By Danielle Strenke

Earnest (not his real name) grew up an average kid in an average family in Chisago County. He played sports like hockey, soccer, football and baseball. He hung out with friends as a young teen. He went through the DARE program at school to learn about the dangers of doing drugs.

Yet the program just made Earnest more curious about drugs. Not soon after, he was invited over to a friendís house to hang out. The friendís brother offered him something he called "wacky tobbacy."
It all started with marijuana.

When Earnest smoked the pot, he thought it was cool. It started Earnest down a road of several years of drug abuse that included arrests and coming close to death.

Earnest said after his first experience with marijuana, he didnít think much about it. But then he developed a regular routine of visiting his friend to get high about once a month. Soon, the seventh-grader was getting high with his friend three or four times a week.

Because Earnestís parents trusted him and knew the friendís family, they werenít concerned with the hours he spent with his friend.

The feelings of getting high werenít even the best part for Earnest. He had a free pass to experiment with marijuana. "No one asked me to pay for it," he said. "I was a little kid ñ no one expected me to pay."

Earnest continued getting high after school and on weekends and started struggling in school. Already taking medication for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) Earnest noticed he was struggling even more in school.

"I was an average student in sixth grade," he said. "Iíd always wait and do things the last minute. The drugs didnít help much. In seventh grade I started failing."

LIES

Still, Earnest was able to keep the marijuana a secret from his parents. The summer between seventh and eighth grades, he took the deception a step further.

ìI told my mom I was riding bike to sign up for football,î he said. Earnest did go to football sign ups, but by then he needed the drugs to get him through. "I had to get high first," he said.

When he started eighth grade, Earnest brought some pot to school, trying to sell it for his friend. He was caught and kicked out for one week.

When Earnestís parents found out about the expulsion, they were shocked and upset. "I was immediately defensive," Earnest said. "I said it was someone elseís and they believed me when I said it was a one time thing."

His penalty outside of school was to attend a drug abuse program through the Youth Service Bureau and complete community service. "That didnít turn my life around," Earnest said.

He did stop using marijuana for a few months during his eighth grade year, but the stigma of being a drug user continued to cause problems for Earnest.

"Once you get labeled itís hard to get away from it," he said. "Any bad situation that came up in school theyíd automatically look at me." He said it became easier to simply take the blame.

Earnest didnít think the school officials cared about him. He started skipping school to avoid other students who were pressuring him to help them score some pot.

His mom noticed the change in his attitude toward school. "It was hard to get him to go to school," she said. "When the teachers stopped believing in him, he stopped believing."

By now most of his friends were drug users. Earnest started offering pot to the few sober friends that he had left.

INCREASED USE

Earnestís addiction was stronger than ever. His appearance also changed from a preppy-looking teen to wearing his hair long and dressing in black band T-shirts.

Also in eighth grade, Earnest dabbled in drinking alcohol that he had stolen from his parentís house, but the experiments with alcohol were short-lived when he experienced allergic reactions to it. "I've only drank a few times in my life," Earnest said.

The pot use continued to increase and eventually he was getting high every day. Earnest and his friends had a meeting place near his home they called "the shack" where they would get high. His dad found him there one day and called the police.

"I was really high when he found us," Earnest said. Earnest's dad asked the sheriff's deputy to take Earnest to jail for at least 24 hours, hoping it would scare him enough to stop using.

Because Earnest was only 13 years old at the time, the only option for the deputy was to confiscate the drugs. Earnest was sent back to the same community program that he had been through before.

"It's bull," Earnest said of the program. "It doesnít work because itís the same people teaching the same classes."

Despite getting caught, Earnest didnít slow down his drug use. By this time, the 14-year-old wasnít getting the drugs for free. Things started disappearing from his parentís home. Earnest was taking the items and selling them at pawn shops to pay for the marijuana.

He was smoking five to six joints (marijuana) a day by the time he started ninth grade and was on a continuous high. Another dealer asked Earnest to try selling again, this time to make his own money.

"Since I was using so much he said it would be better if I just sold it myself," Earnest said. "He fronted me the first bag."

Earnestís supplier gave him the first 1/4 pound of marijuana to try and sell, with a street value of $350 to $400. Earnest learned how to bring just a small amount with him to school to sell ñ 1/2 ounce at a time.
"I knew if I had more I could get busted for a felony," he said. It was easy to find customers at school to buy the pot, he said.

He continued getting high several times a day, including before school. Then Earnest met another kid at a party who passed him a bubble (meth) pipe.

"I just took it and smoked it ñ I didn't know what it was and I didn't care," Earnest said. It was the first time Earnest had tried methamphetamines and he was hooked. "It made me jittery ñ I felt it right away."

He started using meth on a regular basis. The erratic changes in his behavior were sometimes obvious, both at home and at school, where his grades continued to decline during his freshman year.

"I was good at hiding it though," Earnest said. "Certain people knew but they just didn't question it. They didnít want to get involved."

The meth made Earnest stay awake for days at a time. "My parents noticed that I would stay up all night," he said. "I just told them I couldn't sleep."

By now the only friends Earnest had were other drug users. One day, a friend asked Earnest if he wanted a new way to get high. "We did Freon from the air conditioner," Earnest said.

Earnest had no idea what the chemical could do to his body, but his friend did. "He knew it could cause death," Earnest said.

After inhaling the chemical, Earnest felt an instant high. Then his body went numb. "I fell face down on the floor and couldnít move. That was scary," Earnest said. He recovered and was able to keep it from his parents. Earnest also decided to never touch the chemical again, but still couldn't see that pot and meth could potentially have just as serious effects on his body and behavior.

He continued to struggle in school and his behavior was a concern to school officials. Earnest was getting high each morning near school grounds and again after school as a freshman.

He reeked of pot and everyone knew he was using it. "All my teachers knew," he said. "Every time they checked, the pot was gone so they couldn't do anything about it."

He was again expelled, however and another round of anti-drug classes followed.

When Earnest came back to school his freshman year he was sober until attending a concert one day, he found comfort in getting high before the performance.

After a great show, Earnest said a kid approached him to buy some pot. "I had decided that once that pot was gone I would be done selling," he said.

Earnest was caught doing the drug deal in the bathroom, handcuffed and taken to jail.

He spent the night in jail and did some meth the next morning so he could make it through a day of work at his part time job on only three hours of sleep. "I was like a zombie," he said. "I had no guilt or remorse for what I was doing."

Earnest continued smoking every couple of hours to keep the high, but he wasn't getting the same high as before.

"I felt like I wasn't going to get any higher so I decided to try a new drug," Earnest said. He went to his first source and asked for some Opium. "I had heard it was good. I tried it and liked it."

TRYING TO STAY CLEAN

He now knows that the drugs and partying he was doing could have led to a deadly ending, but at the time Earnest didnít care.

During his freshman year, his mom found out he was getting high at a party and came to pick him up. The next day, Earnest found out that a friend at the party almost died from an overdose of drugs and alcohol.

The friend was 12 years old. It wasn't a sudden epiphany that led Earnest to finally seek help from his family during his freshman year. "He told me he needed help because he still liked doing drugs," his mom said.

Earnest checked himself into Fairview Recovery Services in Forest Lake and started to deal with his addiction for the first time. His two month treatment was early last year. The treatment program included counseling sessions and being paired with a sponsor.

Earnest said he relapsed twice during that time, including a relapse during his last week of treatment.
The final relapse was a turning point for Earnest. "It was the first time I felt remorse," he said. "I called my sponsor, I called everybody. I felt bad." Earnestís mom said his treatment counselors said a relapse was something Earnest almost had to go through to stay clean.

His days were incredibly lonely during his time in treatment, Earnest said. "I missed my old friends," he said.

Earnest tried to spend time with his old friends, but his treatment counselors told him he needed to separate himself from that lifestyle.

"They knew my old friends were still using, so they thought I should branch out," he said.

It was difficult to leave those friends behind, Earnest said.

Earnest said he still runs into his old friends, but is careful to not fall in with that crowd.

"I'll say hi to be friendly, but I donít want to hang out with them," he said.

Earnest will reach the milestone of one year of sobriety this month. He has made it through the first year in part by attending Alcoholics Anonymous and Aftercare meetings regularly, as well as going to church.

He still has the same part-time job but his circle of friends has completely changed. He hangs out with sober friends and is a member of a band with other drug-free teens.

He has tough days and said school is still a struggle.

As a sophomore, it is the first year since seventh grade that Earnest has been clean. He said the drugs helped him stay awake in class, and that is now the biggest challenge he has at school.

Earnest feels a sense of accomplishment to hear from his teachers that they know he has been putting in the extra effort in school. "I'm passing all my classes," he said.

He has not been able to kick the cigarette habit, but is trying to quit.

Earnest looks back on three years of drug abuse and is noticeably disturbed by the realization that he deeply affected his family and could have ended up in jail ñ or worse.

The drugs are something that he thinks about every day. It is difficult for him to sit still and concentrate for any length of time. "I love being sober but I have my days," Earnest said.

Earnest tries to cope with it through Aftercare and AA classes. He went through many counseling sessions when he was younger, but Earnest said that's not what he needs now. "I have a best friend for support now, who has been through the same things I have," he said.

He talks with nervous laughter and is unable to make eye contact with his family members when talking about the different person he was when he was doing drugs.

His family is still hearing about some of the dangerous things he did during that time and coming to grips with how deep Earnestís addiction really was.

Emotionally, Earnest feels the effects of his drug addiction every day.

"I feel like a part of me didnít get developed as a person when I was on drugs," he said. "Now I have to deal with those emotions and find comfort in talking about it."

He also knows that he should have asked for help a lot earlier. "I never learned how to cope with my problems," he said. "All these problems and I didnít know how to deal with it. I also didnít want help."

As he talks about his addiction and the road to sobriety, Earnestís emotions rise to the surface and he has difficulty talking without getting choked up.

"I cried for the first time in a long time recently," he said. "I started crying and couldnít stop. I told my mom I was sorry for making it hard to love me."

As Earnest tried to work through his feelings that day, he started banging his head against a wall. "I told my mom I'd give anything for a joint right now," Earnest said.

Earnest knows there will still be struggles, but is now willing to face them rather than escape by getting high.

"I choose every day not to do drugs," he said. "I don't want to live that lifestyle anymore, but I do have to work on better ways of dealing with my anger."

Sometimes the anger and other emotions are just too much to deal with, even a year after his last drug use.
Earnest said he has cut himself several times to get through the pain. Self-mutilation is common among former addicts. "I get so stressed out," he said. "Instead of turning to drugs the cutting takes away the feelings and I can concentrate on the pain." Earnest said he also feels incredibly selfish and the self-mutilation is a way of punishing himself for what he has done to himself and his family.

Earnest works at regaining his parent's trust every day as well. He volunteered to have a urinalysis once a week, and asked his parents to drive him to the county jail to have it done there.

Earnest now looks forward to getting his driverís license. Once he passes his driverís test, Earnest is hoping to buy his own car. "Iíve been saving up," he said. "I don't have to buy drugs so thereís nothing else to do with my money."

Next week, Earnestís family talks about the effects that his addiction has had on the entire family.

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