a mirror, hold
his breath until a vein in his neck popped out, and slide a needle under
his skin.

"Melody" did it to escape. Trying to forget that her mom and dad were
addicts, she became one. To hide razorthin track lines, she took to
wearing longsleeve shirts and tapping veins in her legs.

As heroin addiction made headlines last week with the death by an
apparent overdose of 19yearold Nicholas Traina, son of romance
novelist Danielle Steel 45 teenagers in one Bay Area treatment center
continued their excruciating battles with drugs.

Sitting in a small room in the Thunder Road Adolescent Treatment Center
in Oakland, seven young people, ranging in age from 15 to 19, talked of
heroin, marijuana, LSD, speed and cocaine with a mixture of awe and
disgust.

"Any kind of drug is totally easy to get," said Rachel Muller, 16, an
Antioch native whose drugs of choice were crank (speed) and marijuana.
"Every school has a known drug seller."

She added: "You can know how to do drugs just by watching movies and
television. And, once you do it . . . drugs make you feel happy."

Janella, nodding in agreement, said she thought of drugs as "totally
cool."

"It made me feel like laughing at everything. I didn't have to listen to
my parents bitching."

Of the three girls and four boys who shared their stories, four were
from middleincome families, three lowerincome. All looked like typical
trendy teenagers, with baggy jeans, Tshirts and pricey sneakers.

Rachel Muller, and Felipe and Alfonso Contreras are real names; other
names have been changed at parents' requests.

Despite antidrug campaigns, drug use among 18 to 25yearolds is at
its highest level since 1988, with 15.6 percent of young adults saying
they had used drugs in the past month, according to the annual National
Household Survey on Drug Abuse.

Bay Area counties, including San Francisco, Alameda and Contra Costa,
have the state's highest drugrelated hospitalization rates, according
to the Public Statistics Institute, a nonprofit group in Irvine that
studies health and social issues.

San Francisco leads the rest of the state in heroinrelated hospital
admissions with four times the state average and ranks third in the
country behind Baltimore and Newark, N.J., according to Larry Meredith,
director of San Francisco's Department of Public Health Community
Substance Abuse Services.

Meredith, calling the Bay Area the "drug abuse capital of the country,"
said San Francisco ranked second in the U.S. in cocainerelated hospital
admissions, and first for methamphetamine.

At Thunder Road, which admits teenagers, treatment runs for one year,
with the inpatient phase ranging from 45 to 90 days and outpatient
treatment requiring twiceweekly visits for the rest of the year. The
cost is a staggering $16,000 but financial aid is available for
children of lowincome families.

Family involvement key

Operating on the belief that family involvement is key to an
adolescent's recovery, parents are required to attend a threeday
orientation session and twiceweekly meetings for the entire year.

"Unless the adolescent's family participates, there's a high risk of
relapse," said Elizabeth Escobar, director of admissions at Thunder
Road. "We have to tell parents that tough love works well unless you
forget the love part."

Although none of the young people at Thunder Road who spoke of their
battle with drugs claimed a famous novelist for a mom, the kids shared
much in common with Nicholas Traina, a punk musician whose body was
found last weekend slumped in his Pleasant Hill apartment, a syringe
next to his lifeless hand.

One boy, Jake, clad in a Duke University Tshirt and baggy khaki shorts,
knew Traina and was a fan of his band, Link 80. "What's so sad is he
won't be able to express his feelings through music anymore," Jake said.

Addictive family cycle

Five of the seven said they had parents who abused drugs. Traina's blood
father, Bill Toth Steel's third husband is a known heroin user who's
spent decades in and out of treatment centers.

"My parents never did heroin in front of me, but I still knew they did
it every day," said Melody, with braces and expressive blue eyes. Her
parents managed to use heroin and still hold down professional jobs. Her
mom was a computer programmer and her dad worked as a set designer.

"I had said all my life I wasn't going to be an addict, but one day I
got into my parents' stash," she said. "It took me a few times to find a
vein, but it felt so good. It blotted out everything."

Felipe Contreras, 17, from Watsonville, was initiated into the world of
drugs by his parents. "My mom offered me a line of cocaine when I was
13," he said.

When his parents separated, he went to live with his father, Alfonso,
who was hooked on cocaine and alcohol. "My dad was upset about what
happened with my mom so he was using a lot of coke. To make him feel
better, I thought I'd use it with him."

Father and son used together

Alfonso Contreras, who entered treatment for cocaine and alcohol
addiction on March 9, 1995 long before he could get his son into
treatment has been drug free ever since. "When we were living
together, I was so angry and hurt and caught up in my own disease that I
didn't think anything of him using," Contreras said of his son. "We used
together, drank together, lived together. I saw me in him. Felipe didn't
know anything but drugs and alcohol."

He is proud to attend his son's recovery meetings, and looks forward to
when they will live together again. "Felipe is getting a second chance
in life. Every time I see him, I see something different a light that
wasn't on before."

Rachel Muller's mom, who didn't want her name used, said drugs were a
"family affair" at their home. "I grew up in a family that used and sold
drugs. The first time I got high, my mom was present," Muller's mom
said. "Rachel was raised in a world of drugs."

Having been drug free for 18 months, she said: "I feel really bad that
Rachel had to go through so much pain and suffering because of my
addiction. I just hope we can stop this cycle."

Dr. Doug Anglin, who has studied heroin addiction for 25 years and is
director of UCLA's drug abuse research center, said it was "very clear
there's a genetic component to many behavior issues, particularly
deviant behavior."

When young adults turn to heroin, it can often be traced to depression
over "early attachment problems," said Michael Wachter, a psychiatrist
at Thunder Road.

"Heroin users commonly suffer from longstanding developmental issues,
such as the loss of a parent, the separation of parents or drugusing
parents," said Wachter. "The opiate that is heroin is used to soothe and
numb. It's different in that way from drugs like cocaine and
methamphetamine, which are uplifting."

Even if a child isn't raised in the presence of a drugusing parent as
was the case with Traina, who lived primarily with Steel and her fourth
husband John Traina he or she is at increased risk for substance
abuse, Wachter said.

"Even if a child doesn't know a parent, they know the history of the
parent," Wachter said. "They (often) take on the identity of the
parent."

Louis, whose uncle introduced him to heroin when he was 15, says the
drug had such a hold on him that it was the first thing he thought of
when he woke up "Before I brushed my teeth, I had to shoot up" and
the last thing he craved before going to sleep.

"I'm glad I'm here," he says, clasping his hands, which have the numbers
22 tattooed on them, signifying he was part of the 22nd Avenue gang in
Oakland. "I've been running away from my problems all my life. I don't
have to do that anymore."

Reflecting on his love affair with heroin, Louis said: "Heroin just
gives you that warm rush faster. But whether you're taking pills or
smoking weed or shooting heroin, they're all mindaltering chemicals. A
drug is a drug."