Under the Influence

Heroin use in Sussex County, part two; By Becca Tucker Diamond and Raoul, two fledgling junkies from Highland Lakes, had driven down to Asbury Park on a summer morning intending to cop heroin for the first time. Instead, their money and car were stolen by a scam artist posing as a dealer. Wandering the city, the pair fell in with a group of dopeheads, with whom they smoked crack and sniffed heroin. Raoul, a spiritual guy who spent his teens seeking chemically altered states of perception, describes the high as “Buddhist Zen.” Now in their early 20s, Raoul and Diamond have been clean for just one and two weeks, respectively, when they first meet with a reporter. When they describe the heroin high, it’s as if they’re talking about an ex-lover who treated them abominably but whom they haven’t quite gotten over. That summer — after Raoul had graduated high school and Diamond had dropped out — they copped dope a few more times, both in Asbury Park and in Paterson, where Diamond grew up. It was exhilaratingly risky. White kids driving around Paterson at night stick out. Even after they made it onto the highway entrance ramp, they weren’t free and clear. Paterson cops have been known to contact the kids’ hometown police, who pull them over on their way back home. By summer’s end, the two were “minorly addicted,” says Diamond. “But we didn’t do it enough to get a hard-core problem. We weren’t shooting. We’d get a little bit [dope]sick but not full-fledged.” Raoul’s mother’s car broke down, so the pair parted ways with their summer fling. At that point they didn’t know they could buy heroin from a middleman in Sussex County, where prices are significantly higher. A bag of dope that costs $5 elsewhere goes for as much as $20 in the suburbs. They stayed clean for two years. Full-fledged addiction would be passed along from a source close to them, like a contagion. That’s how it usually happens. “Guys get turned on by their buddies and girls get introduced by their boyfriends,” says Sussex County Prosecutor Thomas Reed. “At first, they think they can do it on weekends.” A prescription for addiction Pain was Oscar’s constant companion. After two car accidents, Oscar — Raoul’s older brother — had his spine fused by rods, screws and plates, which shifted with changes in temperature. Smoking weed helped Oscar’s pain, so he traded Raoul and Diamond two of his prescribed OxyContin pills for a gram of marijuana every other week, when he got his prescriptions filled. Made of pure oxycodone, a highly addictive synthetic opiate, OxyContin is so sought after that pharmacies carry fake pills in case of hold-ups. In Sussex County, the supply fluctuates depending on the status of individual dealers. One young Vernonite says that OxyContin is easier to get hold of than weed. A teen from Sparta says that when a major dealer got locked up in December 2008, a shortage resulted that made the addicts “go haywire,” and led many to do heroin. Raoul and Diamond cut the pills into four pieces, ground them up and sniffed 20 milligrams at a time (sniffing, injecting or “parachuting” produces an instant and powerful high by de-activating the drug’s time-release). High on oxycodone, “your whole body feels pretty good, you’re just chillin’ kinda, very relaxed and laid back,” says Diamond. The drug company Purdue Pharma reaped nearly $2.3 billion in sales in 2008 from OxyContin, the country’s top-selling prescription painkiller. They year before, it paid a $19.5 million settlement in a lawsuit that accused the company of encouraging doctors to prescribe the pill more often than the FDA recommended, and for failing to fully disclose the abuse risks. In September, Purdue Pharma came out with a new abuse-resistant version of the drug whose plastic-like coating is designed to make the drug harder and more time-consuming to crush, snort or inject, but the FDA said the new drug’s resistance to abuse is “limited.” Raoul was doing the pills only when his brother got his prescriptions, but Diamond was displaying the first symptom of addiction: she was going back for more. Her main source was a guy she’d met on an online hip-hop forum who sold discounted pills mail order. She’d PayPal him the money and he’d tape the pills in the spine of a CD case, at the slashed price of $25 for a full-strength 80-milligram pill. (The same pill would cost $40 to $50 on the street). Eventually, Diamond’s source got locked up, but it’s a burgeoning business. The Drug Enforcement Agency estimates that from 2004-2008, the amount of oxycodone diverted for non-prescription use in the United States jumped from under 50 kilograms to 70 kilograms, a difference of approximately 250,000 full-strength pills. Arrests in New Jersey for using and dealing synthetic narcotics like OxyContin jumped from 1,121 in 2004 to 1,645 in 2008. Middle school kids are abusing prescription pills more than twice as frequently as ecstasy and cocaine in New Jersey, according to a recent survey of school principals. Diamond knew she was doing too much, but then again, she also knew people who were doing a lot more. “Dope is the one thing I love,” she told herself with her golden tongue. “If I do oxys I’ll be able to control it because, you know, it’s not the same thing. I don’t have that obsession with oxys.” By the time Oscar brought home a “surprise” for Raoul and Diamond, she was blowing her entire paycheck on pills. The heroin Oscar bought off his co-worker was about five times cheaper than OxyContin and far more potent. Once you’ve gone from pills to heroin, any addict will tell you, you can’t go back. Pill use a growing concern “We saw major growth in prescription pills in the last year, and I don’t think it’s peaked yet,” said Becky Carlson, assistant director of the Center for Prevention and Counseling in Newton, which offers outpatient drug treatment. “We’ve seen a lot of people who got hooked to prescription opiates, then heroin is cheaper and easier to get than opiates. You need a prescription for the pills. But people know where to get heroin.” Drug counselors in Newton list alcohol as the most prevalent abused substance, then marijuana, then heroin. Prescription pills are fast catching up: OxyContin, Vicodin and benzodiazepines like Valium and Xanax are among the worst. Oscar is dead now, of an overdose on methadone and Xanax. Does Diamond blame Oscar at all, a friend 18 years her senior, for tempting her? “I was happy as hell,” she said. “He saved me a lot of money!” Glossary Bag (n) — a single dose equal to about 100 mg. of heroin. Cop (v) - To drive around for the purpose of scoring drugs. Popular copping locations include Paterson, Middletown, Englewood, Asbury Park, Orange, East Orange, Jersey City, Elizabeth, Trenton and Camden. Dope (n) - heroin Dopehead (n) - heroin addict Garbage head (n) - A person who dabbles in many drugs but does not have one go-to drug. Oxycodone (n) - The main ingredient in OxyContin and Percocet, this opiate painkiller became popular in the late 1980s and has a high potential to cause physical and psychological dependence. One bag of heroin is roughly equivalent to 60 mg of oxycodone. OxyContin (n) - Introduced in 1995. Made of pure oxycodone, which has a high potential to cause physical and psychological dependence, it is the most widely prescribed and most widely abused prescription drug in North America. Also called “Oxy,” “Hillbilly Heroin,” “40s,” “80s,” “Real Guys.” Parachute (v) - A method of swallowing pills in which a user makes a capsule for the pill out of toilet paper and swallows the capsule so that its contents are immediately released in the stomach.