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on where and how you will get the drug. You are busy setting it up for the day and the next day. It’s all you worry about.” The last time Steve overdosed he was on life support for 26 days, and woke up to find his mother crying over his body. “It was the worst moment of my life. My hands were tied down, I was intubated and my mother was in tears. I had already been abandoned by my girlfriend, all my friends, and had lost countless jobs. I had been in rehab more times than I could count.” Now clean for over a year, Steve says, “I just wish it had never happened in the first place. It was the worst mistake of my life.” Laura lives in Manhattan. She is the mother of two children, both in their twenties and both of whom are addicted to heroin. Her kids went to a public high school in New Jersey in an upper middle class suburb. Her son, always challenged with ADHD, became addicted first. It was not long before her daughter, always close with her sibling, also succumbed. “The first thing to understand is how easy, inexpensive and prevalent this is in all schools. My kids went to a very good public high school in an affluent town, the last place you would think this would happen. But it’s everywhere. The only question is, ‘Are they going to try it?’ “My son has ADHD and was always impulsive, but he main- tained good grades. His personality was such that it was difficult to distinguish adolescent behavior from dangerous behavior. He prob- ably had been dabbling with other drugs for two years before he started heroin. When he first started using, it took only two weeks before he had to use every day. We didn’t know what to do. He had already missed school 12 days in a month, but no one told us. He began disappearing. He was out of it, sleeping at odd hours. He turned into someone else. Heroin changed everything. He became a homeless person. We didn’t know where he was. His health suffered terribly. He never went back to school. Now he is able to hold down

“MY KIDS WENT TO A VERY GOOD PUBLIC HIGH SCHOOL IN AN AFFLUENT TOWN, THE LAST PLACE YOU WOULD THINK THIS WOULD HAPPEN. BUT IT’S EVERYWHERE. THE ONLY QUESTION IS, ‘ ARE THEY GOING TO TRY IT?’

a job, but he is still a work in progress. “My daughter became addicted when she was away at college. Her addiction was a much bigger surprise. She was super-organized and re- sponsible. Her personality is very different from her brother’s. We believe she first experienced heroin with her brother. She just left school and took off. To us, it seemed abrupt, but I’m sure it wasn’t. Again, we had no idea where she was. The school called us and said she was missing. She travelled for a year and a half, but she’s now living with us as well.” When Laura and her husband found out about their children’s addic- tions, they turned a microscope upon themselves, trying to figure out what they could have done differently. “We were shocked and bewil- dered. You don’t really find the answer.”

Of one thing Laura is certain. “Heroin is a monster. Hands down. When your kid is on this stuff he or she is someone else. They are not the person that you know. Heroin sucks the life out of them. You can see there is no joy in anything else except seeking this drug. What starts out as a euphoric search quickly turns into an overwhelming need. “I’ve seen them when they are going to pick up. One had picked up, and I pleaded with the other not to go and do it. But it was too compel- ling. The same one who had sworn, ‘I am never going back to the stuff,’ couldn’t resist when the sibling was using. In a few moments it was over. It was like a speeding train that you couldn’t stop.” Laura says parents have to educate themselves so they can uncover

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