The Addicted: Profile of a Young Addict, Part 1

stop dices i'm not i knocked on the door i see if he didn't answer me i pushed the door in there he was laying half dead on the bathroom floor from an overdose i was panicking what can i do i called an ambulance the ambulance came with a policeman they found the needle they found the evidence they put him back in jail again where he's now again in jail [Music] [Music] foreign there are only three institutions in the united states devoted to the treatment of drug addiction two of these are the excellent federal hospitals in lexington kentucky and fort worth texas the third hospital is in new york city and is exclusively for addicts under 21. statistically the great majority of patients leaving these hospitals soon revert to drugs and yet the statistics do not tell the whole story they do not reveal the almost complete absence of follow-up facilities they do not tell about the pressures placed upon the addict both from without and within and because they are statistics they deal in absolutes of success or failure ignoring the innumerable shadings in between to convey a sense of these shadings and of the complexity of the addict himself and his treatment we present a case history the story of one boy told by the people who know him and finally by the boy himself these are not actors but the actual people involved my name is mike i'm an addict and have been one for 15 years i guess that makes me something of an expert on drugs i i used to think so this is the story of freddie freddie is a buddy of mine he's a much younger guy than i am and it's much more important to tell his story than mine because of the kids today so much of the miranda stuff freddie was about 19 when he started using junk now like all junkies he thought he was going to keep it a big secret but it wasn't long until his mother found out i found out the first time i found out he came home he says mama i need three dollars it's a friend of mine on a door i borrowed money from and i gotta pay it back i gave him three dollars i didn't look who it was i sat down and watched television and i watched myself in on the chair his eyes turned his first time his whole face turned white as a ghost i kept looking and looking i couldn't believe it i said to him freddy are you using drugs oh no he says but i knew all the while he never had money never had money i always had to give him money how can i do it i have a family support i'm the only one that's working in the family my husband is sick and it was an awful shock to me to face this i used to go around in days thinking why why have i done wrong to my son that he does anything like that that's the way it is for the family of an addict and that's the way it went for about a year freddy finally agreed after some not so gentle persuasion to make an attempt at not using drugs he went to riverside hospital riverside is on an island in the east river and it is the only hospital in the country set up just to handle junkies under 21. the first thing they do at riverside is get rid of the addict's physical dependence on drugs that's the easy part the hard part is helping him so that he wants to stay off [Music] [Music] this is public school 619 of riverside hospital my name is jed axelbank and i am in charge of the general shop in the school this is not a very conventional school but then again drug addiction is not a very conventional problem most of these children have started on drugs when they were 16 or so many even younger their lives have been so limited simply to create an interest in the kinds of activities that are part of normal healthy living we concentrate more on activities of various kinds rather than formal academic studies it's not enough to take away heroin you have to replace it with something else and that was a problem with fred too i remember when i first met him during his first day here he was with a group of new patients with whom i was discussing hospital program and the school program he asked a few questions about cabinet making and woodworking and he seemed to be a pretty bright boy and yet i got the feeling that there was a lot of hostility and that he was on a defensive in spite of the fact that i thought he would become interested in the shop he never did show up for any work like some of the other kids i guess at that time his sole interest was to get out and to go back on drugs he was there for three months he came home he was home a week he start writing again i couldn't understand i this time for sure i don't want him back home again i don't want him anymore i'm gonna run away it's a terrible feeling for any mother to face a thing like that when you struggle all your life to bring up your children right which i did and all of a sudden they go just like that well my freddy went back the second time in riverside hospital and he stood there for two months and he didn't finish his two months one night him and another boy they took a rubber tube they swam the river the east river just to get the drugs again he came home with his hospital clothes on at two o'clock in the morning he got all dressed up i said to him what are you doing home you're not supposed to be home you're supposed to be in the hospital he says shh don't say nothing mom and he got all dressed up and he went out that's the last time i seen him again the next day he got big picked up again freddie was on the outside for one day and one shot right after he got his fix a cop came along and found him with the works needle and eye drop are used for injecting heroin that's a misdemeanor he wound up going to prison for three months the same day he finished his stretch the parole officer sent him back to riverside again for the third time in less than a year my name is leo gold i'm a psychologist at riverside hospital fred was assigned as one of my patients during his third trip here in the beginning he apparently didn't feel comfortable enough to do much talking and to my part i didn't want to alienate him by pressing too hard so our early sessions consisted mostly of silence and waiting during his third trip here i ran into fred a few times in the hall and i asked him to come into the shop one day he decided to give me a break he came into the shop and i set into working on the wood lake this slave is a good place to start off because you can see something happen fairly quickly and this gives the boy a feeling of accomplishment and success a feeling which he needs very very much well fred began to work and he did surprisingly well he had a real talent he began to come to the shop regularly and in a few weeks he became a quite a good craftsman i noticed also that he seemed to be a lot more relaxed and at ease i have one of the pieces of work that he made i don't know if you can see all of the details but it's really a fine piece of work soon after fred began working in the shop our relationship improved he started to open up a little to talk about himself his problems and his feelings and i began to get a picture of what he was like a picture not very different from most of the boys and girls who come here we look upon drug addiction as a symptom of emotional disorder plus an accident the accident being exposure to drugs usually students in the neighborhood you used to tell me mom i know what i'm doing don't tell me what to do that's the answer he gave me i didn't know my his friend and i think that was he's down for those boys they used to go in pool room they shoot dice that i know and that's how it started on marijuana underneath the addiction there is always a troubled person whose world is one of hopelessness futility and rejection a world from which narcotics offers the illusion of escape and in which the companionship of other addicts provides an illusion of belonging this is what makes the treatment of the drug addict such a difficult long-term process these were some of the things that fred and i explored during our talks together and by the time he left riverside i felt he had made considerable progress i would have liked him to stay longer but he was so insistent about getting back on the outside that despite some misgivings we let him go the first day came out he started using drugs again only the first night after four months he never touched the stuff anymore he was happy i've seen progress and i was happy myself the way he's been going along isis thank god he finished his drugs for freddie to stop using drugs on his own after having started again was a tremendous triumph and he continued trying to make an adjustment after the first discouraging month he managed to get himself a job meanwhile he saw me regularly at our aftercare clinic and he also began attending meetings of a group called narcotics anonymous good evening everyone this is the regular wednesday night open meeting for narcotics anonymous patterned after alcoholics anonymous this is one of the very few places where the addict is accepted and understood and where he can gain encouragement from the examples and experiences of other addicts who are trying to stay off drugs now i'd like to turn the meeting over to our chairman well i got another 24 hours under my belt and i'm clean for a change and i'm sober and i got a job and i'm no big deal and i didn't do this alone i couldn't do it alone today because of this program and because of some very fine decent warm people who gave me friendship and a hand nothing material necessarily i'm here tonight and i am clean this is important and this is what i'm grateful for right here and now jack how about you my fellow members i just like to say that i've been using narcotics for 20 years it's taken me quite a good bit of that time to cut down my senses and come to a realization i've been now that can quite a few times i still couldn't find out what was driving me back now i think that through the help that i've found for the psychiatrist at lexington through opinions and the experiences of other people in this group that have come to learn how to use my brain i've come to awareness of the fact that i can't ram a head through a stone wall i think that's the only way that anybody can help themselves and get off of drugs they've got to come to that realization they've got to make a decision for themselves we give up our whole life our friends everything these few days or weeks that i've been orphans it's a strange wonderful thing to wake up in the morning and smell the air like it really is take a walk in the street just dig people the way they should be seen enough for a fog or a haze or a mist that's the way it is with stuff it's like reflections it's not real comes a point in the attic's life after the pressures and so forth forces into he stops and thinks if he can think and if he can think he'll come up with well this is getting dark searching for what part finding the way out [Music] for one addict by himself to just come up and find that way out it's almost an impossibility this group addicts anonymous is one way out as i see it i got to know freddie pretty well through the narcotics anonymous program he didn't dig the program at first i don't think a lot of us did either but he kept coming around and this way he stayed clean he stayed clean for about four months as i know then one day freddy disappeared we checked with his mother and found out he'd been back on junk again he got busted arrested and this time he got six months the day before they sent him away to prison i visited fred at the detention house the old raymond street jail in brooklyn a place i know quite well i was curious about what had gone wrong and also wanted to let him know that we needed him and that we loved him and that we were behind him all the way hi freddie hello mike i think you bought yourself some time well it's not the first time but i hope it'll be the last what did you get six months how do you feel about it well it's not the first time i've been away it's getting so it's routine now but i hope to break this routine i thought i was doing pretty good i was off drugs for about three months and i was trying to take things at a slow pace just like my doctor told me and not to rush things and i thought i was doing pretty good but i slipped you know what i slipped you slipped yes and uh i guess i wanted to slip i felt i i was working anyway and uh i didn't think you know i didn't want no more of it i i didn't feel that you know i wanted to get up in the mornings anymore and go to a job where it wasn't paying much and the everyday struggle getting tired of the job getting up in the morning you know tired of that everyday routine it was a real drag mm-hmm but everybody's doing it but i can't do it i don't know we hear this all the time everybody else is doing everybody's got problems but they ain't like us no eyes are bigger and better yeah and we're going to enjoy i know what you mean but you really don't enjoy them no you don't know remember how hard you tried to get the job you know i remember the first month i left the hospital i couldn't get no kind of work and i felt bad i was even talking about committing suicide too you've done this before yes i want to commit suicide that's that's me you see i'm a pessimist i see nothing in front of me nothing clear everything is blocked everything is cloudy i don't feel that that anything will turn out right for me and uh i don't know look you you bought your [ __ ] you're gonna serve it how do you feel i really believe i've had it i don't like this life no more than anybody else don't going in going out going in coming out it's not for me it isn't it isn't the bid that's bothering me it's not the little amount of time that i have to do it's that i'm doing it but something that i that i don't want to be in other words using drugs i don't want to use drugs no more than any other addict wants to use drugs they don't want to use drugs did you like it in the beginning it's [Music] well i i did like it why i guess it made me feel comfortable i always felt inadequate towards myself towards other people that i it was hard for me to socialize get friends i don't think we don't want to use drugs but he knows what it is he's had that first shot and that compulsion is hard to keep away from you don't want to be an addict and a jockey that's right you had it i've heard it how about trying it our way it's exactly what i'm going to do you know we're going to serve this with you i need somebody thinking damn it i need somebody it's too big for me to handle it's too big for anybody for any addict to him just like i said they can't do it alone no he needs somebody a drug addict drug addict is not strong enough he needs somebody to hang on to somebody something someone to hang on to either it's a hobby a job a girl a wife he needs somebody to hang on to because he cannot do it alone that's the only way you can do it and just like i said i really i really didn't try hard enough but this time i'm i'm going to try and you're not worried about the bit no and the monkey's going to still be there when you come waiting at the door that's what i'm worried about you're worried about oh yes you know you don't have to you know trust us trust us so we can trust ourselves to give proof so that's fred's story at least up to this point of his life i don't know whether you'd call it a success story but the way i look at it it's not a story of failure either even though he is on his way to prison i guess it depends on which you consider more important the fact that he went back on drugs again or the fact that he stayed clean for four months to me the four months is more important in the world outside most junkies don't get me help at all fred got a little and if his means anything it means that help does make a difference and prison is neither the answer nor the end next week at this time we will examine some of the broader aspects of the problem of drug addiction as we continue with the addicted part two criminal or patient this is walter cronkite reporting for the 20th century you