Heroin Hits the Suburbs Hard Amid Wave of Drug Abuse by Teens and 20-Somethings

Video: Jessica Polmann in Her Own Words

Video: Sean O'Conner in His Own Words

Video: Kristen Delgado in Her Own Words

Last year, Salisbury and the surrounding beach communities lost at least six people to opiate overdoses, according to L'Esperance. Across Massachusetts, 149 teenagers and 20-somethings died from opiate use in 2006. Unsurprisingly, the number of heroin addicts entering state-operated drug treatment programs also increased over the same period. Indeed, the gap between the number of addicts entering state facilities to treat heroin addiction and the larger number seeking treatment for alcohol abuse shrank dramatically, from 21 percentage points to only 5.

No stigma. The frequency with which prescription opiate abusers switch to heroin, a drug that is arguably more likely to result in fatal overdoses, does not surprise Michael Botticelli, director of the Massachusetts Bureau of Substance Abuse Services. He says that when OxyContin users exhaust their finances or opportunities to steal from medicine cabinets, they become shrewd consumers. They can either purchase a single OxyContin pill for up to $80 or spend as little as $5 on a bag with one tenth of a gram of heroin. Both options offer a comparable high, and because heroin no longer carries the stigma of a drug that users must inject, the decision to graduate to heroin is an all-too-easy one, Botticelli says.

Though Massachusetts and other northeastern states have not yet seen a decline in the number of young people addicted to and dying from opiate addictions, Botticelli is hopeful that strategies he helped implement this year to address the problem will soon provide some relief. In January, the bureau launched a program to train addicts and their relatives on how to administer nasal Narcan, a drug commonly used by first responders to reverse the effects of an opiate overdose. To deter more people from developing opiate addictions, the bureau also distributed $2 million among the 15 Massachusetts communities with the highest incidences of opiate overdoses. The money will fund prevention strategies that each town must devise.

Law enforcement and treatment officials in New Jersey agree that education about their state's heroin and prescription opiate problem is the best way to prevent more young adults from losing their lives. Between 2004 and 2007, the number of opiate-related deaths per year in New Jersey rose from 129 to 173. In 2006, the annual number of deaths hit 215 when a rash of addicts died from using heroin cut with Fentanyl, a synthetic opiate more powerful than morphine. One of the young adults who lost her life that year was a friend of Polmann's. In total, Polmann lost seven of her school friends during her five years addicted to heroin.

Polmann now lives at Daytop, a drug rehabilitation and treatment facility in northern New Jersey, and she has been clean for nearly five months. She has made significant strides in repairing what were once broken relationships with her family and even has plans to go to college and join the Army, accomplishments that were seemingly beyond her reach earlier this year. "When I came to Daytop on June 23, I walked in here with my face yellow, tracks up and down my arms, saying f--- this," she says. "Now that I'm in the program, I love it. I love being clean, and never in a million years did I ever think I would say that."

But she is never far from reminders of her life as an addict. An album she keeps in her bedroom at Daytop is filled with photos of her former friends. Some have died or gone to prison while others have attempted suicide or contracted diseases through their IV drug use. The first photo in the album shows Jessica in a vibrant green front yard wearing a silky, white dress and preparing to leave for her middle school dance. She had snorted heroin earlier that night and was high when the photo was taken.

• Watch a video interview with Jessica Polmann
• Read about Kristen Delgado's daily routine as a teenage heroin addict.
• Read Sean O'Conner's story of overdosing on heroin after a friend's party.