Drugs through the eyes of those in the trenches

Editor's note: This story originally ran on Dec. 4, 2001 as part of the Daily Herald's "Hidden Scourge: Heroin in the Suburbs" series.

Lt. Keith Stegman

Emergency Medical Services Coordinator

Lisle-Woodridge Fire District

It takes some prodding, but Keith Stegman can remember one especially disturbing overdose.

The kid was 17. He was alone with his heroin in his bedroom, and he was far beyond help when paramedics arrived.

"It was too late," Stegman says.

He isn't emotionless, but he also shows no fear. His eyes are fixed.

In the 12 years since Stegman joined the Lisle-Woodridge Fire District's emergency medical services team as a paramedic, drug overdoses have become routine. It's easy for him to describe them in a routine manner: the vomiting, the unconsciousness, the sleepiness; the way medics stuff a breathing tube into the trachea and administer Narcan - a drug that reverses effects of narcotics like heroin - before loading the young people into an ambulance.

The overdoses come in apartments, houses and dance clubs, and they come at all hours. Even in the middle of the afternoon.

The only sure thing: There are a lot of them. Between September 1998 and Aug. 20, 2001, the Lisle-Woodridge Fire District responded to 383 overdose calls, or about 17 each month. Most were for alcohol. But a disturbing number also were heroin and club drugs - drugs Stegman has seen more and more teens using in recent years, and he can't put his finger on exactly why.

He sees addicts with track marks from the injections running the length of their arms. He sees people who are casual users. He sees teens and people in their 20s, and people much older than that.

All of them can overdose.

In the recent years of increased heroin and club drug overdoses -a change from the cocaine of the 1980s - Stegman considers his job a "learning experience." Technique always is the same. But he's had to read up on the new drugs.

Still, the overdose calls are too common to be completely disturbing. The calls are too frequent.

"I don't think it's any different than seeing any other person who's not breathing," Stegman says. "It's a relatively routine call."

Melita Lendway

Substance Abuse Prevention Coordinator

Adlai E. Stevenson High School, Lincolnshire

Melita Lendway pulls open a file cabinet and thumbs to the back, where she keeps confiscated magazines in her high school office - an office papered in posters warning of the risks of drugs.

She takes out an issue of the magazine "High Times" and flips through it quickly, revealing catchy advertisements for anything and everything to help kids try to beat drug tests: prosthetic penises that store another's urine at room temperature; special shampoo that removes all traces of drug use.

Lendway shakes her head. Disbelief, from a veteran substance abuse prevention coordinator.

"Look at this," she says. "What will they think of next?"

From eight years of experience at Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire, she knows addicts will do anything to hide their problem.

It's her job to help them get help.

She keeps a list of tips for parents on talking with teens, and she's rewritten a manual that tests all Stevenson students on things they need to know about drugs, including club drugs and heroin.

The students she deals with have had problems with various drugs, but she hasn't heard of club drugs or heroin problems - yet.

And it's probably only a "yet."

"I know they're out there," she says softly. "Maybe it's just a matter of time."

She already has folders packed full of drug information for parents of addicts, and that information includes key facts about heroin and an assortment of "club drugs."

"We consider drug use as dangerous as someone who might be suicidal or who had sexual abuse as a child," Lendway says. "We put it right in the same category."

Ed Brenner

Outreach Counselor, Clinical Psychologist

Northwest Suburban High School District 214

Ed Brenner had been an outreach counselor with Northwest Suburban High School District 214 for 30 years when administrators at the school he was in caught a boy shooting up in the bathroom.

It was Brenner's first up-close experience with heroin addiction and the first time he realized the drug really was in the suburbs.

Since that moment several years ago, he has seen and worked with many who are trying heroin and too many hooked on it.

He has seen their worlds fall apart, their grades suffer and their attitude become more rebellious. He sees them at school; he can hear of them through their friends.

Their friends are worried.

Most kids snort or smoke the drug, but Brenner remembers one girl who shot up so regularly she had track marks on both arms.

Brenner called her parents - he always works with parents to find help for teenagers - but they didn't want anything to do with the problem. Neither wanted to claim ownership of their daughter.

"It was just a nightmare, what to do with this young lady," Brenner remembers. She finally went to a hospital for treatment, but Brenner never heard from her again.

"My hunch is she's out on the streets somewhere," he said.

There have been others who have had no family support, and that's when finding help - especially financially - is difficult. In those cases, Brenner looks to the courts or public agencies for help.

The process can scare him.

"It's very frustrating," he said. "You feel pretty alone out there."

There are some parents who do accept responsibility and are willing to help their child. That's when Brenner finds the most success.

Other times, he sees teens who don't even want to try to find help.

He can't get too far with them.

Brenner retires this year, having logged 34 years in District 214, almost all of them as a counselor.

He made it most of those years without seeing heroin. Then, in the last few years, things changed.

Mary Ann Maniacek

Addictions Counselor

Des Plaines

Mary Ann Maniacek saw "Dan" again after he got out of the drug addictions program. He was older, in his 40s, and grateful for what she and others had done for him.

He even told her "thank you."

Days later, she received a phone call from Dan's mother: he'd died from a heroin overdose.

"It was too late for his body, but I believe in his way, he did find some peace," said Maniacek, a clinical professional addictions counselor who works with addicts and families at the Relapse Prevention Counseling Center in Des Plaines.

Dan's story - and others, like the 19-year-old heroin addict who walked out of therapy and overdosed a week later - bother her.

When she thinks of them, she gets quiet and tugs on the glasses that hang on a cord on her neck.

She's known so many people so close to success who fall so short.

But that's how it is.

She's learned that she can't save everyone. Some can't make it. She only hopes that she's helped them find peace, if only for a moment.

"I didn't use to think that way, but I do now," she says quietly. "There comes a time when we can only do the best we can."

There have been successes:

A man who smoked his first joint at age 11, lost three marriages and almost died has turned his life around. A woman who three times attempted suicide is now sober.

Then there are the stories that have no ending - the people who Maniacek hasn't kept track of.

"For me, this is a lifetime commitment," she says. "As long as we learn something from it. ..."

She's thinking again of the faces of heroin users she's seen, and of the families she's counseled. She keeps tugging her glasses.

- Erin Holmes