HEROIN ‘HIGH’ SCHOOLS
Brave student battles addiction amid city’s teen opioid epidemic
SHE’S 16 and a typical New York City high school kid — for better and worse.
Her parents are professionals, her family lives in Queens. Her older sister attends college. She was an A student at an elite school, and smoked marijuana for the first time as a freshman.
Pot led to pills and pills led to heroin. In January 2016, she shot up smack for the first time — and overdosed in the bathroom of an East Side shop.
The teen recovered, only to overdose twice more. Now she’s struggling to stay clean.
“I’m really surprised I managed to slip away from death,” the girl told the Daily News. “It’s so crazy. I feel horrible for what I did to my parents and everyone else in the process.”
Experts say such tales are becoming more common among city youths in the age of opioids.
Drug therapists and treatment center operators told The News they’ve seen a dramatic increase in the number of students with addictions to prescription drugs and heroin.
The spike mirrors a drastic increase in fatal drug overdoses across the city, with the NYPD investigating 1,370 suspected opioid deaths last year — a surge of 46% from 2015.
At the Realization Center in Manhattan, teens undergoing treatment for addictions to pills and opioids attend well-known high schools like La Guardia, John Dewey and Bronx Science.
The center sees nearly twice as many city high school kids struggling with drugs today as it did only a couple of years back, staffers said.
The 16-year-old, a student at a specialized and highly competitive public high school, says drug use runs rampant at her school.
“I was drinking and smoking (pot) because it was accepted,” said the teenager, who asked to remain anonymous to prevent bullying at her school.
“Eventually I started smoking like four times a day and dabbling into pills like Xanax,” she said. “I wanted to go to my parents, because I knew I was self-medicating.”
But she didn’t. The first her parents heard of her drug use came in a call from hospital staffers after their daughter arrived on a cold Wednesday afternoon last year.
She had graduated from Xanax to heroin. Then she began began snorting china white, a powdered mix of heroin and the potent synthetic opioid fentanyl. On that January day, she accompanied two friends into the bathroom. One injected her with the drug for the first time. She lost consciousness in the stall, and her panicked pals called 911.
“I woke up to my parents crying and I was bawling, talking to a child psychiatrist,” she said. “I felt like I messed up because I wanted to tell them how I was feeling, and I thought I could get help.”
After two more overdoses and three trips to in-patient treatment programs, she’s just trying to maintain her sobriety. She and her family have been through hell.
“It’s very indicative of what we’re seeing more of now,” said Maria Afordakos, an addiction counselor and coordinator of adolescent treatment services at the Realization Center. “There’s more experimentation with prescription medication than we’ve ever seen,” she added. “It’s leading to a lot of dependency.” Students and therapists said prescription drugs — and opioids in particular — are becoming the norm in city schools where drugs are sold and used. The 16-year-old Queens girl interviewed by The News estimated that one-third of her high school classmates had sampled Xanax or other prescription drugs.
A single bar, or pill, of the antianxiety medication Xanax costs just $5, she said. Students buy them in bulk from the dark web by using credit cards, or obtain a prescription and peddle them at school.
During finals and midterm exams, she said, students pop prescription stimulants such as Adderall, Vyvanse and Ritalin to aid their studies.
“It’s crazy,” she said. “Even the kids who never use drugs want to enhance their brains, so they’re taking these drugs.”
The second time she overdosed was at school, nearly passing out in the girls bathroom on a mix of Xanax and alcohol. Other students carried her out of a stall and summoned school staffers.
“I lost control of my body,” she recalled. “Everyone was trying to get me off the bathroom floor. They held a trash can in front of me and said, ‘Hold this until you throw up,’ and called an ambulance.”
The girl’s mother thinks the school didn’t do enough to help her daughter.
“I still don’t understand why the school had no control over what kids are doing besides academics,” she said tearfully.
“It takes a lot of effort to get into a good school,” she added. “And then to have all that happen, and go to rehab — it’s a nightmare for the parents.”
City Education Department officials said the number of incidents of students using or possessing alcohol or drugs at schools has remained basically flat in recent years.
School officials don’t keep track of what types of alcohol or drugs kids are using in class.
But they have altered mandatory anti-drug lessons to better cover prescription drugs and opioids over the past few years, they said.
The city spends roughly $25 million on anti-drug efforts in schools each year, funding 300 specialist educators who work in roughly 400 different schools.
Community-based organizations that offer drug awareness lessons and counseling also work in about 100 city schools, official said.
Students receive additional drug awareness lessons embedded in health classes that are required for graduation from high school.
“We cover a big swath of the student population with our staff,” said Marion Thomas, program manager for prevention services at the city Education Department.
But there remains an informal waitlist of schools seeking dedicated anti-drug counselors, Thomas said, although he didn’t know how many schools are waiting for help.
Veteran Manhattan therapist Sean Grover said he’s not surprised that school officials haven’t noted a spike in prescription drug use.
That’s because it can be virtually impossible for even a parent to tell if a kid is using pills, he said.
“Parents don’t report it. The kid goes on medical leave if it gets bad enough,” he said. “They generally don’t want the school to know. It’s totally shrouded.”
Grover said he’s now treating about 25 city teens with prescription drug problems, up from about five a few years ago.
He personally knows of five nonfatal overdoses involving students from a single specialized high school since January.
The Queens girl who overdosed at school has now been sober from pills, heroin and alcohol for more than 100 days.
But the allure of prescription drugs and opioids remains a strong one for her — and for other students like her.
“Teenagers are very hormonal and go through a lot of changes,” she explained. “Those emotions have nowhere to go. It’s the only way that they can get a grip on themselves and their feelings.”