Story Photos
 Photo by Bill Wagner From her Kelso home early last month, recovering drug addict Deborah Idlett reflects on her chemical dependencies. |
Our teens' pill problem
Sunday, June 3, 2007 6:03 AM PDT
By Stephanie Mathieu and Leslie Slape
Printable version
E-mail this articleKelso High School senior Chad Holtman had anxiety and panic problems, and his prescription for Prozac wasn't working.
So when a classmate told him prescription pain-relief patches would help calm him down, the two made a trade: Holtman's pills for two patches of fentanyl, an opiate painkiller dozens of times stronger than morphine.
The last things Holtman remembers that December day was slapping the two patches on his back after school and driving to his girlfriend's home in Longview. There, he became too incoherent to drive home and fell asleep, others later told him.
Early the next morning, his girlfriend tried unsuccessfully to wake him up, then she and her mom called 911. She punched him and splashed water on his face, but Holtman, then 17, wouldn't awake. A white film crusted on his lips, and it sounded like he was trying to breathe through a slender coffee straw.
He had vomit in his lungs and an 80 percent chance of never waking up, doctors later told him. He was in a coma for three days.
"I've never been a drug user," a now-healthy Holtman said during a phone interview last month. "I didn't know anything about the fentanyl patch. ... I was told that it would relax me."
Holtman's brush with death highlights a rising problem with prescription drug abuse, especially among young people, that is alarming medical experts across the country and community members in Cowlitz County.
Recent surveys suggest that today's teenagers -- raised in a culture that seems to pop a pill for any ailment -- abuse prescription medications because they incorrectly believe they aren't as dangerous as illegal drugs and because they're easier to get --- by duping doctors, stealing from parents or buying or trading with friends.
Nationwide, the rate at which teens abuse prescription drugs is increasing while their use of street drugs -- from marijuana to heroin -- is declining.
Prescription drug abuse can be fatal. In 2006 in Cowlitz County three young adults -- an 18-year-old Longview man, a 26-year-old Kelso man and a 26-year-old Longview woman -- died of accidental prescription drug overdose, according to the coroner's office.
The most common cause of death was a chemical reaction from combining drugs, much like Holtman's Prozac interaction with the fentanyl.
Since his recovery, Holtman said he has become a walking example at his high school of just how dangerous prescription drugs can be when used without a doctor's permission or direction.
"They're not out there just to buy, because they will kill you," Holtman said. "To me, it's like that should make them sound more dangerous."
A growing problem among teens
Prescription medications are becoming a drug of choice for teens, according to a White House Office of National Drug Control Policy study released in February.
During the past five years, the use of illicit drugs among teens declined 23 percent, but the rate of teens purposefully abusing prescription drugs to get high is growing, according to a 2006 University of Michigan survey. Their abuse is second only to marijuana, according to the Michigan report.
In Cowlitz County, students abuse prescription painkillers more than their Washington peers, according to the 2006 Healthy Youth Survey, which is distributed every two years to middle and high school students by the state's Department of Health. More than 3,000 students in the county answered questions about prescription drugs.
In 2006, 4.8 percent of 10th graders in Cowlitz County reported illegally using Ritalin -- a stimulant commonly used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder -- in the past 30 days, according to the Healthy Youth Survey. That rate was 3.6 percent in 2004.
And 4.8 percent of Cowlitz 12th graders last year illegally used Ritalin in the past 30 days -- nearly double the 2.5 percent of 12th graders who reported using the drug illegally in 2004.
The Daily News attempted this year to conduct its own, more detailed survey in the public schools about prescription drug abuse, but several nearby school districts denied access, citing federal privacy laws, a burden on the teaching staff and the availability of the Healthy Youth Survey.
Local high school and middle school students interviewed about prescription drug abuse said they have either seen students swap and pop pills in school or heard about weekend parties where students take medications to get high.
They said their peers turn to prescription drugs because they are easy to get and easier to hide from teachers, parents and police.
Toutle Lake High School freshman Samantha Thurman said she knows at least two friends who use prescription medications to get high, and word "gets around fast" when a student brings pills to school to sell or hand out. Sometimes students swipe painkillers from a parent who just had surgery, or from a sibling who takes a stimulant to control attention deficit disorder.
"I think some people think it's not as harmful because it's medication," said Thurman, 15.
Cowlitz County Sheriff's Capt. Mark Nelson said many people who abuse prescription drugs don't consider themselves drug addicts. Some people who refuse to try street drugs put legal medications in a different category. Young people grow up watching family members share prescriptions -- which is illegal -- to save a trip to the doctor, he said.
"I think that happens more frequently in families than anyone would care to admit," he said. "Probably 98 percent of the time, no harm, no foul. But there's the other percentage where there are drugs that interact with other drugs ... and cause serious injury and sometimes death."
As harmful as street drugs
Prescription drugs are safe when a doctor gives them in the correct dosage to a person who needs them, but when taken recreationally, the drugs can be deadly, said Brian Hoyt, an emergency room doctor at St. John Medical Center.
On a weekly basis, emergency room doctors deal with prescription drug problems, including overdoses and withdrawal symptoms, Hoyt said. When a person addicted to prescription painkillers or stimulants runs out of pills, they react with symptoms that are similar to food poisoning but last at least five days, Hoyt added.
"It doesn't have the stigma of a street drug," Hoyt said. "They can be just can be just as dangerous or lethal or addictive as street drugs."
When a teen comes in for an overdose, they are usually "scared and screaming," Hoyt said. They don't recognize their own family. Sometimes they are blue because they've stopped breathing.
"They're sitting there in their own vomit, gurgling," Hoyt said. "We are seeing more of it, and that is very disturbing."
There are many myths about prescriptions drugs, Hoyt said. Sometimes athletes pop a Vicodin painkiller before a game thinking the drug will help them physically push themselves without feeling any pain. In reality, he said, the drug causes drowsiness, constipation and slow reflexes.
Stimulants used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder also are abused, Hoyt said. Overdoses on those drugs cause a fast heart rate or heart palpitations, anxiety, paranoia or hallucinations, he said, and teens sometimes graduate from these stimulants to using methamphetamine, which gives a similar yet stronger high.
Designer prescription drugs -- extra-potent medicines for patients with a resistance to typical doses -- are especially dangerous, Hoyt said. "These are designed for somebody who's having to take 20 pain pills a day."
Just a locker or medicine cabinet away
According to the National Drug Control Policy study, 56 percent of teens say prescription drugs are easier to get than illegal drugs, and more than three in five teens say prescription painkillers are easy to steal from parents.
Half of teens say it's easy to obtain the painkillers by using another person's prescription, and 39 percent said it's easy to order prescription drugs over the Internet or phone.
Thurman, the Toutle Lake freshman, said other students pop pills during weekend parties and come back on Monday to brag, asking, "Guess what I did this weekend?"
Thurman has seen students pop pills at school, too, she said. They will linger around a friend's locker, scoot in close and hand the pills off, she said. Athletes will take pain medication before a game to be able to overexert themselves and play through pain.
That was the case in 2004, when a 17-year-old Kelso High School student tricked four of the school's football players into buying an over-the-counter painkiller, telling the athletes that it was Vicodin. When they discovered their bags of 30 pills -- purchased for $15 -- weren't Vicodin, they planned to beat the seller up. He pleaded guilty to four counts of delivery of a counterfeit substance in Cowlitz County Juvenile Court.
This year, in Kelso's alternative Loowit High School, a teacher caught students passing medications during the lunch period in a "surreptitious manner," according to a police report. One student had a prescription for Adderall and passed a pill to a classmate who asked him on several occasions for the drug.
Mark Nelson, the sheriff's captain, said it's not unusual for students to ask their sick or injured peers to sell them their medications. The culture has changed from "Can I sign your cast? to Can I buy your drugs?" he said.
R. A. Long High School freshman Dusty Minkler said she has seen students pass around pills in the lunchroom, telling their friends it will make them feel "so much better."
"Anybody can do it if you know where to go," said Minkler,15.
Teen dealer sold meds to students
A former high-school drug dealer who used to sell oxycontin, Vicodin, methadone, Xanax and other prescriptions says fellow students approached him about 30 times a day for pills. His customers ranged from preppies to grungers to athletes, he said, and "I always made at least a couple hundred dollars a day."
"People have to have it (medications) to feel good," he said. "You feel like you're going to die, you go through such bad withdrawals. ... you'd be sick all day until you find a way to get money or get drugs."
He dealt for several years to support his own habit before he was caught selling drugs in a school zone and became an undercover drug informant for police. The Daily News agreed to not use his name.
Now 20, the young man spent two years at Mark Morris and nearly two at Kelso High School before dropping out (he later earned his GED). He said he kept his drugs in his car and sold them before school, during lunchtime, or he forged excuse notes so he could leave campus to deal. When he attended Kelso, "I had people coming into the parking lot from Mark Morris to buy drugs" because Mark Morris students typically had money to burn, he said.
Most of his customers used drugs at school, he said. He recalled doing drugs during class behind the shield of an open book.
"I used to ... crunch down pills on my desk and snort in class," he said. "Teachers don't pay good enough attention."
He said he bought most of his supply from adults who had legal prescriptions.
'I didn't realize what addicted felt like'
Recovering drug addict and Mark Morris graduate Deborah Idlett, 24, used several means to sustain her dependency to Adderall, a drug similar to Ritalin used to treat attention deficit disorder.
At age 15, she got the pills from a friend with a legal prescription. She also stole the drug from her brother, who had a prescription, and went to the doctor to fake the illness and get her own prescription.
She often told doctors she misplaced her pills to get more, and later, when she became addicted to methamphetamines, Idlett would sell Adderall at school to afford meth.
When she couldn't find meth, Idlett said she took Adderall as a substitute. She sold pills for $3 each to her friends, $5 to acquaintances and $8 to strangers, but the "first one's always free," she said. "It's a way to make money."
Idlett said she was raised in an affluent household in Longview. She started smoking marijuana at age 10. When she was 15, she started taking a friend's prescribed Adderall so she could maintain her drug-taking lifestyle.
Idlett would waft through the school day stoned on marijuana, then take Adderall at night to stay awake and catch-up on school work. She was involved in drama, debate and honors English at Mark Morris High School, and she was active in her church youth group.
"It's hard to hold up the 'look good' and 'have fun' if you don't have something to compensate for it," she said. "I didn't feel like I had enough time in the day to get anything done."
After about only four months of abusing Adderall, Idlett graduated to methamphetamine. "I was at a party, and I had fallen asleep, and I had been up for a couple of days on Adderall," she said.
She saw some people smoking something out of light bulb and took a hit without asking -- or caring -- what it was, she said.
Like Idlett, today's students who abuse prescription drugs do it to escape their problems or feel good, and they don't understand that prescription medications are more addictive than others they might have tried, such as marijuana.
"I didn't realize what addicted felt like," Idlett said. "I know I wanted it every day. ... I started with Adderall, which led to meth, then I got into oxy, which led to morphine, which led to heroin. It was always like a steppingstone."
Idlett has been clean for 14 months, lives in Kelso and is expecting a baby. She hopes to land a job that will allow her to help children and teens understand the dangers of drugs.
"Adderall was the beginning," Idlett said. "I took it everywhere. It's not something people look for. ... Pills? You scratch off what it says it is, and it can look like anything you get at the store."
The mentality about prescription drugs is different, Idlett said: "Pills didn't feel like real drugs. It felt like we were playing."
Cracking down
Students who require medication at school must get permission forms signed by a guardian and a doctor.
"We can't have it at school without the appropriate forms being filled out," said Mark Hottowe, director of students services in the Kelso School District. "It could be No-Doz (extra-strength caffeine pills). It could be aspirin."
Students caught with illegal or mood-altering substances face suspension, Hottowe said. Students can lessen the days suspended by attending drug awareness classes. School officials must catch a student with the drugs, or hear that a student is in possession before disciplining the student.
For students who want help with drug addiction, Educational Service District 112 -- which covers 30 Washington school districts -- provides one intervention specialist for Kelso's middle and high schools and two intervention specialists based in Longview's three middle schools, said Sandra Mathewson, director of the ESD 112 prevention center.
When Holtman overdosed on fentanyl, the experience opened up an opportunity to discuss with all students the consequences of experimenting with medications, Hottowe said.
"This is not a new phenomenon," Hottowe said. "What is new is the choice of the prescription drugs that may be in use."
Danny Neves, 18, is scheduled for trial Aug. 22 for trading drugs with Holtman, leading to the overdose. He has been charged with obtaining a controlled substance through fraud, delivering a controlled substance within 1,000 feet of school grounds and third-degree assault.
Outside of school, it is illegal to possess another person's prescribed medication or carry medications out of their original container, Capt. Nelson said.
Holtman said he thinks law enforcement officials are trying to make an example out of Neves. Regardless of the law and school rules, prescription drugs are still being traded and purchased liberally, he added.
After reflecting on his overdose, Holtman said he feels worst about disappointing his parents and giving his school a bad name.
"I'm just known as another stupid teenager drug addict," Holtman said, adding that people who know his story probably "just see 'another Kelso teen ODs.' "
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