Drug addiction: four students tell their stories

Approximately 50 percent of today's college students will try an illicit drug by the time they turn 25.* We are reaching epidemic proportions among the young and educated. Four SCC students tell their stories about the depths of their struggles and how they overcame the enslavement of habits that threatened their lives. Witness the stories of addiction.

DUSTIN

Family members inspire his determination

Dustin Ernst's father began training on a tandem bicycle by himself after he lost his wife to ovarian cancer. As he prepared for a ride they always did together, he was determined to do it in her honor -Miami to Maine.

When Ernst got out of prison, his mother made him accept an apology from her as she lay dying.

"I told her there was nothing to be sorry for," he said, "That I made these choices, but she was adamant about me accepting an apology about my upbringing."

Ernst has never blamed his mother, father or his older brother for the heroin addiction that took years of his life.

"I came from a good family. I had a lot of support," he said.

After his mother passed away, Ernst approached his father with a proposition that he accepted: the son would take the mother's place on the tandem bicycle, and the father would not ride alone.

"I went with him," Ernst said. "We made it from Miami to New Jersey. That was a pretty proud moment: the fact that I was able to be there for him, that we were able to grieve together. The fact that we made it 1,600 miles on a bike."

Downward spiral

Ernst is on his way to math class around 4:25 p.m. on Mondays and Wednesdays, a subject that comes to him naturally.

"I'm freaky good with numbers," he said.

He plans to transfer to ASU's Polytechnical campus and has decided to go into Science of Technologies.

"Specifically, alternative energies," Ernst said.

This is his first semester back at SCC in almost two years. Arrested for aggravated assault and burglary, Ernst served 15 months of a 18-month sentence in crimes related to his attempts to keep up a heroin addiction that had plagued him since he was 16. He is currently 25 years old.

"It was not until I got arrested that I finally quit," he said. "I was released from jail and going to court for five months, and during that five months I was in Teen Challenge, a Christian-based program."

Ernst was not then and still does not consider himself to be religious. But the experience itself, he said, was greatly helpful until he stopped believing.

"Being in the sober environment and believing that there was a greater power out there that could help me get through the addiction was helpful," Ernst admits. "I had to stay there and work the program for the program to work."

Before that, Ernst's addiction was so bad that he didn't see a way out. Attempting to stay clean without professional help, he entered into detox without the proper medication.

"I tried to quit several times," he said, "Put myself in detox at least 10 times. Trying to do that without proper medication seems to be impossible."

The withdrawals from heroin addiction, he said, can feel like hell.

"If you're sick and you can take a Tylenol and be better, you're going to take that Tylenol," he said. "It is kind of like that with heroin. You know what you have to do to make that sickness go away. I went to any extent to get it."

At $25 for a half-gram of heroin, Ernst did not have far to go when he needed a fix. He was caught shoplifting six times and would steal anything he could from cars, houses and garages.

"Anything I thought I could sell at a pawn shop," he said.

His addiction grew in a household where the obvious warning signs may have gone unnoticed.

"He'd (father) get home from work and he'd be doing more work. He spent time with me but he was running a business; he was devoted to it," he said.

The first instance when Ernst knew he had a problem was the first time he got dope sick. Throughout his drug use he had tried acid, crystal meth, mushrooms, cocaine and crack, among others.

"I didn't realize how out of control my addiction was until I used heroin," Ernst said. "I was able to switch from one drug to the next before. I woke up at my girlfriend's house in the middle of the night sweating," he said.

That day he had not gotten high because his girlfriend didn't know he was using.

"I didn't think it was an issue," he said.

The sheets were soaked down to the mattress. The next day Ernst called his friend who started him on heroin. He told him the symptoms were from not using that day.

"When I got high to fix that, that was my moment. Knowing that drug was causing me to feel that way and to have to use it to get away from those feelings, that was probably my, what the f*** was I doing moment," Ernst says.

Before he was using heroin on a daily basis, Ernst was bringing in over $1,000 a day selling drugs.

Addicted at 9

Ernst's drug use started much younger than most - age nine.

Beginning in the fourth grade he tried pot, alcohol and cigarettes. The cigarettes became habitual by the time he was 12, the same age he was when he first tried acid and mushrooms. Cocaine and crack at age 13, ecstasy at 14. Before he turned 16 and began to use heroin only, Ernst had also tried ketamine and crystal meth.

The first memory of when he began the downward spiral was when he and his friend were in the fourth grade.

"He was staying the night," he said. "Once my parents fell asleep we went and grabbed a couple beers out of the fridge just to try it out. We waited until we knew we were not going to get caught. It was something to brag about. It was never about peer pressure."

Ernst will say that there are a lot of things he regrets, a lot of people that he has hurt in his lifetime, but if there is a message out there that people should take from his story, it is that there is hope.

"There is a light at the end of the tunnel," he said. "That life is good when you're not using drugs. Hope for your family life to be restored. You're not powerless. I won't ever touch heroin again and I can say that with confidence."

For those who are not ready or wanting to join a large support group, Ernst suggests one-on-one counseling.

"When my mom passed away, we were on good terms," he said. "She saw me enter into Teen Challenge and work hard in that program. My parents kept in touch with me when I was in prison. The five months I spent with her when I was released before she passed away, she saw me working hard and not using drugs. She was proud of me. If she were to pass while I was using, I don't think I'd be able to accept that. I'd have a lot more guilt than I have now."

Ernst currently works full-time and gets along well with his family. He is still addicted to two things: cigarettes and online fantasy basketball. His team was recently kicked out of the playoffs this season though, so he is only struggling with one addiction now - one that he says, in time, he will kick too.

LUCY

Stable family didn't keep addiction away

(Lucy Willis' name has been changed to protect her identity.)

"Life, love, stress and setbacks, yes, you could tell me how hard you had it and you could show me all the scars to back it…"

This is Lucy Willis' favorite song, Atmosphere's "Yesterday."

"I listened to them a lot in my addiction. I am a little obsessed- okay," she admits, "a lot obsessed with that band. Cause I have been through so much with them."

She explains that Atmosphere started off a lot like her, morbid and jaded.

"And now," she said, "it has morphed into something more uplifting and positive. That is where I am now."

Finding acceptance

"I grew up in a great family," she said. "We have always had enough. I didn't have physically abusive parents, I had support."

Unfortunately, she explains, the people she wanted to be hanging around with were doing drugs.

"For some reason I thought that was cool," she said.

Willis feared not being accepted, not being a part of something, feelings that she believes are partially responsible for the path she chose.

"I was just in so much fear of not being accepted or not being good enough or not being loved enough that I used drugs to get all those feelings," she said. "Eventually the drugs stopped working but I couldn't stop using the drugs."

Lucy began using pot at 14. She progressed into alcohol use as she entered into high school. That's also where she experimented with prescription drugs. Her senior year marked the beginning of what she explains as the harder drugs.

"I was a functioning addict," she said. "I still showed up to work, showed up to school. But on the inside I was in emotional despair. Those were my days."

Willis says she was at her worst when she was working for an elementary school as a teacher's aide in a classroom for children with disabilities. In the morning she smoked heroin before going to work. Throughout the day she made bathroom trips and spent lunchtime getting high. Then she went off to school.

As a college student she was using heroin every day.

"If a teacher made me mad, I'd go and use," Willis said. "If I got a good grade on a paper, I'd go and use. Everything was a reason."

One day her dealer stood her up while she was on her way to school.

"I was all out and I was just sobbing, like it was the end of my world," she recalled. "I thought to myself, how am I going to continue my day. And I thought, 'S***, I have a problem'."

Until that day, Willis was able to keep her problems to herself.

"I find that addicts are usually pretty crafty people," she said. "They can usually get the job done if they want it done. That is what I did. I always seemed to get my stuff done because I was scared of anyone finding out. School was just a part of the show I was putting on."

Reality sets in

July 12, 2007.

Willis was working as a nanny for a family that had a four-year-old child with cerebral palsy. The child's mother was a cancer patient undergoing chemotherapy, leaving her frequently bedridden.

"The little girl was in a wheelchair," Willis said. "She couldn't talk and she was very dependent on me. There was another daughter about a year old at the time. I was sitting on this chair and the girls were both in the room and I was using heroin. I was trying to get that last hit in. And I looked at this girl. She had every challenge in the world and here I was, this blessed human being, thinking I have all these opportunities and I am just sitting there killing myself. I felt ashamed of myself. I felt disgusting."

That was the last day of her addiction. The next day she sought help.

"I went and saw a life coach. He said I wouldn't be able to win this battle alone," Wills said.

She says that it is harder to get clean than to stay clean. But with the help of a support group and people who have similar experiences it gets easier with time.

"The first time I went in to a meeting I had so much anxiety," she said. "I was just out in the parking lot terrified. It was hard to walk in there and admit and say 'Hi, I'm an addict.' A part of me still didn't believe it."

"I had this view in my head of what an addict was," she said. "And that view was this guy hanging out on the street looking for his fix or this woman that's selling her body to get high. I had this idea in my head that I wasn't that bad."

"Today," she said, "I woke up free from the obsession to use drugs and if I wake up with that feeling, it is a successful day for the most part. I feel like I am a valuable person. I am smart. I am a good contribution. I have confidence. I am a student who works, just like we all are. I have a pretty blessed life today."

Jordan

Student now sponsors addicts

On Dec. 27, 2006, Jordan Buis overdosed on a mixture of painkillers and barbiturates.

As he sat up from the hospital bed, his mother screamed the question from his bedside, "Why are you doing this?" as Buis ripped the IV needles out of his arm in a last ditch effort to get home and get high one last time.

"I knew I was going to rehab. I knew I was going away for a long time," Buis said. "They had to tie me down to the bed. My mom was next to me crying. This is where drug addiction takes you. Your family can be there on their knees begging you, and it doesn't make a difference."

He considers that day his lowest moment.

Two-and-a-half years later, Buis is a sponsor for struggling addicts and a student at SCC, taking courses on drug counseling and drug dependency.

From age 11 on, Buis has tried pot, mushrooms, acid, ecstasy, cocaine, Oxycontin, Demarol, Percocet, Vicadin, Zanex, Valium, Ketamine and various inhalants and whippets. He also struggled with alcohol.

Buis first entered into a detox program when he was 16. In total he would enter into six similar programs as he continued to relapse again and again.

What started off as a way to have fun turned into what Buis calls an endless search. Finally, drug use became a mandatory means to avoid getting dope sick, where the body undergoes violent withdrawal symptoms like vomiting and fever that can last for weeks.

"At first it was fun," he said. "Then I was trying to search for this ultimate euphoria. Then it became a way to just not get dope sick. It led me to steal, lie, anything I had to do to get drugs. It snowballed."

Before he turned 18, Buis overdosed a handful of times.

In 2006 Buis had a drug-induced seizure at the wheel, flipping his Honda Civic two times after striking a curb and then a waist-high concrete wall. He was upside down in a heap of metal with only one thing on his mind: the medics were going to give him liquid morphine. This made him happy.

For Austin

"It is hard to say what someone needs to hear. Death isn't going to change people's minds. Overdosing or getting arrested is not going to change your mind. When you do drugs," Buis said, "your brain gets rewired. It tells you that if you don't do drugs, you'll die."

After his last overdose, Buis was sent to a long-term rehabilitation program in Wickenburg. While there he heard what would help propel him not only to change, but to remain clean.

It was family night at the program and Buis' parents had driven to Wickenburg to show their support for their son and to deliver news.

"I was eight months sober when my brother, Austin, died of a heroin overdose. He was 21," Buis said. "I'll never forget what my mom said to me. It was during a parent counseling night about a month after my brother died and my mom said to me, 'I always thought it would be you.'"

Austin had been clean and sober for six months when within a week of using drugs again, he died.

"The last time I ever saw my brother, we were fist fighting," Buis said, "over drugs I think. My family will never be the same. It is hard seeing my mom. She is never going to be the same. I can just see that look in her eye where she is just sad. It's painful because there is nothing I can do."

Both brothers got into drug use at a young age.

"We use to smoke pot together. But once we knew we were getting into deeper drugs like heroin and Oxycontin, we never did that stuff together. I think we were both ashamed that it got to that level," he said.

Every night Buis goes to bed and thanks God for another day sober. He also tells his brother that he loves him.

Breaking the cycle

After leaving Wickenburg, Buis was transferred up to Prescott and placed in a halfway house. Soon after, noticing his progress, he was offered an internship as a house manager.

"As time goes by and you have been sober for awhile, you help newcomers. A sponsor is kind of like a teacher to help them indentify who they are and why they make the decisions they do," Buis said.

He has compiled his own advice and experiences and now spends his time trying to help others.

"The one thing I have found is that you have to quit for yourself or it isn't going to work," Buis said.

The warning signs he encountered he looks for in those that he sponsors.

"If I am waking up and I am locked in my head and I am isolating myself, not talking to people, then the voices are going to take over and I might cave in," Buis said. Moments like these are when you need to call your sponsor, he explained.

"Yeah I have been sober for two-and-a-half years but I can mess that up in two seconds," he said.

Dealing with pressures of life can be too much at times, he said.

"When I did drugs I wanted to go into this fairytale land to escape," he said. "But know that the bad times do pass if you work hard."

Recently Buis bought his first car on his own, a Dodge Magnum that he is immensely proud of.

"All the money I spent on drugs I couldn't buy a car," he said.

At its peak, his habit was costing upwards of $300 a day.

His expenses are much different today. Though he does admit he lost $200 at the casino for his 21st birthday. Jokingly, he talks about getting addicted to gambling next.

At work, Buis handles newcomers and addicts who have not yet signed up for help.

"I have a lot of people say, 'Yes I want to do it'," he said. "Then I'll have a couple people call me up and say they want to meet and then like that, they're gone. You're going to get people who are not going to be ready."

He was one of them.

"I went to Banner Health to get help at least five times and not a single time did I stay," he said.

The payoff, he said, comes when you stick to it long enough. Helping one person, saving one life, would make everything he has experienced to this point, worth it.

"When I am at meetings, talking to guys who have been clean less than a week and they are just broken and they want to change but don't know how," he said, "To try and show them the better way of life and see that click in their head - that is the best feeling in world."

Taylor

Past meth addict seeks to counsel others

(Taylor Jerkin's name has been changed to protect her identity.)

When she was 14, Taylor Jenkins had a drink with her parents.

"I was almost taught it was okay," she said, "My parents thought if I drank with them, I wouldn't drink at parties."

But she still did.

At the time Jenkins' boyfriend was older and getting ready to leave for college.

"The security I had while with my boyfriend left when he went away to college," she explains. "I was at a party and people were breaking up lines of cocaine, so I did it."

That same night Jenkins emptied her entire bank account: $600. This, she explained, was the beginning.

Bugs under my skin

Throughout her drug abuse Jenkins continued to remain in school because her enrollment meant having health insurance, a fact that would later help her convince doctors into giving her prescription medication she didn't need.

"I would be registered, barely show up, manipulate my teachers and somehow manage to get a passing grade," she said.

From drinking to cocaine, Jenkins' drug problems escalated quickly as her household began collapsing in on itself when in March 2004, her mother was diagnosed with cancer. Jenkins was 19.

"I graduated from doing lines of cocaine to smoking meth. Then there was no hiding my addiction because I had a big issue with seeing the bugs in my skin," she said.

Recalling them, she said, makes her sick to her stomach.

"I didn't feel them but I saw them, saw them crawling underneath," she said, "Little tiny ones and I would end up with wavy scabs up my arms."

Jenkins does not blame her family for all that would follow in her drug abuse.

"I was readily given anything I wanted with a dying cancer patient in my house," she said. "I would say I had a small headache and my dad would give me liquid morphine."

When Jenkins' mother died in October 2005, Jenkins' father began to look past what was happening to his daughter.

"I am the only thing he has left of my mom. It was a denial issue," she said.

"I would freebase cocaine to crack and smoke crack all night. Eventually I would pour myself into bed but before I would, I'd cut up an Oxycontin so I'd have it there to snort in the morning," Jenkins said, recalling the worst days of her addiction.

Throughout her drug addiction she has done cocaine, crack, meth, mushrooms, acid, special K and an assortment of prescription drugs like Percodan and Zanex, all while living with her father and her brothers.

"One time," she said, "I was sitting in my room and I was getting high and I was kicking myself because I didn't get the pills from my dealer for the next morning. I was praying my dad would come into my room and force me to get help. But I knew that wasn't going to happen. I didn't even get paranoid about him hearing the lighter light every minute. I think he wanted to believe all the lies I was telling were truths."

The first step

Soon after that night when she was out of the house, her brothers went into her room and gathered all of the drugs and paraphernalia out of her room and showed her father. There was no denying it anymore. When her father confronted her he also offered help her into a program. It was the first time someone had tried to help her in her eight-year addiction. She was 22 years old when she first checked in with a 12-step program.

"I entered into a 21-day treatment. Admitting that I was an addict was hard. I had a false pretense of what an addict was. I went into treatment with plans to meet someone after to go get drunk."

Since that day, March 30, 2008, Jenkins has been clean. At first she battled withdrawals and her own denials. Currently she remains active and involved in the program.

"I also dealt with my mom's death. I had been holding it in for two-and-a-half years. All the tears that I should have been crying since March 2004 I cried March 2008."

Jenkins is now 23 years old and is currently completing her prerequisites at SCC in pursuit of a master's degree in Substance Abuse Counseling. She is slowly building her relationship with her father.

"He trusts me with his credit card and his car," she said. "The amount of trust that is there is implied, not a spoken trust yet."

But she says, it's getting there.

Jenkins plans to transfer to NAU as soon as she finishes at SCC, eager to have a career helping people like herself.