Troubled Teen Programs Help Drug Addicts

“It’s come to this. The dreams of growing up to be a rock star now crumpled beneath filthy sheets. A career as a personal assistant to the boss of a Collins Street property firm, nothing more than resume rubble.” It always goes like this. If only teens at risk would get it. They think - hey, it’s their life, they only get high on week-ends, anyway - they won’t get hooked, they are too smart. And then, they are 25 or 33 or 50 - their life in shambles, their addiction the total master of what life that they have left. Heroin guarantees it. “Two lives of promise and purpose reduced to an existence of unrelenting desperation in a grimy room in a Collingwood boarding house. Its taken half his lifetime, five heroin overdoses and two pronouncements of death for Felix to come this far. It’s a long way from the refined grounds of Kew’s Xavier College and the eastern suburban expectations of gainful employment.”

Cont...

Bet Felix wishes he had been busted when he still had a chance, sent to a boarding school for troubled teens - anything but this. “Felix, not his real name, has lost all but the memories of his former private-schoolboy life. Heroin has stripped him of friends, money and opportunities, his hock-slips a reminder of the possessions he owned a week ago, and might get back if his tax refund comes through. His arms, once so adept at wielding a tennis racquet that he was sent to train at a camp in the US, now bear the track marks of his pitiful life. His heart, which thumped to the beat of his prized drum kit as he played with a band in Adelaide, now races with the rush of heroin as the drug snakes its way through his veins.” (unknown source) By Ann Walker