The enemy within: drugs in the NW Corner

Last fall parents, school officials and other interested parties began asking questions about drug and alcohol abuse among young adults in Region One towns — recent graduates who still have significant interaction with students at Housatonic Valley Regional High School.

To address this concern, reporter Patrick Sullivan is writing a series of articles that explores the complexities of drug use and trafficking in the Northwest Corner. His series begins with the story of a local heroin addict, an ordinary young man from an ordinary Northwest Corner family, interviewed in November 2008.  

“John,†age 28, is a Housatonic Valley Regional High School graduate who says he has been drug and alcohol free for about three months. In an interview he described his introduction to the illicit drug world.

“I started smoking pot when I was 11,†he said. “I drank for the first time, and blacked out. I didn’t drink again for two or three years, but I smoked pot daily until a year and a half ago.

“In high school a couple of friends and I got hold of a bottle of Percocets. I gave a couple to them and wolfed the rest, and I was off to the races.â€

Availability of opiate painkillers was a problem. “We’d rummage through cupboards and find a few here and there.â€

But by his senior year at Housatonic, John had found a neighbor with access to Vicodin. And his substance involvement didn’t stop with the opiates, although those became his drug of choice.

“I did a lot of cocaine — an eight-ball [4 grams] a week, and I was binge drinking four nights a week.†(Binge drinking is usually defined as five or more drinks at a sitting for men or three or more drinks for women.)

When John was in his early 20s, he moved to a house in North Canaan. His new friends were like-minded, and he was introduced to OxyContin, a powerful opiate painkiller and one of the most highly sought-after prescription drugs on the illicit market.

That habit grew rapidly, he said. “Right off the bat I was spending $200 a day on OCs.

“Then a kid came to town. He’d heard how much I was doing and said, ‘Why don’t you try this, you’ll save a lot of money.’ And that’s how I was introduced to heroin.

“I tried dope at around 23, and I’ve done it every day for five years.â€

John was lucky, he concedes: His fear of needles and relative affluence — he stated he has always worked since his early teen years — made it unnecessary to use heroin intravenously, and he was able to avoid committing the kinds of crimes often associated with drug use — burglaries and petty thefts, or possession of drugs and/or paraphernalia arrests after traffic stops.

But even snorted, the heroin took over quickly. “I started doing a bag a day.†(The smallest retail unit, a bag of heroin is generally between 1/8 and 1/4 of a gram; 10 bags constitute a bundle. The amounts and purity vary considerably.)

“Pretty soon I needed it first thing in the morning, then I was doing five bags at a time, and so on.â€

By the time he checked himself into a detox a few weeks before this interview, he was snorting 100 bags daily, by his estimate.

(This is an astonishing amount, only possible with an addict who has built up a massive tolerance. It is the rough equivalent of taking four to six 80 mg OxyContin pills per day, or drinking a 1.75 liter bottle of 80-proof liquor for an alcoholic.)

His local dealer delivered to him until John’s tab got too large (he reckons he still owes the dealer thousands of dollars). He started driving to Hartford two or three times a week, where he could stock up at less cost — and more risk.

John is frank about drug use among his contemporaries. “Of my 10 best friends growing up, eight of them are shooting dope.â€

John’s parents were utterly bewildered when he phoned them from detox. “We knew something was wrong, but we had no idea of the extent of it,†said his father.

At the November 2008 forum on teen and young adult substance abuse at Housatonic, parents expressed similar confusion (and some anger) over the threat of drugs in general and the rise in opiate use in particular. In Southington, Conn., Mary Marcuccio formed Parents 4 A Change in response to a heroin-related crisis in her family in March 2007.

“I was astonished first, and then angry about the level of denial†among parents in her suburban community in central Connecticut. “So I started speaking out.â€

The all-volunteer group provides support for families in crisis, raises awareness of opiate addiction among young people, and works with law enforcement — municipal, state and federal — on deterrence.

It’s been a successful effort — and widely publicized. Marcuccio has appeared on ABC-television’s “Good Morning America†and “Nightline;†the organization’s Web site provides a link to a local news broadcast.

The emphasis is on the direct involvement of group members with families struggling with opiate addiction.

“Our main target is parents in crisis,†Marcuccio said in a phone interview. “We assist with court proceedings, we help get the kid to detox, and we do interventions.â€

But the level of ignorance and/or denial remains high, she added. “People hear ‘heroin’ and they think it’s an inner-city, minority problem. But it’s everywhere.

“Parents believe they are safe in the suburbs, but they’re not. No matter where you live, how much money you make, how well you’ve raised your children — the danger is very real.â€

Parents 4 A Change can be found online at parents4achange.net.

Part two of this series, which will appear next week, will look at the efforts of law enforcement in Litchfield County and Dutchess County, N.Y., to handle the heroin trade in the Northwest Corner.