Teen Lives Horror Of Drug Use

Lea was a freshman at Quince Orchard High School in Gaithersburg in 2009. In many ways, the popular honors student was a typical teenager.

Her life changed on June 4, 2009. That night, Lea broke up with her boyfriend and had a fight with her mother. She went to a friend's house in Derwood, where she and the friend smoked marijuana. During the evening, her mother, Lisa Essich, sent her a text message that she could not spend the night because she had to come home to help clean in the morning.

Lea's friend brought out some heroin. That friend had previously introduced Lea to oxycodone, a prescription opiate used illegally to produce an effect similar to heroin.

"I was high," Lea said. "I was angry with my life and just thinking 'screw it.'"

Lea's body had a severe reaction to the drug. Now paralyzed, she faces years of therapy to regain her ability to perform simple functions, like feeding herself.

Lea, 17, can speak in short sentences. She will share her story Saturday at an event to raise awareness about drug use.

"She's depressed, feels like she doesn't have a purpose," Essich said.

Essich hopes that talking about her experience will give Lea a new sense of purpose and that she will see she lived to prevent other teenagers from making the same mistake.

Lea's story

At 9 p.m. on June 4, 2009, Essich got a call that both girls were unconscious and Lea was foaming at the mouth.

"My whole world fell apart," Essich said.

Doctors who treated Lea at Shady Grove Adventist Hospital in Rockville told Essich her daughter was in cardiac arrest for eight minutes before they were able to revive her.

Lea was flown to Children's National Medical Center in Washington, D.C., where she was in a coma for about a month, Essich said. Her prognosis was bleak.

"There was not a lot of brain activity," Essich said.

Lea was having seizures and also had kidney, liver and heart problems.

After a month, Lea opened her eyes but was unresponsive. After two months, Lea made moaning sounds and responded to commands to stick out her tongue.

Two months after the night she used heroin, Lea was at the National Rehabilitation Hospital in Washington, D.C. and said, "Mama."

Lea's still has problems with short-term memory. She went home for Christmas in 2009 but was readmitted to the hospital the next month with a life-threatening infection.

Lea has been home since Memorial Day weekend.

A Medicaid-paid nurse is with her for 12 hours on weekdays. She receives physical therapy twice a week and emotional counseling twice a week. Montgomery County Public Schools sends a teacher to her house every day. In November, she remembered how to do algebra.

Increasing use of opiates

Since mid-2009, police have seen an increase in the number of cases involving oxycodone and heroin distribution in Damascus, said Lt. Marcus Jones, drug commander of the Montgomery County Police Special Investigations Division, Drug Enforcement Section.

"They think, what's the harm if it's over the counter and prescribed?'" Jones said.

Based on complaints from the community, "Damascus has long been on our radar," he said.

Police made one arrest in March and five in June in Damascus for oxycodone and heroin distribution, Jones said.

Montgomery County police do not distinguish among drugs in their arrest records.

Nationwide, about 6.9 million individuals aged 12 or older were nonmedical users of prescription-type drugs, such as opioid pain relievers, tranquilizers, sedatives and stimulants in 2007, according to the National Drug Intelligence Center.

The most recent data available report unintentional overdose deaths involving prescription opioids increased by 114 percent from 2001 (3,994) to 2005 (8,541), according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention National Center for Health Statistics. The number of treatment admissions for prescription opioid abuse increased by 74 percent from 46,115 in 2002 to 80,131 in 2006, according to the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

The problem is spreading to communities throughout the county, said Capt. Luther T. Reynolds, commander of the Montgomery County 5th Police District.

Washington, D.C., and Baltimore are the main distribution points, Jones said.

Meghan Westwood, executive director of the Avery Road Treatment Center, the county-supported inpatient detoxification program, will also be at Saturday's event.

Avery Road admits about 1,200 patients a year, and the number of young adult and adolescent admissions has surged in recent years, Westwood said. In 2006, 10 percent were younger than 24; in 2010, that number increased to 18 percent.

Avery Road is also seeing an increase in the number of people admitted for opiate use, from 11 percent in 2006 to 23 percent in 2010.

About oxycodone

Oxycodone is an opiate, a synthetic form of heroin, according to the University of Maryland, College Park Center for Substance Abuse Research. It is known by the trade name OxyContin and its active ingredients are found in prescription pain medications such as Percocet and Percodan.

Oxycodone can be bought illegally for $40 to $80 a pill; heroin costs $10 to $50 a vial, Jones said.

Opiates are physically addictive and can be lethal if used in combination with drugs such as Valium, which suppresses the respiratory system.

"They go into withdrawal if not using regularly," Westwood said. "It's painful, it feels very bad. They need to get into treatment."

The availability of prescription medication contributes to oxycodone abuse, according to police.

Nationally, almost 4.6 million emergency rooms visits in 2009 were drug-related, of which 45.1 percent were linked to abuse and misuse of drugs, both legal and illegal, according to data compiled by the Drug Abuse Warning Network.

More than a quarter of all visits - 1.2 million - were due to prescription drug abuse, an increase of 98.4 percent from the 627,291 visits recorded in 2004.

Use of illegal drugs accounted for 1 million emergency room visits, according to the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.