balmain PHOTOGRAPHY

Editorial

story by Molly O'Conner
photographs by Maxwell Balmain

In the mounting numbers of teen drug users are children like any others: curious, troubled, bold. They experiment. And some are consumed by the experience. They encounter the drugs and alcohol in the most casual ways, on school yards, at parties, and in their own homes. Finding a way to stop is harder.

The Seattle area teenagers profiled have all sought help. For some, it is a fragile recovery...

It is highly recommended that you read the sad but riveting stories about these struggling teens and what they have all gone through.

Part ONE

Sarah would hug the gasoline can, wrap her mouth around the nozzle and breathe deeply the fumes from the fuel used in the family lawn mower. If her parents were gone, she and her older sister would carry a gasoline can to the attic of their home on the Plateau and spend all day huffing the fumes. If her parents were home, Sarah would make as many as four 15-minute visits to the garage to get her gas-fume high.

"I started huffing at home once I realized we had gasoline here,'' said the eighth-grader. She had been introduced to huffing at a party. Huffing, she said, "made everything seem like a dream.'' Sarah said she doesn't remember the time she tried to jump out of a window at her house after huffing. She heard the story later of how her then-boyfriend pulled her back in.

But gasoline fumes weren't Sarah's first high.

At 9 years old, Sarah and her older sister started to swipe beer from their parents. By the time Sarah was 11, they had graduated to hard liquor, also pilfered from their parents. At age 12, Sarah tried to kill herself several times in one month. That was before she started smoking pot. "Pot took me away from reality 'cuz I never really could handle it. It (reality) scared me.'' After a month of smoking pot, Sarah said it became a daily routine for about a year.

Some days, she'd ride the bus to school and then go to a local grocery store to steal alcohol. She'd spend the rest of the day drinking behind the building. "I didn't care about school. I didn't care about my future.'' Sarah had been caught by her mother behind the grocery store once, but she said her parents were more suspicious of her older sister's drug and alcohol use.

"I was the little innocent baby of the family. They were in denial that I would do anything wrong.'' But when Sarah's mom found out that Sarah had been sneaking into the garage and huffing gasoline daily, she checked Sarah into a residential treatment program. Sarah's sister went for treatment later. "They wanted it for me when I wasn't strong enough to want it for myself.''

To aid in Sarah's recovery, her parents quit drinking at home and took all of the alcohol out of the house. She's been sober for six months. "Moderation is not an option,'' said Sarah, who describes her personality as addictive. "Either I do it 'til I pass out or everything's gone.

"I plan to stay sober. I can't do drugs. They'll kill me, or I'll kill myself.''

Drugs made Quincy desperate. He'd sell pot to kids in junior high and skim his share off the top. He'd break into houses and steal drugs from friends and their parents. He'd date girls just because they bought him dope.

"I couldn't handle a second without it. I had to have it somewhere on me. To me, they were my god. I'd use anyone and rip anyone off for drugs. I didn't really have friendships. I used them. They used me."

Quincy, an only child, started drinking, smoking pot and huffing gasoline in ninth grade. By tenth grade, Quincy had replaced soccer, football, baseball, basketball and snowboarding with Scotch Guard fumes, LSD trips, hallucinogenic mushrooms and pot. He hoarded lunch and clothing money his mom gave him and bought drugs at the end of the week. Toward the end of tenth grade, he quit smoking pot. To reward himself, he started smoking again.

Quincy was friends with gun-carrying drug dealers by eleventh grade. He carried his own pager, so he didn't miss a drug deal. He thrived on the attention. Every time he was paged, every time the phone rang, it "made me feel wanted, like I was the man of the hour."

But Quincy trusted no one. The acid made him paranoid. He thought people were listening to him through vents or were out to get him. Eventually, brushing his teeth and taking a shower became a chore for Quincy.

Quincy snorted, then smoked, crystal methamphetamine during his senior year.

A different drug dealer with a stronger form of the drug brought Quincy's drug use to a frightening halt. His heartbeat would race and then limp along. He'd try clutching the daggers in his chest, as others shot down his arm. The chest pains lasted for a week. Quincy couldn't eat. He smoked pot for two days, hoping the pain would subside. Increased paranoia was the only effect he had from the pot. "I ended up praying for some reason. I was so scared.''

But when Quincy entered drug treatment center in Burien, he only was ready to give up crystal meth. He didn't think he'd have to give up his other drugs. "They were taking away my best friend. It was like losing someone you'd been married to for a long time.''

Quincy now works at a printing business and has a 3.2 grade point average at school. He'll graduate in June. He has his driver's license, real friends and truthful talks with his mom.

But he can't promise that he'll always be drug free.

"I can't really look at the future, but I think I can make it through today."

Eric couldn't fall asleep at night without a drink or a joint.

That was the summer before he started tenth grade.

Now 30 percent of the high school student's liver is dead and his lungs are black. Memory loss, flashbacks and tracers - shooting stars in his vision as a result of doing acid - still linger.

Eric started smoking pot and drinking in sixth grade when he became friends with an eighth-grader at Catholic school they attended. "It was getting so we'd make plans for it. And nothing could break those plans, even family gatherings.'' By seventh grade, Eric found a full-time dealer to feed his pot habit. Eric would smoke pot three to four times a week - five if he had the money.

That summer, Eric discovered acid. "It was the best high I've ever had in my life.'' It was a contrast to the "downer'' drugs - pot and alcohol - he had been doing.

Eighth and ninth grade for Eric blew by with daily doses of acid and pot, and alcohol three to four times a week. He sold the drugs prescribed to him for his attention deficit disorder. He also would steal car stereos and break into houses, spending all of his money on drugs.

Then Eric was introduced to the "booger sugars'' - cocaine, Ecstasy, crystal methamphetamine. Within a month and a half, Eric looked gaunt, having lost 25 to 30 pounds. He had lost his appetite and could sleep only if he were drunk or stoned. His use was so frequent and heavy he was being called a "cluck'' - a fiend - by his friends. On his own, Eric stopped using the stimulants but continued to drink until he'd blackout. In one drunken rage, he broke his stepfather's nose and bruised his ribs. In another, he was arrested for drinking and driving.

He drank the night he left a residential treatment program and throughout the after-care program provided by the center.

He finally quit when he realized his sober friends in after-care were his real friends. "They are the friends that care if I live or die.''

Eric's been sober since September 7.

"It's a miracle. I wasn't sober for a day. Now it's been eight months. That's a miracle I think.''

Continue to Part TWO »

more editorial »