FYI: According to Lt. Steve Bolts of the Sheriff-Coroner’s office, in addition to three heroin overdoses this year, there have been another 12 ODs in the county from other substances, including methamphetamines, prescription drugs, mixed drugs, and alcohol.

Need Help?
Drug & Alcohol Services of San Luis Obispo County
2945 McMillan Ave., San Luis Obispo  781-4275
1106 Grand Ave., Arroyo Grande  473-7080
3556 El Camino Real, Atascadero  461-6080
1920 Main St., Cambria  927-1654
Narcotics Anonymous  549-7730

Want to help?
Matthew Nunes, who was Sarah Mattson's fiance, is creating a website to show Sarah's artwork. He hopes to have prints of her work available for sale, and to set up a fund in Sarah's memory to help people with heroin addiction. For more information, e-mail Nunes at [email protected].

Heroin Took Sarah Mattson's Life–But Society Might Have Been Able to Save Her

Junk is a cellular equation that teaches the user facts of general validity. I have learned a great deal from using junk: I have seen life measured out in eyedroppers of morphine solution. I experienced the agonizing deprivation of junk sickness, and the pleasure of relief when junk-thirsty cells drank from the needle.… I have learned the cellular stoicism that junk teaches the user. I have seen a cell full of sick junkies silent and immobile in a separate misery. They knew the pointlessness of complaining or moving. They knew that basically no one can help anyone else. There is no key, no secret someone else has that he can give you. I have learned the junk equation. Junk is not…a means to increased enjoyment of life. Junk is not a kick. It is a way of life.

–William S. Burroughs, Junkie/Author

BY GLEN STARKEY

Sarah Mattson is dead, one of three people in SLO County to have died of a heroin overdose this year. The pretty 28-year-old, who had struggled with addiction off and on for a decade, scored some junk at an acquaintance's house on her way to a barbecue with friends visiting from Germany, shot up in his bathroom, and promptly collapsed.

Instead of immediately calling the paramedics, Timothy Prince, the man who supplied Mattson with the heroin, tried to revive her by putting ice on her, slapping her, and throwing her in the shower. Despite the protests of Mattson's companions, Prince, who was also high, continued to refuse to summon help, forcing Mattson's friends to run to a neighbor's house to call 911. By the time help arrived more than half an hour had passed.

Mattson was rushed to the hospital with a low heart rate and shallow breathing. She died shortly thereafter. If an ambulance had been summoned immediately, Mattson would probably have survived. If they’re administered soon enough, drugs such as naloxone and naltrexone can almost instantly reverse the effects of a heroin overdose.

Providing heroin is considered an "inherently dangerous" offense under the law. If doing so results in another’s death, the heroin supplier can be charged with murder. Because Prince had no serious criminal history–he'd had two public drunkenness charges–he was able to plea-bargain a second degree murder charge down to involuntary manslaughter, agreeing to serve four years in prison.

The story is all too common, and in America's current anti-drug climate, it's easy for most of us to dismiss this event as unimportant–just another dead junkie and one more dealer off the street. But it is this very attitude of dehumanization of drug users that might have kept Sarah Mattson from getting the help she needed to overcome her addiction.

A Promising Future

Sarah Mattson didn't have a horrible life. As a young girl, she was an honor student who participated in Gifted and Talented Education (GATE) programs. In sixth grade she won an "All Around Citizenship Award" and a scholarship from the Sons of the American Revolution.

She had two loving parents, both of them highly creative, who encouraged Sarah to pursue her artwork. Her four brothers adored her. She also had dozens of friends, a fiance, and plans to go to New York City to promote her art career. Her life was looking up. Unfortunately, the allure of heroin was stronger than her desire to stay clean.

"She was trying to get help at County Mental Health," said her father, Jan Mattson. "They had her on antidepressants, and I saw Narcotics Anonymous meetings marked on her calendar. She had just sold a painting for $500 and immediately used the money to pay off one of her credit cards. We found coupons in her purse for the grocery store–the little mundane things of life. She was trying to be responsible and take care of herself."

"I don't know what went wrong," said Sarah's mother, Arlene "Artie" Mattson. "I have other children [who don’t use heroin]. I don't know why she did it in the first place, maybe it was self-medication, the price she was paying for being a really sensitive person."

The Mattsons, former SLO residents who now live in San Diego, paint a picture of a sweet young girl who, as she grew older, found it more and more difficult to make the right choices.

"She was very bright and very much of a pleaser," said Jan. "When she was young she was a very good student, but in junior high she started making friends who sort of undermined that desire to be an achiever and good student. If your friends aren't that way, you're not motivated. I think it became uncool to be a good student.

"And we’re religious people, so since we had a fairly structured system, that may have given her something to rebel against; she may have felt restrained by our Christian beliefs."

By no means, however, were the Mattsons repressive. Both Artie–so nicknamed because of her proclivity towards art–and Jan are progressive thinkers.

"My wife and I met at art school," said Jan. "My parents are both artists, so I came from a bohemian background. I'm 57, so I know about the counterculture and alternative sensibilities. Sarah appreciated I understood those things, understood complex feelings and a questioning attitude toward life, not taking things at face value. In our family beliefs were arrived at through intellectual reasoning. I realized if she was going to accept our beliefs, she would have to make that decision on her own. When you have a child you do the best you can. I don't think we were heavy-handed."

But bits of doubt creep in for the Mattsons, a common reaction in the loved ones of OD victims.

"When Sarah was very young, 3 or 4, when older people saw how cute she was they’d say ‘hi,’ but she would just look at them. She was shy and didn't know how to respond," recalled Jan. "She was bright, already reading at 4 years old. I would tell her as tenderly as I could, all you would have to do is just say ‘hi’ back. You'd make [people] so happy. Sarah always remembered that. I thought I was a wise old man, but later I wondered: Maybe I put a burden on her to always be cheerful. It changed her as a person. Once she did it, she never went back. To me it was significant that we both remembered that.

"She really constructed her own persona," continued Jan. "Her personality and her wit and her bubbliness were a product of hard work on her part to overcome a basic shyness, so she was quite a work of art herself. She made herself the person she was, a brightly colored bird that would cheer up everybody."

People who knew Sarah recall that same special personality.

"When she walked into a room she sparkled," said a friend of 11 years, Heidi Kuczmierczyk. "Everybody loved her. The best way to describe Sarah is infectious. She made everyone feel special, gave them self-worth. She was so full of talent–awesome. And she was one of the best friends I ever had. I’ll never have another friend like Sarah."

A Close Family

Many addicts become estranged from their families for one reason or another: embarrassment about their addiction, their antisocial behavior, their parents’ cutting off ties in the hope that their child will choose them over drugs. But Sarah and her parents continued to maintain a closeness.

"Sarah, in this family, being the only girl, was kind of a centerpiece," said Jan. "She was very thoughtful. No matter how many problems she was having with own personal life, she always made time for family and her brothers. She never became jaded as far as relationships with family [went], she never became hardened.

"And she didn’t have a selfish persona…apparently just living in this world was difficult for her. Once you open the door to the kind of relief or solace that something like heroin can give, that's a dangerous place for someone with those kinds of [artistic] sensibilities. She pursued a structured lifestyle, went to Allan Hancock and Cuesta. She did a substantial amount as a student, which was difficult because she was always waitressing one or two restaurant jobs; she was even a bartender."

The Mattsons were always impressed with Sarah's self-sufficiency and determination. They had helped Sarah with money in the past, but with four other children to support they could only do so much.

"She was pretty independent, kind of tough in a way as far as making her own way," said Jan. "We own our house and we helped her any way we could. I guess we're like most people, a couple paychecks from hitting the rocks."

By all accounts, Sarah was a well-loved person. So why did she join the estimated million and a half other heroin users in the United States?

"Maybe she had a void in her life, some empty spot that no one could fix or fill no matter how hard they tried," said Heidi. "I tried to help her as much as I could. She knew I loved her and that her fiance, Matthew, loved her. It wasn’t like, ‘Oh, I’m so unwanted and nobody loves me.’ She knew she was loved.

"I think she just craved it," continued Heidi. "Some of her best art was done when she was on heroin. Maybe she thought she needed it to be creative."

Sandy Cattaneo, mother of Matthew, Sarah’s fiance, said, "I would watch her walk across the yard, and I felt she was one of those people who walked lightly on the earth. She was such a little lady. Then you’d see her art and the way she dressed and you'd think, ‘Where is this coming from?’"

"She was a very beautiful person with a lot of complex facets to her, very artistic," said her mother. "I don't know, it's hard to express.…"

Her high school English teacher, Daniel Kirk, was Sarah's advisor at Pacific Beach High School, the continuation school. He remembered a promising writer who seemed troubled, but no more so than other students at the school.

"She was a talented writer, but fairly quiet," recalled Kirk. "And it seemed to be her black period–I don't mean bleak, just her mode of dress. She was on her own a lot, a free thinker who loved to think. She was involved emotionally and spiritually in what the heck the world was doing or not doing. She had a social conscience that certainly surpassed most of her fellow students, then and now."

Kirk knew of Sarah's drug use, but didn't think it was any worse than other students attending the school.

"I was pretty aware of her drug use at the time and that was partly what kept her pretty quiet and a bit on her own, but she didn't seem to be more into drugs than any other student here," said Kirk. "Drug use is still rampant."

An Epic Romance

Sarah’s fiance, Matthew Nunes, a musician who was in Seattle to record with a band when Sarah died, recalled the moment in 1992 when he first told Sarah he loved her.

"When I first realized I loved Sarah, I didn't want to just tell her; it was so much bigger than that; I wanted it to be special. I wrote a poem for her and memorized it. We drove up to Perfumo Canyon to look at the stars. It was so beautiful; we were seeing shooting stars and making wishes. I looked over at her and recited the poem: Miracles dance and whisper as night's purple fingers gently caress the day. Her passion burns the sun, and the moon is surely jealous of her beauty, soaring my soul; might it never touch the earth again."

Matthew and Sarah moved in together in a small apartment on Morro Street in San Luis Obispo, and for four years everything was perfect.

"Then I started getting into drugs again, mostly cocaine," said Matthew, who at that point hadn’t yet tried heroin. "Sarah wasn’t happy about that. She remained clean. I was being a jerk and not realizing what I had right there in front of me. Eventually we broke up, moved out, and got our own places."

This would be the first of several times when drug use got between Sarah and Matthew’s romance. When the couple started dating again, Matthew was living with some drug dealers. At the time, he had a band called Curiosity Killed the Cop. Matthew thinks his band’s name, coupled with the comings and goings of drug users at his house, brought police surveillance and the eventual bust that sent him and his roommates to jail.

Sarah remained true to Matthew while he served his sentence, but right before he got out she broke up with him.

"I was crushed," he said. "She started seeing another guy. I just had to be cool about it. I didn’t freak, I respected her and tried to be her friend. She went to Europe, and when she got back we got together again. But almost immediately I got popped for dealing again. They wanted to give me nine years, but I ended up getting just one year."

Sarah began a ritual of visiting Matthew in jail.

"She would come visit me with her blue hair," recalled Matthew, grinning wistfully. "She was so cute. But when I saw her–she was so skinny! I said, ‘Oh man, you’re doing drugs.’ She didn’t even deny it. We stayed in contact the whole time I was in, but then right before I got out she moved to Seattle. I knew it wasn’t a good place for her to be–there’s so much junk there–but off she went."

Matthew pretty much lost touch with Sarah. His own depression sent him right back into the drug life. This time, for the first time, he started doing heroin.

"I wasn’t out one week and I was high. It was like Sarah dumped me. I didn’t care about anything anymore. But my parole officer knew [I was using] and he said right up front, ‘You’ve got to make a decision about your life right now. Either you stay clean or I’m sending you back.’ That was heavy. He came at me straight, and that was cool. It seems weird to say, but he really helped me out."

Matthew got clean and stayed clean. And when he finally received a letter from Sarah he "freaked."

"It was really touching. She said she needed to get her head on straight, and she wrote me a poem. It was really beautiful. That’s what got us back together."

Sarah's poem was called "The Curtain."

Ignorance is for ignoring / Blissful and yet dull / Time is lacking shelf life / It burns quick like a velvet curtain / Hiding glass window pain / Driving through it / Sounds of shattering screeching / Crunching metal car crash./ Someone rinse the blood off / And delicately remove the stones / Get up again / And walk…/ Feel like a Cyclops / No, just one giant eyeball / Throbbing./ But I can see the skyline / I soar above the city / It is red./ Up here there is no postman / He can't come knocking on my heart / With his bag bursting of letters / That are filled with love and / Debts and pained atrocities / The girl needs to sleep / Just for awhile./ Turn out the lights and make / It calm./ Try to pretend I can't hear / The cries of a broken heart / And the mailman at my door.

It was now October 1999, and Matthew and Sarah continued to nurture their relationship at long distance, he in SLO and she in Seattle. With permission from his parole officer, Matthew left the state and went to Seattle to spend New Year’s Eve with Sarah.

"We spent the week together. I got her an engagement ring. I was scared that she was going to say no, but she didn’t, she accepted. But that night–and this is where it’s fucked up again–we went out and I realized she was high, not just drunk, but high on heroin. I accused her, but she denied it. Later I found a syringe in the bathroom. I couldn’t believe it. I said, ‘Let me see your arms.’ She was covered [with tracks].

"I remember her crying and saying, ‘You probably don’t want to marry me now.' But I told her, ‘All I want to do is marry you and take care of you.’ But I had to go back [to SLO], I was on parole. She was going to move back down, and when I was finished with my parole we were going to move to LA.

During the time she remained in Seattle I thought she was clean, but when she finally got [back to San Luis Obispo] she was a waif, so skinny, it was bad; it was obvious she'd been using. But she kicked right here in my mom’s house. I was there and it was horrible. But we nurtured her, brought her back to health. She got better."

From then until the time of her death, however, Sarah continued to struggle with her addiction. She would remain clean for a while, then use behind Matthew’s back.

"She kicked drugs, but was then just kind of chipping [using heroin occasionally]. She got to where she was depressed. I thought when she got down here it was going to be walks on the beach, but it was TV and laying around. She was lying [about her drug use], you know? I went insane. I didn’t know what to do. I wasn’t going to break up with her because she was using drugs and just throw her out there, that would have been lame."

Sarah did eventually come out of her depression and things got better for awhile.

"She was painting a lot and I was writing music. We shared a little [art] studio together at my mom’s house and we’d spend our days there working. It was rad."

Then Matthew got a recording job in Seattle.

"I thought, ‘Well, should I just take her with me?’ I was worried that if she went back to Seattle it would be too tempting for her. She decided to stay with my mom [in SLO], and the plan was for us to meet up in LA in a month or two when I was finished recording. Plus she was selling her paintings, just kicking ass on her art, making money. Before I left she decided she wanted to go to New York [to promote her art]. I had hoped to go to New York with her someday, but I was like, ‘Yeah! Go for it.’ We were close like that, proud of each other’s [aspirations]."

After a barbecue and bon voyage party for Matthew on Sept. 10, he got in his car and drove to Seattle–22 hours straight. By the time he arrived, Sarah was dead.

"She and Matthew had such a unique thing," said Sarah’s father. "It was so tragic that Matthew got in trouble. They went through a lot together. If it could have ended with a happy ending, it would have been quite an epic romance."

Falling Through the Cracks

Artie’s main concern is that the system may have failed her daughter.

"She came to our house [in San Diego] two weeks before this happened and hinted at a stomach problem," recalled Artie. "‘Mommy,’ she said, ‘I want to see your doctor because I’m not getting any help up there [in San Luis Obispo].'

"If a person is in a weakened state and can't fight for themselves, they can get shuffled along and overlooked," she said. "I’m not sure that happened, but it seemed like it may have."

Even though Sarah was obviously seeking help, she wasn’t able to admit her problem to her parents.

"At that point she wasn't ready to say ‘I'm a heroin addict and I need some help,’" said Artie. "I think she didn't want to hurt us. This was a safe haven for her here with her family."

"She didn’t want to bring problems to the family," added Jan. "That's one thing that's hard for Artie and me. We wish she could have expressed her problems to us a little more."

What's so confounding for those who loved Sarah was her descent back into drugs. When she and Matthew began their romance in 1992, she was clean, and she remained clean until the late '90s.

"She was clean from late 1991, and when she met Matthew in 1992 she was clean, and that probably lasted six or seven years, but we can't quite pinpoint it," said Jan.

After helping her clean up the last time, Matthew's mother Sandy, also couldn't be sure when Sarah started her last run of drug use.

"That's what we don't know. I don't know how we could ever know. This is what upsets me: She had gone down south to see her two friends, and she came back, evidently, and checked herself into General Hospital on a crisis basis. She didn't tell us that. When she came back the next day, she told Matthew she had been given these pills. We didn't know if she was telling the truth, but when we went through her things later we found pill bottles: antidepressants; sleeping pills; and stomach pills. And she was real zonked out for a few days. But then she went into this other thing. The [anti] depression pills seemed to perk her up. Then she became really creative. Her painting block was gone. She started selling paintings and planned to go to New York.

"What upset me was I couldn't understand why the prescribing doctor or somebody at the hospital didn’t follow up on this and tell us," continued Sandy. "We could have been more supportive, could have been more tender. I feel we should have helped her more. She'd gotten really needy of me the last few weeks before she died. Usually she was very private, but those last couple weeks she felt she needed to tell me things. I think what she really wanted was a normal life, but she was caught up in having that artistic nature and sort of rebelling, and I think you can kind of see that in her artwork. There's an anger there, and also sarcasm. That’s not a side I ever saw in her personally."

What bothers Sarah's mother the most is the media coverage of her daughter’s case.

"I wondered why nobody has brought out the fact in the media that Tim Prince didn't call 911 and prevented others from doing it," said Artie. "To me, that's the real murder. If a person wants drugs, they’ll find them. I asked [Deputy District Attorney Dave Pomeroy] about this, and he said that wasn't the issue. The precedent had been set: a person who gives illegal drugs to someone and they die makes him guilty enough. But to us, she didn't have to die."

"We're torn up; this is a huge loss," said Sandy. "It wasn't like, ‘Oh, this person is better off.’ No. This cannot have happened! I think she would have been all right. I really believe that. She just wasn't a junkie."

A question remains in the minds of all concerned: Could Prince have prevented Sarah’s death?

According to Pomeroy, because Prince was also on heroin, he wasn't exercising the best judgment, but Sandy doesn't buy that excuse.

"I know people who use heroin," she said. "You either have a conscience or you don't. He could have called, but he was too busy protecting himself."

At Sarah's family's request, Pomeroy had an investigator take a detailed statement from a German tourist who’d witnessed Sarah’s collapse, and who said that Prince didn't call an ambulance. The statement was used during Prince's sentencing.

In any case, the Mattsons think the system worked.

"Pomeroy may not have subtle or sophisticated insights into the [drug] issue, but we still view him as a good guy because he took it seriously," said Jan, who continues to search for his own answers to the national drug plague. "This society has so many dichotomies. It’s really hard. It's almost like it creates a situation leading people to resort to drugs, then it drives them out when they do [use them]. I never really found myself getting furious at [the countries that produce drugs]; I never really saw the substance itself as the bottom-line problem. I haven't worked through it entirely in my mind, but I can say this society is not doing a good job by just making it criminal."

Sarah's family, and Matthew and his mother, all hope telling Sarah's story will have some positive impact.

Said Sandy: "If it could make one person think, make them think about what people are going through instead of making heroin users think they belong in the bushes somewhere.… It's just another drug, but heroin is looked upon as the worst. It's just another escape, no different than alcohol, except that it’s illegal. Why are people in pain? Taking heroin is not what you do because you feel good. I think the system lacks."

There is Hope

Junkies–is there a more vilified, less tolerated group of people in the country? By most accounts they're the scourge of the nation, a useless subset of citizens who serve only to tax the system–both the penal system and such social services as welfare and health care. But with a little help and open-mindedness, many drug addicts can and have successfully re-entered society.

Jake (not his real name), a 41-year-old with slicked-back bleached blond hair and tattoo-covered forearms, first tried heroin at age 14. He has lived in SLO County for 16 years and, thanks to help from Narcotics Anonymous, has been clean for the past four. Although he doesn’t blame anyone but himself for his habit, he does believes the stigma attached to heroin use makes it harder for users to come clean.

"I was doing it for a lot of years because I liked it. I was a very serious kid, always thinking. Heroin stilled the voices in my head," said Jake. "But I wasn't a bad person–people need to know about this. Some are open enough to understanding, but others think if you're a drug user, you're shit."

Like a lot of heroin addicts, Jake is of above-average intelligence, though he never felt that he fit in the world.

"When I first tried it, I realized I found something I really, really liked. I did it and it made everything OK; the world wasn’t a shitty place anymore.

"But you know, I didn’t have a bad life. I had good parents, we lived in a nice house. But we moved a lot so I never stayed anywhere for long and never made those lifelong friendships. I always felt like an outsider. When I did heroin I felt like I was part of something. Everything made sense. When I was using I felt like I could be president; I could talk a good line of shit."

After Jake’s habit grew to $200 a day and he became so hooked he couldn’t do enough of the drug to get high anymore, he went looking for a way to quit. He tried methadone, rehab, counseling. Sometimes he would kick for as long as three years, but he always went back to it.

"If I could have put just 25 percent of the energy I spent at scoring towards something productive…" said Jake, his voice trailing off. "All I can say is, doing heroin was the hardest job I ever had. Using isn’t a 9-to-5 job, it’s 24 hours a day. I had to work all day at being loaded and not being sick."

The real tragedy in Jake’s addiction is that his habit drew his girlfriend into the life.

Becky, a pretty blonde with sparkling green eyes, found Jake adorable from the start.

"I knew he was an alcoholic, but he was so cute, with that little puppy-dog face, and I thought I was going to fix him," remembered Becky, who was then a Cal Poly student who had kicked a short-lived cocaine habit. "I drank on the weekends with the other students, but that was about it."

They went out for three years. Although Jake drank a lot and partied with other drugs, he was in one of his heroin-free periods until one day he came home high. Becky immediately recognized the symptoms.

"My brother is a heroin addict and has been since he was 13," said Becky. "I told Jake I wanted to try it. I wanted to know why my brother threw his life away and why Jake went back to it again. I was 31 years old and I tried it for the first time, mainlined it. The very second I did it was like, 'Oh my God, I'm in trouble now,' because I loved it, just loved it! Twenty minutes later I wanted to do it again. I don't know how anybody can do it and not become addicted. That rush! Jeez, I think its better than an orgasm."

It didn't take long for Becky to become hooked.

Jake recalled the moment he knew Becky was addicted: "One day I came home and Becky said, 'Jake, I think I'm coming down with a cold.' I said, 'No man, you're hooked.'"

It was that easy. At the time Jake and Becky shared a nice condo off South Street in San Luis Obispo. She had a car and he had a motorcycle. But within a year, everything was gone and Becky was $50,000 in debt. Then Jake got arrested.

Becky found herself on the street and started shoplifting to support her $150-a-day habit.

"I hated it," said Becky. "I was brought up in a family that taught me better than that. But the fear of getting sick overrode anything anyone could do to me. The sickness of withdrawal to me was horrible. My blood pressure would drop so low I couldn't stand up, and I had terrible pains, leg cramps."

Eventually, Becky was arrested three times for shoplifting but had her sentences diverted after accepting a treatment program. Like a lot of addicts, on the first go-around she couldn't see it through. In her first attempt at rehabilitation, she dropped out after one day and went on a heroin binge.

"I couldn't shoot enough dope," she remembered. "At that point I knew I was going to die. I went into a store, stood right in front of the camera, and shoplifted. Then I went outside and waited for security. He came out and said, 'What are you doing?' I said, 'I need to go to jail.'"

Becky was given one more chance to clean up, and this time she did it, enrolling in Singing Trees, a rehabilitation center in Northern California.

A lot of soul-searching and hard work finally yielded success. Becky still attends Narcotics Anonymous meetings twice a week.

"We have a saying in NA, 'We'll love you until you can love yourself,'" said Becky, a big advocate for both Singing Trees and NA. When Jake got out of jail, he contacted Becky. Although at that point she was reluctant to associate with anyone from her drug days, she invited Jake to attend NA meetings with her.

"We have a family in NA," said Becky. "They give you tools to help you deal with the day-to-day problems of life. They call me on my shit when I'm having a pity party, and they offer me empathy when I really need it."

"They don’t offer any guarantee," added Jake, "but if you want to stop, they can help. It helped me because I found new friends who weren’t using but who had shared my experience. They knew what I’d been through."

Now Becky and Jake take strength from one another, though both, as products of the legal system, find fault with how both society and the law view and deal with addicts.

"The war on drugs? It’s the new Vietnam," said Jake. "We spend billions and billions, and for what return? Nothing. The government is wasting my money and yours. I think legalization needs to be looked into. What do we have to lose? It can’t get any worse."

One of the chronic complaints about drug users is their propensity for prevarication, but according to Jake, the current anti-drug climate has a lot to do with the way addicts behave.

"The lying thing? That’s fear-based. The biggest part of that is the stigma and attitude that comes along with heroin use. You don’t want anyone to know because you’re embarrassed, you’re afraid of what people might think.

"People need to look at it as a medical problem, not a criminal problem. We’re warehousing users in prison. It’s incarceration, not rehabilitation."

A Risky Solution?

Most members of society aren't ready to accept legalization, even though there are strong arguments for it, such as the dismantling of the illicit drug trade and the health of users. Anti—drug war crusaders readily admit that it would take a giant step forward in progressive thought to see legalization through, and that the risks are great–from Third World economic collapse to repercussions within our own economy if we curtailed the prison-building boom.

What seems clear is our current system is effectively crippled and ineffectual. Too many people fall through the cracks. And we seem to be focusing on the wrong end of the problem. Advocates of legalization say it's time to minimize the damage done by drug use rather than uselessly force prohibition.

"The real danger isn’t so much the drug, it’s all that comes with the lifestyle," said Jake. "You don’t take care of yourself, you don’t eat right, there’s the risk of dirty needles, dirty water, impurities in the drug. If you could get clean, pure heroin and have clean materials to shoot with, a lot of the risk would disappear."

Jake and Becky still struggle with their addiction, but both are committed to staying clean. Becky has re-entered Cal Poly and is working toward her dream of being a veterinarian. Jake continues to work his 40-hour-a-week job.

"What I like about being clean more than anything else is I have options," said Jake. "You don't have any options when you're using. As soon as you wake up you start thinking about how you're going to hustle money to get your stuff, then you shoot up, and as soon as you wake up the next day you start all over again. I don't want that life anymore.

"Whatever you decide to do, you have to own up to your decisions," continued Jake. "It's not your parents' fault and not society's fault. You've only got yourself to blame."

* * *

Jake and Becky are the success story. For many others, like Sarah, the only escape from a life of drug addiction is death. Those left behind have to deal with the consequences of a life that was lost, a system that failed.

"I want everyone to know Sarah was the most beautiful person that I've ever met or known, inside and out," said Matthew, choking back tears. "She was so sweet and so beautiful, just amazingly beautiful, and she was smart, and she was funny, and she was kind, and she was talented. She's the love of my life, you know? We were true soulmates. And, I don't know, I think she's left quite a legacy behind in her 28 years. She touched a lot of people. I was, oh I feel…oh man, I feel extremely blessed to have been able to share a part of my life with her. She touched me so deeply, and I'll always have her; she'll always be a part of me. She'll be with me forever. There will never be another like her, period." Æ

Glen Starkey has lost two friends to heroin overdoses in the past three months.