Young Follow Painkiller Route to Heroin, Agencies Find ; Rehab Facilities Note Rise in Admissions

By Natalie Morera

Kayte Heerdt’s downward spiral into heroin use started with booze, marijuana and then her family’s medicine cabinet.

The 18-year-old got hooked on her stepfather’s Lortab, then turned to OxyContin, which she bought on the street. When that got too expensive, she turned to a cheaper and more readily available drug — heroin.

She ended up in rehab in the Renaissance Campus, a residential treatment program for adolescents in West Seneca.

Her path is becoming all too familiar for young people in Erie County. Law enforcement, social service and health care agencies report an alarming rise in heroin use across the county. A significant number of users, they say, are young people, some as young as 12.

The number of rehabilitation check-ins in Erie County for heroin and other opiates has risen 89.5 percent in five years — to 2,581 in 2006 from 1,362 in 2002.

For all eight Western New York counties, heroin and other opiate check-ins have risen 102.4 percent in those five years.

To Dr. Robert B. Whitney, clinical director of the chemical dependency program at Erie County Medical Center, these numbers reflect a significant drug problem in the area — specifically among teenagers.

“It’s not the largest group that we see, but it’s the one who has changed the most,” Whitney said.

For young people, the drug of choice has become prescription opiates. Often, as in Heerdt’s case, the pills were legally prescribed for someone in the family.

Experts say abuse of pain relievers increasingly leads to heroin use.

“[Pain relievers are] a gateway not only to heroin and the problems that go with heroin,” Whitney said. “But [they] may also be a gateway moving from oral medications and the risks that go with that, to injecting.”

Heerdt’s drug use began with alcohol and marijuana she got from friends about two years ago. It escalated when she found her stepfather’s prescription painkillers: Lortab, a combination of acetaminophen and the narcotic hydrocodone.

“My stepfather has a real bad back, and he was prescribed Lortab,” Heerdt told The Buffalo News. “I’d steal them from him.”

She moved on to OxyContin, a prescription narcotic similar to morphine that she bought on the street for $5 to $20 a pill. She not only ingested it, but also injected it into her veins.

In the final four months of her two-year addiction, Heerdt used heroin. She could get 10 one-ounce bags for $25 to $50.

She found heroin different from other drugs she had tried.

Heroin “made me hit bottom so fast,” she said.

While heroin use has increased, places to go for help have decreased, and the availability of prescription narcotics has skyrocketed.

From 2002 to last year, the number of inpatient rehabilitation centers decreased from 13 to eight. The number of outpatient centers has increased by just one, to 48.

Prescription opiates have become more available across Western New York, Whitney said.

An Associated Press analysis of of statistics from the Drug Enforcement Administration showed that, from 1997 to last year, sales and distribution of pain relievers rose 88 percent.

That, Whitney said, raises the possibility of addiction.

More than 55 percent of those 12 or older said they had received free pain relievers from a friend or a relative, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s 2006 National Survey. More than 9 percent said they had bought the drugs from a friend or relative. Only 3.9 percent got the medications from a drug dealer or stranger.

Capt. Ron Kenyon of the Erie County Sheriff’s Office said the abuse and availability of pain relievers undoubtedly have risen, while heroin use has posted a “major increase.”

“Kids with prescription medication, I think, is going through the roof,” Kenyon said.

He has encountered the problem throughout the county, even in rural areas.

“We’re seeing heroin in Springville. We never thought we’d see it there,” Kenyon said.

Drug experts say many young people experiment with drugs because of a lack of love at home.

“What plays a role today for a significant number of people regardless of age, they don’t feel the love, receive the love, many have little hope, self-esteem; and they’re looking for something to help them feel a little better,” said Dick Gallagher, executive director of Alcohol and Drug Dependence Services.

The experimental age, once 15 or 16, has dropped to 12, Gallagher said.

When the Renaissance Campus started in 1990, Gallagher said, residents averaged about 17 years old; the average age now is about 14.

The number of teens seeking treatment for addiction to opiates and heroin has increased significantly, he said.

“I think right now, what we’re seeing with prescription drugs — throughout Western New York — that [it] is getting to be just as bad or worse than the crack epidemic was to us in the 1980s,” Gallagher said.

A survey conducted in February at the Renaissance Campus shows that the youngest patient to have experimented with heroin was 13. The youngest to try pain relievers was 12.

Nationally, the organization re Police and rehabilitation experts are not the only ones to notice the increase.

The Erie County Council for the Prevention of Alcohol and Substance Abuse works mostly with schools to prevent drug use and tailors programs to fit the needs of the schools.

Andrea J. Wanat, the council’s executive director, said it is aware that abuse of pain relievers is increasing in the county.

“We’re looking to do a prescription drug initiative coming up in the next year,” Wanat said, adding that experts are seeing 8-year- olds experimenting with drugs.

“Substance abuse and prescription abuse [have] become an emotional Band-Aid,” she said. “There’s a pill for everything.”

For Heerdt, there wasn’t one for the pain her heroin addiction caused her family.

But now, as she is completing her drug treatment, she says she believes they’re closer than ever. She will attend Erie Community College and hopes to someday become a surgeon.

e-mail: citydesk@buffnews.com

Originally published by NEWS STAFF REPORTER.

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