Pubdate: Sun, 26 Jun 2005
Source: Era-Banner, The (CN ON)
Copyright: 2005 The Era-Banner
Contact:  http://www.yorkregion.com/yr/newscentre/erabanner/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2678
Author: Martin Derbyshire

DRUGS CARRY HEAVY COST

FORMER STRAIGHT-A STUDENT TURNED TO PROSTITUTION TO PAY FOR HABIT

Five years ago, Jessica Weihrich was a straight-A student from an
upper-middle class family without a care in the world.

No one would have suspected she would soon be strung out on heroin and crack
and selling her body to feed her addiction.

"I was a normal teenager. I had it all and I threw it all away for drugs,"
the Ottawa resident told a smattering of concerned parents and teenagers at
a drug and addiction forum in Aurora Thursday night.

Now 18 and clean for the past year, Ms Weihrich said her downward spiral
started with a few drinks on Christmas, New Year's Eve and her birthday.

Like a lot of teenagers, she smoked pot a few times in Grade 8. She tried
ecstasy and started having sex with older guys. Later that year, she became
pregnant.

She had an abortion, but missed a lot of school and her grades suffered.

In Grade 9, there would be more pot and even LSD, but the big changes came
when she made friends with street kids in downtown Ottawa.

"I always used to put all this pressure on myself to do well in school. I
looked at these street kids and it was like they didn't have a care in the
world," she said.

She found a boyfriend on the streets, dropped out of school and started
getting into harder drugs such as PCP, a white crystal powder that can be
snorted, smoked or ingested.

One night she overdosed and it took her two weeks to start speaking normally
again, but it wasn't enough to scare her straight.

It wasn't long before morphine and heroin became her drugs of choice and the
street became more than just a place to hang out, it became a home.

In and out of several drug treatment programs and back on the streets, she
spent the better part of three years using heroin daily until she added
crack cocaine to the mix.

When panhandling wouldn't pay for the drugs, she turned to prostitution.

"I came from a normal middle-class family. People who knew me back then
would never imagine I would be living like this," she said. "But I'm here to
tell you it can happen to anyone."

Jessica's story is the extreme of what can happen when teenagers experiment
with drugs, said Carin McLean, a youth outreach services supervisor with the
Centre for Addiction and Mental Health.

But if York Region parents think their children won't be faced with some of
the same choices, Ms McLean said they should think again.

The last Ontario Student Drug Use Survey showed 66.2 per cent of all high
school students have experimented with alcohol.

Almost 30 per cent have tried pot, 19.2 per cent tobacco, 4.1 per cent
ecstasy and 1.4 per cent heroin.

According to the survey, teenagers are most likely to try drinking and
smoking when they're 13 and marijuana at 14.

The survey shows two thirds of teenagers will try some drug while in high
school, yet less than a dozen parents attended the forum Thursday.

"The biggest challenge in dealing with parents on these issues is denial,"
Ms McLean said. "They refuse to see their teenager could be engaged in some
of these risk-taking activities."

While you may not stop your child from experimenting, you can help make sure
they don't abuse drugs by talking to them about the issue, she said.

If your goal with your children is complete abstinence, you're probably
going to fail, Ms McLean said.

A more realistic goal would be just making sure your teenager is making an
informed choice.

"Scare tactics and telling your children to just say no isn't going to
work," she said. "The chances are you're not going to be there when your
kids are faced with these choices. But if what we want is when we're not
around for them to hear us, we can do that, just by talking to them."

Since the average age children start experimenting with drugs is 13, it's
never to early to begin that dialogue, she said.

Jessica's mother, Heather Hilts, said she never talked to her daughter about
drugs until it was too late.

"That's the best advice I can give," she said. "Educate yourself early and
talk to your kids. Don't wait until you think or know you have a problem."

For more advice on talking to your children about drugs, the Centre for
Addiction and Mental Health is on the Internet at www.camh.net
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