Confessions of a Party Mom

Confessions of a Party Mom

We'd all finished dinner, and we kicked off our shoes and watched as our host showed off his new Technics turntables, a present from his wife. It was his 40th-birthday party, and a group of us had come to stay at his house in Devon. One mum went upstairs to check all the children were asleep. Including my three-year-old, there were 10 children staying, aged from six months to five years. No sooner had we been given the all-clear than two of the five dads got out wraps of cocaine and began chopping out lines on the table. Are we a group of rock stars, DJs and supermodels? No, we're city bankers, lawyers, housewives, entrepreneurs: professional urbanites doing what many parents do on a fairly regular basis. MORE

So rarely do any articles take this particular stance, at least not publicly. I suspect most parents or even adults do not want to leave one with the impression they may be irresponsible or negligent in their parental duties. Simply ones taking of drugs from time to time should not automatically condemn them for all eternity, although in this day and age, this all too often is what actually occurs.

OXY Part Five

So here is the final installment of the Oxy series from the London Free Press.

I think for a "small" town paper that the series was fine but I think as a whole London needs to start realistically looking at this issue if the stats that they reported are actually accurate.

On a personal note, I don't really have a lot to report. I am doing well both physically and mentally. Am thinking of dropping my methadone dose by 5ml next week as I've been on my current dose of 80ml for close to a year now and am able to go more than a day and a half without feeling badly. I think that it is time.

Part Four of Oxycontin Series

Here is the next part of the London Free Press's series on oxycodone.

This is the clinic that I attend. The male in the photo is Dr Craven who was my first doctor when I initially started. I had to switch to another doctor though when I started my new job this past May as his hours of practice were not working well with my work hours. He was a fantastic doctor none the less, but believe it or not, my current doctor is even better! We're lucky here in London as most of the doctors associated with the clinic are fantastic.

Part Three of Oxycontin Series

Here is the third part of the series that my local paper is running on oxycontin.


London Free Press - Local News - Oxycodone

Oxycodone
In Clinic 528, addicts are treated with methadone, Free Press reporter Randy Richmond writes in the third of a five-part series on abuse.
By RANDY RICHMOND

Early morning and a steady path of people make their way to the counter.

Each one stops and takes a sip from a small, plastic medicine cup.

In each cup is methadone, a narcotic you also can buy off the street.

In Clinic 528 on Dundas Street, the methadone is legal.

In here, fire is being used to fight fire, one opioid drug handed out to battle others --plastic cup after plastic cup after plastic cup.

"I remember us thinking maybe we would end up with 350 people here," says Dr. John Craven, associate director of Clinic 528.

It opened on Dundas Street five years ago, after doctors running a smaller clinic and private methadone treatment practices realized the need was growing. Back then, in 2001, the doctors had 120 patients with 80 on a waiting list.

"About three years after opening, I thought things would plateau," Craven says.

"But everybody coming in, still to this day, tells us they know half a dozen other people out there."

About five to seven new people a week come in for treatment, he says. Now there's about 850 in treatment in London and another 180 at Clinic 461 in Woodstock.

More than 80 per cent of clients are addicted to opiate drugs prescribed through doctor's offices, Craven says. The most common are the oxycodone-based drugs, Percocet and OxyContin being the most popular brands.

Methadone replaces those drugs, but comes, supporters say, with a much lower price.

Methadone basically fools the brain into thinking it's getting a far more interesting and powerful opioid than it is, Craven says.

"Methadone is the most boring drug on the face of the earth," he says. "It is useful because it is a lousy drug. It fills up the brain receptors and doesn't do much of anything else. It stops people from going into withdrawal.

By all accounts, the physical withdrawal from opioid painkillers is a nightmare.

That physical dependence starts when the brain becomes used to an opioid. The drug changes the brain's chemistry so it demands more each day to obtain relief or euphoria.

When the drug is taken away, the brain and body rebel. "I would sneeze until I felt like my head would blow off," one told the Free Press.

"You get the runs. You would be on the toilet forever. You feel nauseous. You feel like you want to throw up. You get achy."

A factory worker named Steve, 39, says he tried twice to go through counselling at Addictions Services of Thames Valley, the central outpatient service for addicts in the region.

"I just couldn't do it, cold turkey," Steve says. "I felt like my feet and my hands were going to pop off my body."

He has a good family that he neglected more and more during the two years he was addicted to OxyContin. He spent all his savings on the drugs, lost a girlfriend and gave up his social life. Of all things, it was the repo man that turned him around.

"I had bought a new car and they repossessed it. I woke up one day and my car was gone. I thought, what am I doing?"

His elderly mother drove him to his first appointment last year. Imagine, Steve says, making your mom take you to a methadone clinic because you are an addict. He got clean in 12 days. After a year, he has a new girlfriend and is playing sports again.

"I don't want to say it saved my life. But if I wasn't here, I don't know where I'd be."

Not everyone sees Clinic 528 in such a positive light.

Provincial Conservative Leader John Tory, accompanied by police Chief Murray Faulkner, took a law-and-order tour of London last year and called for the clinic to be moved because it is close to Beal secondary school.

That prompted several London leaders to criticize the clinic's location and the work it does. But the city itself runs a coffeehouse two doors east at William Street that attracts a rough-edged crowd.

Dozens of dealers, users, those trying to kick and other down-and-outers mill on the sidewalk between the clinic and coffee house.

In the middle of the day, you can get several offers to purchase drugs on the sidewalk.

Homeless people make up about seven per cent of Clinic 528's patients, Craven says. Another 15 per cent are "one pay cheque away" from homelessness. The rest are working or in school or homemakers.

In the downstairs waiting area, though, a constant flow of rougher-looking patients come in each day for their methadone.

That's because 'downstairs' is where beginners and long-time addicts who can't get clean get their methadone.

Once someone tests clean for everything but methadone, they move 'upstairs.'

That means they can get 'carries' -- several days worth of methadone at once, and get individual counselling from one of three doctors.

"All I do is prescribe methadone, get them in the door, get their feet on ground, then try to educate them on how they got in this mess in the first place and how to get out of it," Craven says.

A third of his patients are upstairs, a third downstairs trying to get upstairs. "And one third are determined to kill themselves through their addiction," he says.

---

Upstairs and downstairs patients can meet twice a week in group recovery sessions. Mondays they talk about what they want. Thursdays they listen to a short recording by Craven and mostly stick to that subject.

There are rules here. No interruptions. First names only. A few veterans talk at a recent session about some other rules they'd like to see. No nodding off during session. No opening a bottle of pills for an aspirin.

"How do they know those aren't my triggers,?" says one in exasperation.

At this session, they talk about honesty. A regular member, a woman in her 30s, fidgets in her chair. She tells the group she feels ashamed because she trusted a friend and the friend lied.

"Why do you feel ashamed? It's your friend who should feel ashamed," a group member says.

"I'm embarrassed because I want to help people but I can't because I am not recovered yet," the woman says.

"You can't give what you don't have," Craven tells the group. "You have to help yourself first."

Another group member tells them, "My conscience is working overtime now."

That's normal, because during addiction, you can't get emotional about what you do, Craven tells them.

"Don't beat yourself up," a veteran of the clinic says.

---

After the meeting, the veteran says he's been on methadone for seven years.

There are no deadlines to getting off, Craven says. Only after a year on a regular dosage should anyone even try to taper the amount, he says.

Opioids change the brain chemically and feed a growing hunger of fears, worries, past abuses and guilt.

That is one criticism of methadone treatment: It replaces one addiction with another.

Even those on it worry.

Tom, 34, an out-of-work furniture installer, used to drive by Clinic 528.

Why don't these people just quit? he wondered.

He signed up in February 2006. Three years earlier he hurt his back at work, then spent years battling an addiction to OxyContin. "I tried to quit on my own. It was debilitating. I looked down on these people until it was me."

His daughter saved him. Her grades were failing and she was getting into trouble at school. "I had to get the pills out of my life or I was going to lose my daughter. I think I just barely got away."

It took him six months to move upstairs because he continues to smoke marijuana.

Ironically, the same thing that keeps some people away from the clinic was the thing that made him strong enough to get clean and move up.

"There are some pretty hard tales and some pretty hurting people downstairs," Tom says. "It inspires me to get better."

It took him a year to get his energy back and only now has he begun to call up old friends he left during the addiction years. He's even thinking about going back to work.

"The past year I was content to have not much money. It helped me quit."

It's been a while since he had a craving for the drugs.

"I had a lot of dreams about it that are really where you are going and scoring and going home and doing it. Right now, I don't think I will ever go back. I don't want to ever go back to where I feel that low about myself."

There's just one worry.

"The methadone is a really good painkiller so I wonder how long I am going to be on it. When I am off, I don't know how much of my pain will return."

GLOSSARY

- Opioid: Drug made from the opium in poppy. Commonly called narcotics or opiates. They are effective painkillers, but can also produce euphoria, making them prone to abuse.

- Oxycodone: An opioid and key ingredient in prescription painkillers such as Percocet, Oxycet, Endocet and OxyContin.

Oxycodone can create addiction and physical dependence.

- Percocet: Contains 5 mg of oxycodone and gives about five hours pain relief. On the street, "percs" refers to both Percocet and generic forms of the drug.

- OxyContin: Contains higher levels of oxycodone, usually 10 mg to 80 mg. It has a time-release coating offering pain relief for 12 hours. Chewed, crushed and snorted, or injected, the time release is bypassed and all the oxycodone is released at once.

- Addiction: When a drug is so central to thoughts, emotions and activities the need to continue its use becomes a compulsion.

- Physical dependence: The body has adapted to the presence of the drug, and withdrawal symptoms occur if use is reduced or stopped.

- How they work: Opioids bind to brain receptors, and over time block those receptors. That forces the brain to require more opioid to produce the same euphoria.

Whats The Story, Morning Glory?

Remember in high school whenever you had to study for that all important exam? What was the first thing that you did in order to prepare yourself for this? If you were, and still are, anything like me then the first thing that you tended to do was anything but study. I’ll never, ever forget how suddenly even the most mundane of chores somehow managed to become mythical in proportion, waiting ever so patiently until they had my undivided attention. Over the years not much in regards to my procrastination skills have managed to change.

Now instead of school, I generally have work related projects competing for my ever diminishing attention span. It seems that whenever I sit down to my computer to complete one of the many never ending stream of projects that the Property Manager keeps sending my way, I find myself very easily distracted away from the task at hand. Like some pathetic sort of sycophantic fan, each day I am compelled to check out one of the many entertainment type gossip blogs. My morning simply can’t start until I’ve managed to get a wee taste of celebrity dirt. I mean, I have to be looking good when held up against comparison, say, to Ms Spear’s current foibles, etc

Now, if I may take the time to wonder aloud how it is possible that she has found herself in this recent set of misdeeds and misadventures. I thought that these type of people generally paid good money to certain types of employees to ensure that this type of stuff stayed very much in the background not front and centre of the public stage. And seriously, how badly messed up are you to allow things to reach this point? I mean even Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love, who in a strictly legal sense, lost custody of their newborn for her first three months and technically had to surrender their physical custody of her, all four of them - including Frances’ first nanny - managed to live under the same roof this entire time.

Come on Britney, give your head a very serious shake. If two of the most notorious heroin users were capable of successfully pulling this off, you at the very least could at least make a little bit of an effort to show up for your custody hearings and actually show up on time. My guess would be that this would strengthen your case significantly. Certainly passing a drug test here and there wouldn’t hurt either. Also, what kind of drugs is this chick on anyway that she has allowed herself to become this unglued?

I’ll be the first to admit that the entire drug landscape has most definitely change a lot over the past decade. No where do I find this very apparent then witnessing this change each and every day at my methadone clinic. The general demographic of the typical methadone patient has undergone quite the change here in London, Ontario, Canada from the first time that I started MMT in the summer of 1999 - in fact, in less than a ten year time period.

The number of patients actually at the clinic who are on MMT is 800 compared to the 162 patients back in 1999. Typically, the current wait time to start treatment works out to approx two and a half weeks, whereas the first time, I ended up having to wait almost three months. I ended up lucking out getting in at that time simply because there had been a cancellation on their waitlist. If not for that cancellation, I would have ended up waiting four months before I would have been able to even start MMT. From my experience, when a junkie finally reaches out and starts asking for help, being put on someone’s waitlist is not any kind of solution but rather, an additional problem.

In the years between each MMT, the opiate landscape in this city changed so that what I remember from a decade ago, no longer exists today. While talking to my doctor recently, he mentioned of the 800 patients currently on methadone at the clinic barely a handful had ever seen heroin. Or almost 780 patients - out of 800 - being treated with methadone, were not, by exact definition, heroin addicts. Yes, they were opiate addicts because each and every one of them had issues with narcotic analgesics, but they certainly could not be easily lumped into society’s usual perception of the dirty, disgusting junkie.

Of course, in the end, this is all just semantics. Obviously, the growth of the clinic here in London, Ontario these past tens years is a result of a number of factors occurring simultaneously. Obviously, there is a growing need for this type of facility and from the perspective of a business plan, a need which if operated properly, will also prove to be financially rewarding for any investors i.e. the doctors that decided to expand their much smaller clinic from the previous decade into a clinic requiring considerably more support staff, etc.

Now a clinic of its current size will definitely be much more noticed by John T Public because depending on its location, the influx of nearly 1000 individuals that for the most part walk to the beat of a different drummer would hardly be invisible. Not many would be thrilled to have this particular group doing not much more than loitering near their homes or business each and every day. If it were just the patients of the clinic that the neighborhood had to be concerned about then that would be one thing but inevitably, it is the baggage that accompanies each of these patients that ends up being the biggest concern as generally they have less to lose.

Now if most of the opiate addicts in London, Ontario are not addicted to heroin, what the heck are they doing then? Apparently the majority are hooked hardcore on oxycontin. Or at least so says the five part series that our local paper, the London Free Press, started running in yesterday’s paper. This special report plans on covering all aspects of this addiction and how it is affecting our community as well as what we as a community can and should do to help.

The article from today focused on how oxycontin was doing much more than killing pain for two men while yesterday the series shared the story of one young housewife and mother of two’s battle with this drug.

Following is the introduction article to the series which was written by London Free Press reporter, Randy Richmond, that you should be able to read in its original form here. There was a second article regarding pharmacists and how they feel caught in the middle.

Oxy, part 1

Oxy, Oxygen, M&Ms, 80s, Oxycotton.

Killer.

The drug sweeping London’s downtown streets, workplaces and suburbs goes by many nicknames.

But it has one effect on police, civic officials, social service and health-care workers, users and those dealing in drug subculture -- alarm.

And it’s ravaging London like few other cities in the province, police say.

A $3.7-million, five-year plan to combat substance abuse will be unveiled at city hall Monday.

"It is the drug of this city right now," said Sgt. David MacDonald, head of one of the police’s two street drug units.

The opioid called oxycodone is so powerful, so easy to get and so hard to kick, it’s fueling crime, ravaging the vulnerable, and turning ordinary middle-class citizens into sellers and buyers.

What makes it tough to tackle is the source. It’s not made in makeshift labs, grown in basements or shipped in from other countries. Most comes from London doctors’ offices, then gets ’diverted’ to the underworld.

Signs of its rise are everywhere:

• OxyContin, the most popular oxycodone based painkiller, is the most commonly injected drug among needle users in London, recently surpassing heroin.
• Opioid abuse is rising to one of the top three problems cited by people seeking help at Addiction Services of Thames Valley. In most areas, it is tied with or nearing crack, cocaine and cannabis.
• In Ingersoll, opioid abuse ranks behind only alcohol, traditionally the No. 1 cited problem among people getting outpatient counselling.
• The Children’s Aid Society of Middlesex London is seeing more and more parents hooked on OxyContin and other painkillers.
• In 2004, only 86 police occurrences, such as break-ins and thefts, could be identified as fueled mainly by oxycodone addiction.

By 2006, the number of police occurrences had jumped to 261.

- OxyContin is the drug of choice -- supplanting crack --among sex-trade workers in London, police say, and 100 per cent of the about 80 women working in the sex trade use drugs.

The diversion and rising influence of oxycodone-based prescription drugs is one of the forces prompting the city’s community services boss, Ross Fair, to present a plan to politicians to attack substance abuse in London. The five-year plan rests on four foundations -- improvements in prevention, harm reduction, treatment and enforcement.

Only a large-scale co-ordinated effort will work, Ross says. "Addiction is a big hairy beast."

The city would pay a third of the $3.7-million price tag, the rest coming from Ottawa and Queen’s Park.

The plan would target the most vulnerable first: the homeless, sex-trade workers, street youth.

Key points include:

• Create a downtown street outreach initiative, with nurses and addiction workers.
• Expand existing safe haven drop-in programs, such as Mission Services, My Sisters Place, Centre of Hope and AtLohsa, so full day and evening service is available
• Push senior levels of government for more treatment, and wait-time standards.
• Increase London police so the force can focus on illegal activities associated with drug dealing and prostitution.

The strategy also has clear targets:

• Reduce the number of sex- trade workers 50 per cent in three years
• Cut to zero the number of overdose deaths among homeless.
• Increase the number of homeless in addiction programs by 200 over five years.

COPING WITH URGES

I came across another article today on the web that I thought was fairly interesting and also most probably pretty relevant for a good few of us. Personally, I have found that MMT has been fairly effective for me in eliminating my cravings or urges, once I'm on a stable dose of course. Now, this is not to suggest in any way that MMT helps eliminate the desire to do dope, cause I don't think that this ever really does go away once you've been insane enough to taste it but then that is an entirely different ball of wax, so to speak. This desire ends up being more of a psychological one anyway rather than a true physical one. While a good solid dose of willpower should be enough to keep one's desire in check, personally I need any help that I can get with the other. It's just too tangible and real and all where as the other is the opposite.

Anyway, on to the article...

Habits and urges go hand in hand. In fact, many people in the throes of an addictive behavior problem, whether it is overeating, drug use or alcohol abuse, claim that they derive no pleasure from their habit--that it is nothing but the relentless craving that fuels ongoing addictive behavior. What is usually most difficult for people when changing a bad habit is coping with the sometimes relentless urges. The initial days of a habit kicking plan can be exhausting as urges dominate thinking and interfere with daily routine. Many people give up change efforts because they feel that there is not way they can function without their habit as the urges interfere too much with quality of life.

It is important to remember that urges, in and of themselves, are normal. We experience craving in varying degrees every day. And because your habit has been important to you for a long time, it may be unreasonable to expect urges to vanish completely. What is hoped is that you will come to experience urges with less frequency and that when they are experienced you will be able to react in a way that avoids relapse.

The "three Ds" can be helpful in coping with urges and craving, whether these urges are related to alcohol or drug use, overeating , tobacco use or any habit you are attempting to change. The Ds stand for Decatastrophizing, Disputing Expectancies and Distracting.

Decatastrophizing
Especially early on in your change efforts, craving can seem excruciating. Your daily routine has been altered by the elimination of an important part of life and now you can't get your mind off it. Everything you see reminds you of your habit. If you smoke, every room you enter may bring to mind the image of a cigarette and associated pleasure. The inability to satisfy the urge can lead to frustration and inner statements like, "I can't stand this!" or "There is no way I will be able to live without giving in. I'll just go crazy!" Statements like this can be overwhelming. So much so that people often give up efforts.

As is the case with anxiety, catastrophic thoughts can lead to a great deal of arousal which can, in turn, make things seem worse than they are. If you believe that you are completely out of control, your emotions will follow. What is important to remember is that urges are normal and typically decline in intensity as you continue implementing change. To combat catastrophic reactions to urges it is important to remind yourself of times in the past when you have successfully changed habits (think now, we all have done so at least once or twice!). Do you still experience urges? If so, are they as intense as during the initial phase of your change efforts? Probably not, right? Furthermore, think about other people you have known who have undergone significant change. Do they seem haunted by urges such that they cannot function? If not, who is to say that you cannot accomplish that also?

Try to take some of the power away from a black and white adjective like "horrible" or "unbearable." Belief in horrible extremes only makes you feel worse. Just how unbearable is your urge right now? To accurately answer this you may need to conjure images of what other types of suffering reported as unbearable are like. Is this as unbearable as getting stabbed in the stomach? Or better still, what have you endured which was worse than your current urge? Was that unbearable? If so, does it follow that your urge is less than unbearable and perhaps only "very uncomfortable."

Disputing Expectancies
Craving is, in essence, the activation of expectancies. Beck and his colleagues (Cognitive Therapy of Substance Abuse, 1993, Guilford Publications) believe that there are three beliefs associated with "the acute decision to engage in substance abuse." They are Anticipatory, such as "I'm gonna be Mr. Wonderful after one line." Relief Oriented, such as "I won't have to think about work if I drink this bottle of wine." and Facilitative or Permissive, such as , " I've been good all week, I'm entitled to an evening high." Though Beck and his colleagues presented these fundamental beliefs in reference to substance abuse problems, it is this author's contention that these beliefs can function in any habit urge.

Since we rarely think about distant consequences when craving, bring them to mind deliberately. Bring to mind the negative emotions which may be experienced at a later time due to engaging in your habit. Urges are "myopic" in that they can only see advantages. You must shed some light on your craving in order to effectively control it. Ask yourself questions like:

* How will I feel later if I give in to my urges?"
* What consequences might I suffer if I give in?"
* Will the negatives outweigh the positives in the long run if I give in?"

Another way to cope with urges is to imagine that someone very close to you is voicing the very urge you are experiencing. How would you go about convincing them not go give in. Sometimes distancing ourselves from our urges is imperative before you can subject them to any scrutiny.

Your ability to conjure vivid images can be used in your favor when you experience craving. In the presence of a strong urge, try to imagine a very negative outcome. The more negatively graphic the better. The more true to your life the better. For example, if you have a problem with alcohol and experience a strong urge to walk down to the convince store and buy a bottle of Vodka, imagine the worst hangover possible. Imagine vomiting all morning. Better still--imagine someone very important dropping by, someone you really want to impress, and seeing you in that condition. It is amazing how powerful our own imagination can be in fueling and impeding behavior. Use it to your advantage in your habit change efforts!

Distracting
Some urges are so relentless that talking back to them is insufficient. You still can't get your mind off your habit. Good old fashioned distraction is sometimes the only medicine that can pull your thoughts away. Distraction can be cognitive, in the form of some mental exercises, or behavioral, in the form of activity. Certainly the latter is going to be the most effective, in that urges tend to occur in environments with are the same or similar to those in which the habit occurred in the past. If you are trying to quit smoking, and you have previously smoked at in your office all day, being in your office is going to elicit a strong drive to light up. Certainly if possible, taking your work into a conference room, or taking a break and walking outside will often be enough to decrease the urge to a manageable level. You must evaluate your schedule and determine which situations evoke the most intense craving and create as much flexibility as possible so that you can "escape" if necessary--especially in the initial days of your change efforts.

Cognitive distraction can be very powerful. Certainly imagery has been used as a means of helping stressed people learn to relax. You too can use imagery to take your mind off an urge which is dominating consciousness. Conjuring a pleasant place like a beach or on a raft in a lake can help you not only take your mind off the urge but relax as well.

However, "relaxing" images are not helpful for everyone. Some find that if they relax when craving they will only want it more. This makes sense as we have discussed that many habits are associated with relaxation and pleasure, and evoking these feelings in places previously associated with your habit can strengthen urges tremendously. I recommend that you find some mental task that will be very difficult to finish but which is interesting and consuming that you can activate in response to an urge. I like to refer to these as Mental Tapes. Some examples of tapes which have been helpful are:

* Writing the perfect epic novel or screenplay.
* Planning the perfect vacation.
* Creating the ideal money-making business
* Interpreting a dream from the night before
* Picking an acquaintance and trying to "figure them out."

Certainly what you choose will depend on your interests, but the key is to make it something that will be easy and perhaps interesting and fun to do. Choosing to think about all the mistakes you've made this year and how you could have done things differently is not going to prove a good distraction tape as it won't be enjoyable. In fact it may increase the power of your urge, especially if stress has precipitated your habit in the past.

It is sometimes best to try one urge control technique at a time so that you don't get overwhelmed. These techniques work, but they also require a great deal of mental energy and conscious effort. The aim here is not to make change excruciating or extraordinarily taxing, but to provide you with some tools which you can add to your armory at a your own pace.

Robert Westermeyer, Ph.D.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Recent Articles of Interest

From time to time, I find an article on the internet that I find interesting enough or relevant enough that I’m compelled to share it with others - assuming that anyone other than myself is remotely even reading any of these entries! These few are worthy of mention to be sure. The first two focus primarily on methamphetamine but I’m sure, for the first article anyway, that could be substituted with any other drug of addiction. Ok, not so much the second one. The third article was one that I discovered approx two years ago but feel compelled to mention it once again. It kind of covers the whole gamut of drugs.

You Do the Meth

By Joel Warner

Published: June 28, 2007

Someone was at the front door. Miranda’s two-year-old daughter rushed toward it, figuring that her father was home. But then the door burst open, narrowly missing her, and the toddler saw that it wasn’t Daddy after all. It was a SWAT team. Armor-clad police officers stormed inside, weapons drawn. They pushed a shocked Miranda to the floor and fastened her hands behind her back with zip ties. While her three children - her daughter and five- and nine-year-old sons - sat beside her, the SWAT team quickly scouted the rest of the two-bedroom basement apartment. After that, narcotics operatives from the North Metro Task Force took over, led by Detective Rob Lopez. He’d received a tip several months earlier that folks had been scoring methamphetamine from this residence, located in a shabby stretch of low-lying apartments near U.S. 36 and Federal Boulevard in Westminster. He’d sent a wired informant there to buy meth - once from Miranda and once from her husband, Vince. Each time, there were children at home. Combing through the apartment on this evening in December 2004, Lopez and his colleagues found half a gram of meth in a vitamin bottle and a fifth of a gram in a plastic baggie. In a sealed box in a closet, they discovered meth pipes and other drug paraphernalia, plus digital scales and various plastic baggies presumably used to sell meth; elsewhere, they found two stashes of marijuana.

The detectives asked about Vince, and the oldest boy said that his father was at the apartment building next door. They found him there, along with 26 grams of meth in a throat-lozenge container.

As the three children were handed off to representatives of the Adams County Social Services Department, Lopez read Miranda her rights, which she waived. Flustered and defensive, she admitted that she and Vince sold meth out of their home four to five times a day, making $20 to $50 per deal. She smoked meth, too, she said. Lopez asked if she realized what she was doing to herself, to her family. There was more to life than this - didn’t she see that? But it was impossible to know if any of that got through.

Lopez then talked to Vince, who was scruffy and skinny, with a goatee; Lopez was scruffy and built, with his long hair in a ponytail. Under different circumstances, in a different life, the two wouldn’t have looked out of place sitting down together for a beer. But now Vince said he sold meth to supplement his income - and used it himself. He was already on probation for a previous misdemeanor drug charge, so he was probably facing jail time. Vince seemed resigned to his fate, maybe ready to turn things around, but Lopez didn’t buy it. "When you have them at the jail, they’re willing to give up the world," he says. "In this instance, I just thought it was more of the same."

As a narc, it was Lopez’s job to find the drugs and bust the perps. He wasn’t operating a daycare center. The three kids might go to friends or relatives, but who knew if those new caretakers would be addicts? Or they could stay in the social-services system and bounce from one foster home to the next. Either way, they were just collateral damage in the drug war.

"So I dumped Vince off in jail and turned around and went home," Lopez remembers. "And that’s usually where it ends."

READ THE REST

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TOXIC SHOCK

By Alan Prendergast

Published: September 4, 2003

Randy Goin remembers his first visit to a methamphetamine lab six years ago. It was the beginning of a long and disturbing chemistry lesson.

A Thornton narcotics detective assigned to the North Metro Drug Task Force, Goin didn’t know quite what to expect. He’d heard the horror stories about crazed meth-cooks and their paranoia, guns and booby traps. He knew something about the ingredients they use, a vile brew of cold pills, household solvents and acids, iodine, phosphorous, ammonia -- which, if inexpertly combined, can produce flash fires, deadly gases and toxic spills. But all of his training couldn’t prepare him for his first lab bust.

The target was an old barn on a 25-acre property in rural Adams County. Goin’s team found a fully automatic machine gun but no cook in progress; to their relief, the chemicals and glassware appeared to be neatly stored. What caught Goin’s attention, though, was the sink that the lab operator had used to dump his waste chemicals.

The sink wasn’t connected to the sewer system, and the waste simply oozed from a pipe outside -- near a well pump and a trampoline where kids played. It was easy to trace the discharge as it trickled down a hill to a catch-pond. All you had to do was follow the ever-widening kill path in its wake, a swath of bare ground where the surrounding weeds just stopped.

"Nothing would grow there," Goin recalls. "Nothing."

The scene was his first intimation that he was dealing with something beyond the grasp of conventional law enforcement. What kind of dipstick could so casually poison the land around him -- and possibly his children and his own water supply in the bargain?

Over the next three years, North Metro began to encounter meth labs with alarming frequency. The task force was soon hitting a couple a month, then one or two a week -- labs in apartments, motel bathrooms, cars. Goin was in on 35 or 40 of those busts. In almost every case, his protective gear consisted of a pair of latex gloves.

Goin saw pristine apartments turned into iodine-stained dumps, a once-tidy mobile home scarred by unreported fires. He saw kids scavenging for whatever food they could find after their parents had been passed out for days.

"It’s all about the meth," he says. "Kids get ignored, the property falls apart. Meth becomes their whole world."

At first, few people -- aside from the haz-mat teams that customarily made the initial entry -- gave much thought to the dizzying vapors that permeated the labs. Even after the joint had been aired out, you could smell the chemicals and sometimes taste them -- a sweet yet acrid smell, not unlike the odor of a hardware store stacked high with pesticides and fertilizer. Goin emerged lightheaded a couple of times. Other team members complained of headaches that lasted for days.

Goin saw one co-worker chase down a suspect and cuff him bare-handed. The cook’s clothing was saturated with chemicals; a few minutes later, the skin on the officer’s palms started blistering.

In time, Goin thought less about what the labs were doing to the weeds in Adams County. He began to worry about what they were doing to him.

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Generation Rx

By Glenna Whitley

You couldn’t miss him: a teenager dressed always in black, with Elvis sideburns and a hard-charging way of bounding up the stairs, as if life were moving too slowly for him. In the same class as my oldest son at the Science and Engineering Magnet at Townview, occasionally at our house for all-night LAN parties, Luke Stone was likable, smart and had an appetite for adventure, the guy willing to try anything once. He was a natural leader, a person who drew people from all walks of life into his orbit with his energy and enthusiasm. He also had a sweet side. He’d grown up going to church and carried a picture of Jesus in his wallet. He was drawn to beautiful, troubled girlfriends who needed rescuing. Luke Stone was your basic good kid. But on May 14 a year ago, when Luke was a 20-year-old student at the University of Texas at Dallas, his daring nature killed him. The coroner’s verdict: accidental drug overdose. This isn’t another “drugs are bad for you” story. It is a trip into another world, one far different from that of Luke’s parents-even though they’d grown up in the ’60s and ’70s and had their own encounters with illegal drugs. David and Sondra Stone viewed their experimentation, particularly with marijuana, as a normal part of growing up. They didn’t want their kids to become addicts, of course, but as long as they stayed away from “hard drugs” like cocaine and heroin, they figured the kids would come out all right, just like they had.

Luke Stone’s parents know that isn’t true anymore. They didn’t realize the landscape of substance abuse has radically changed.

Today, kids Luke’s age swim in a sea of psychotropic pharmacology-pills, potions and powders legally prescribed for everything from depression to attention deficit disorder. When they want to get high, they’re more likely to turn to benzodiazepines, a class of drugs like Valium that treat anxiety and panic attacks. Instead of shooting heroin, they score synthetic opiates such as Vicodin, Percocet, Dilaudid or Tylenol with codeine. To get a buzz or pull an all-nighter for an exam, they pop pills like Ritalin and Adderall, amphetamines that treat ADD.

It makes sense. You don’t have to find a drug dealer to get Xanax. You just have to rummage in Mom’s medicine chest. You don’t need to sneak around to score Adderall. A pediatrician prescribed it because you were driving your teachers crazy. Why not trade a few Adderall to your roommate, under the care of a psychiatrist for panic disorder, for some of his Xanax?

If you get caught-well, parents who discover a kid snitching a Lortab react differently from those who find a crack pipe or syringe. The explosion in pharmaceuticals has been magnified by the Internet. Not only are there more psychotropic drugs to choose from, it’s easier than ever to learn what to take, how much to take and what effects to anticipate. Luke scoured sites like erowid.org-”documenting the complex relationship between humans and psycho actives”-for information and “trip reports” on everything from peyote to Percocet. From there, teens are one click away from an illegal online pharmacy, a cyber medicine cabinet offering quick, discreet delivery.

A 2004 study at Columbia University found that only 6 percent of 157 Web sites selling medications actually required a prescription. And last month the DEA arrested 20 people, from Tyler, Texas, to Bombay, India, as part of “Operation Cyber Chase,” targeting an illegal international ring that used more than 200 Web sites to distribute prescription narcotics, amphetamines and steroids. Web sites to replace them will pop up overnight like psilocybin mushrooms sprouting in a cow patty.

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