Pubdate: Sun, 18 May 2014
Source: Daily Press (Newport News,VA)
Copyright: 2014 The Daily Press
Contact:  http://www.dailypress.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/585
Author: Prue Salasky

TEEN SPICE USER: 'IT'S THE NEW CRACK'

Rehab, drug court gives NN teen new life

NEWPORT NEWS -- Spice took over his life in middle school. Nothing
else mattered. Being high became the norm.

At 12, he picked up his first cigarette. Soon the Newport News teen,
now 18, was smoking marijuana, too. "Cigarettes and weed," he said in
a single breath, making no distinction. "Weed was just part of life. I
smoked weed all the time -- after school, every weekend."

Halfway through eighth grade, he moved on to spice, which had the
advantage of being cheaper and, at the time, both legally obtainable
and undetectable in drug screens.

He quickly became addicted.

"At first four grams, which cost $20, would last two days," he said.
"Then the bag would be gone before I went home." Soon, he was inhaling
five grams in a couple of hours and stealing from his parents to
support the habit.

Now he says he despises the drug that changed his personality, caused
him to cough up black gunk, and had him thinking of little else. "The
smell of it makes me sick to my stomach," he said in a recent
interview at his parents' home.

He would smoke before school, at school and before bed. At school he
would use a "one-hitter" in the bathroom; he would dribble shreds on
his bedroom floor before he left for school so he'd have some when he
got home. "It's nasty stuff," he said, describing escalating mood
swings and constant lying to friends.

When the law caught up with him, the teen faced a choice between
detention and getting clean. He chose the latter, attending a pivotal
three-week rehab program out of state. His insurance paid for the
residential treatment, though it wouldn't cover an initial one-week
detox because spice wasn't classified as an addictive substance, his
mother said.

Eighteen months later, the night sweats are gone, but he still has
occasional tremors and experiences cravings.

The wavy-haired teen attributed his initial foray into smoking to peer
pressure, introduced to it by an older neighbor. From the beginning it
held a social lure. "It's a way to meet people, to have fun and relax.
It makes you calm down, self-medicate, not stress about problems," he
said. "I had tons and tons of friends, people I could hang out with."

At first he smoked when others supplied him, but he rapidly moved on
to stealing money from his parents and pawning their
possessions.

He'd been smoking marijuana daily for two years when his parents
started drug-testing him. To avoid detection, he switched to spice,
which friends told him was a legal synthetic.

"It was brand new. It wasn't as horrible as it is for you now. They
would illegalize the chemicals and just change them," he said. "It's
the new crack. People are ridiculously addicted, it's much worse than
it was."

He thrived on the social aspect of an intensifying drug
habit.

"I'd be with a lot of friends. The guy I was chilling with was really
popular. We'd switch off buying one gram," he said. Alcohol didn't
hold much interest for him, but occasionally he'd drink and pop pills
with the group. He tried acid, Molly, Ecstasy, the names spill out in
an easy cascade. Given 24 hours they could find anything, he said.
Mostly he used at other people's homes. His parents would drive the
streets looking for him.

After rehab, he didn't make the break immediately. He smoked again a
couple of times, but when he observed others high, he thought they
looked stupid. He realized he didn't want to be like that.

"You can have so many punishments but it's not going to make any
difference unless you want to change," he said.

His counselors taught him that to be successful, he needed to change
his "people, places, and things." He has a couple of friends from his
using years but they don't use around him and don't want him to start
back. "The main thing is the boredom," he said. "You need something to
occupy yourself. I got a job, school, drug court." He has just one day
a week when he doesn't have structured activities.

For his family, his habit was devastating.

"He was going down a road to nowhere. He just wanted to get high,"
said his mother, describing numerous interventions and the futility of
trying to stop him from seeing his friends. She kept a Ziploc bag full
of empty spice packets she found hidden. His parents took off the
doors to his bedroom and bathroom so he couldn't use there. They
called the police. Far from being scared, the teen found their visits
"an annoyance."

They came up against ignorance about the potency and effects of
spice.

"Nowhere talked about the addictiveness and the personality change,"
his mother said as she described watching her son, "a nice, easygoing
kid," morph into a verbally and physically abusive young man who
regularly stole from them. She still doesn't know everything that's
missing from their well-appointed home.

Her son nodded. It did alter his personality, he agreed, though he
didn't notice at the time. Others had seizures and bad trips, but he
didn't. Their parents looked the other way, he said, or even joined
in.

His parents looked for drug paraphernalia, such as the bong they'd
found in the drainage pipe when marijuana was his drug of choice.
Instead, they ended up finding Pringle packages so they stopped buying
the chips and hid the Reynolds wrap. They locked up the silverware and
the liquor. They considered locking up the knives. His mother started
sleeping with her money in an inside pocket in her pajamas.

"Spice always came first," said the teen, who now can't abide its
smell. He believes that drug court and rehab saved his life.

"The court provided a bigger stick than I could," said his mother,
crediting it with turning her son's life around. Drug-free for the
past 18 months, he just obtained his driver's license. He will
graduate from high school this summer. He's applying to colleges with
rolling admission programs.
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MAP posted-by: Matt