A potent foe links parents of addicts

Joanne Peterson wanted to believe the doctors when they said her 19-year-old son was suffering from depression. But instinct told her something else was wrong. Very wrong.

In a matter of months he had gone from an ambitious, athletic, polite young man to a sickly and disheveled recluse who would venture out only at night. There were hushed phone calls, strange people at the door, and items missing from her home. Sometimes he would disappear for days from their Raynham home.

Her questions were met with vague excuses, until one day he couldn't respond at all. She found him unconscious on the couch. His eyes rolled back in his head as she tried to revive him.

He survived, and Peterson came face to face with the truth: Her son was a heroin addict.

"My whole world caved in," she recalled. "All of those years of watching him play sports and bringing up a beautiful young man with a beautiful heart and a bright future -- it was all disappearing."

Finding out your child is using an opiate drug is devastating, Peterson said, but it's not the worst part. Dealing with the effects and trying to get treatment are even harder. "That's when the real nightmare starts," she said.

When Peterson began that struggle, she felt very alone. She didn't know anything about what the drug does to the brain, or about treatment programs, or what to expect after detox. There were no support groups for people like her, other than Al-Anon, which did not provide guidance on how to handle an opiate-dependent child or where to find help.

In the spring of 2004, her son in jail, Peterson attended a public forum on drug addiction. She shared her story and met other mothers who shared her shame, terror, and grief. They drew strength and information from each other -- and a support group called Learn to Cope, or LTC, was born.

The group is for parents of heroin and OxyContin users. The meetings take place every Monday evening, from 7 to 9, in the community room of the Stoughton Police Department.

With no other chapters, LTC is small and personal, but it's a stabilizing force for parents on the emotional edge.

To date, it has been maintained by weekly donations from members, who typically give a few dollars each. But state Representative Allen J. McCarthy, an East Bridgewater Democrat who also serves Abington and Whitman, recently requested that LTC receive $100,000 from the state budget for fiscal year 2008. If granted, that money would allow the group to grow.

For now, roughly 50 people show up at the meeting each week. Most are from south of Boston, where the group counted more than a dozen heroin-related deaths in the last four months. But others come from the Cape and Greater Boston.

They vent frustration and anger, they counsel one another on "what to expect next," they guide one another toward new resources for help, and they cry for themselves and for their children. They have become a family, say LTC members.

There is also a website, learn2cope.org, with a bulletin board that hosts hundreds of people, some from as far as Florida.

Life with an addict means having no life at all, members say. You sleep with your wallet and your car keys under your pillow. You shuffle your child in and out of rehabilitation centers, often re mortgaging the home, cashing out retirement plans, or taking from college funds in order to pay for private treatment.

"We have been through just about everything you can go through," said Mary, who asked that her last name not be published to protect her daughter's identity. In the months since she found her daughter overdosed on heroin and near death, she has spent tens of thousands of dollars on private treatment and has even petitioned a court in Quincy to have her daughter committed to a state facility for 30 days -- all to stop a cycle of drug use that went quickly from the prescription painkiller OxyContin to heroin.

The pattern is typical, say LTC members. Youths are introduced to OxyContin, often at a "pharm party" where they share pills from the family medicine cabinet. OxyContin is highly addictive, but expensive, so the user turns to heroin, sold on the street for about $4 a hit. Each time heroin is snorted, smoked, or injected, the user develops a higher tolerance. Withdrawal can begin just a few hours after the last use. Soon it's a $150-a-day habit that leads to crime.

"Boys steal and fight, and girls turn to sex," said Bill Phillips, director of New Beginnings, a drug awareness and educational program in Framingham.

Suddenly, parents see only jail or death in their child's future. Some youths will admit themselves to a three- to five-day detox center to avoid an arrest, but it's a short-term fix. "We call it spin-dry," said Larry Kostant of Norton, whose son is in a heroin detox program. They are safe for a short time, but then right back on the street and using again, he said.

The mental and physical pressure put on Kostant and his wife, Sandra, is sometimes overwhelming. "Mentally I break down, I get behind in work, I get migraine headaches," Larry Kostant said. "I'm an addict, too. I'm addicted to his recovery." The best bet is through tough love, he said, but administering it is painful for all.

LTC teaches parents not only how to cope with a child's addiction, but also how to reclaim their own lives.

"We're broken," said Liisa Bennett, a Taunton mother whose oldest son's four-year heroin addiction has wreaked havoc on family life, forcing his younger brother to "spend all his time at a friend's house to avoid the situation."

"The worst thing for an addict who has recovered," said Sandra Kostant, "is to have a family that hasn't recovered."

Joanne Peterson knows the journey, and how painful it can be. Her son, now 24, has been clean for two years. But she takes nothing for granted. "Once the body takes that drug," she said, "it takes a lot of determination and tools to beat it."