http://news.galvestondailynews.com/story.lasso?ewcd=6e760db558d9fd2a647b56e8e79db721&-session=TheDailyNews:AAE0087E1123f02811GLsTEBB777

The first time, it seemed so harmless.

Carolyn was sitting at the classroom desk, oblivious to the instruction going on around her, ready.

She waited for the oblong, white pill making its way toward her.

She was anxious to become like her older friends and eager to be the first in her grade to do it. It was more than that, though. She wanted to relax and forget about everything. She was just 11, but already life at home and school seemed too much to handle.

So when her older boyfriend passed her that first tablet, she took it right there in class, unnoticed by the teacher or other students.

It was the first pill of many.

Soon, almost miraculously, the world slowed down and Carolyn’s problems at home, her arguments with her parents and her bad grades didn’t matter.

“I was young,” she said. “I was a kid. But it didn’t seem like I was young then. It seemed like they were all doing it, so I should do it, too.”

Carolyn, now 18, just graduated from the Clear Creek Independent School District high school that she used to supply with drugs.

Even though she’s been clean for two years, the problems her school and others across the country are having with prescription medications aren’t over — they’re getting worse.

An epidemic

Carolyn’s first pill in that sixth-grade classroom was Xanax — an anti-anxiety drug with skyrocketing illicit use. It’s not the only prescription medication being used by teens to get high.

Law enforcement officials have seen painkillers such as Vicodin and OxyContin, muscle relaxers such as Soma, stimulants such as Adderral and prescription cough syrup with codeine sold and abused just like illicit street drugs.

Nationwide, street drug use among teens is slowing down, but abuse of prescription drugs is booming.

Today’s teens are more likely to have abused prescription medications than a variety of other drugs, including cocaine, LSD, methampetamine and heroin, according to a 2005 study conducted by the Partnership for a Drug-Free America. That study found that one in five teens had experimented with painkillers to get high.

It’s also getting worse. The 2006 Monitoring the Future survey, a study done annually to monitor drug use among eighth-, 10th- and 12th-graders, showed a trend that local law enforcement officials confirm — abuse of prescription drugs has doubled since 2002.

In Galveston County, it’s not uncommon for police to pull someone over for erratic driving and find multiple pill bottles with different names on each.

The number of such cases has quadrupled in the past six years, Kemah police Lt. Rick McCollum said.

In Friendswood, about 40 percent of drug arrests are for prescription pills, Chief Bob Wieners said.

And although cities in other parts of the county see pills being used and sold, Wieners said it’s a bigger problem in the suburbs.

“They have the cocaine and the crack,” he said. “We have the pill problem. And our numbers show it’s not just (Friendswood). We’re arresting people from League City, Pearland and Webster for pills.”

Authorities are finding students with pills in school across Galveston County, said Glen Watson, the administrator of a residential program at the county’s juvenile justice center.

“I wouldn’t say any school district has a bigger problem with it than any others,” he said. “It’s everywhere. It’s really probably the most emerging trend of drug abuse in our country.”

Friendswood Police Capt. Shari Burrows said she saw a noticeable spike in prescription use about 18 months ago.

“I’m not talking about six or seven pills a day,” she said. “You wouldn’t believe it — 30 pills a day. A month’s supply, gone. It’s shocking to see how much they’re taking. That’s why they get caught. You can only hide that kind of habit for so long.”

‘A recipe for death’

Those habits don’t usually form overnight. Carolyn said that as a sixth-grader, she took only one pill every couple of weeks. Eventually, the highs lost their sting and she started taking more — this time supplied by the medicine cabinet of her friend’s grandmother.

By the time she was in high school, she was using multiple pills every day and about to move on to harder drugs.

For many teens, it’s not the pills alone that create the high.

Most users combine prescription pills with alcohol or other drugs.

David Gomel, the administrator of adolescent programs for the Rosecrance Health Network, a nationwide drug treatment facility, said the risky patterns could have lethal effects.

“When you’re taking a depressant and maxing the impact by mixing it with a chemical, that’s a recipe for death,” he said. “It’s the same risk as other drugs. These kids are dying over the use.”

Susan, a 15-year-old who has been off drugs for about five months, said she used to mix marijuana, Xanax and codeine-laced Sprite to get high.

She was so high riding her bike one night that she fell, split her eyelid open and refused to get in an ambulance until someone got her some food — a symptom of the hunger pangs caused by the Xanax and marijuana.

Mixing the codeine drink with pills and marijuana gave her a quick and strong high, but had other, devastating consequences.

The drugs clouded most of her memories of all-night partying, but she can’t shake the feeling of the morning six months ago, when she woke up knowing she’d been raped.

“It’s something I never thought would happen to me,” she said. “I blanked out. Everyone was telling me that I had no clothes on, that I was screaming.”

The rape triggered her to stop the pill use, but wasn’t enough to keep her out of trouble. She got caught with marijuana, upgrading her juvenile delinquency status to the point that she had to live at a juvenile facility for 10 months.

At five months in, she doesn’t think she’ll go back to that lifestyle. Then, she was living with friends and without a guardian. When she’s released, she’ll live with her aunt who recently got custody of her.

“I was in a bad situation,” she said. “It was a bad spot in my life. Now I don’t have to run no more.”

‘Everyone is doing something’

The culture of pill-popping teens isn’t just made of runaways and heavy drug users. Often, it’s the people you’d least expect, Carolyn said.

At the affluent school she went to, students sleeping in class weren’t always simply tired — they were coming down off drugs. She could look around the room and know they were users — everyone from computer nerds to popular athletes.

At parties, she saw everything.

“We don’t sit in a circle and pop pills or anything, but everyone is doing something,” she said.

Carolyn said she never went to a “pharm party” — a gathering where everyone brings different prescriptions and passes pills around freely.

At the parties she went to, pills were sold and used but not the only type of drug there.

But 14-year-old Mason, a Galveston resident, said he went to parties centered around specific drugs.

“Whatever it was, a pill party or a smoke out, they would say it,” he said. “Then you know that’s what everyone is going to do.”

It’s also clear there are teens embracing pill parties nationwide. On the video-sharing Web site YouTube, hundreds of video clips showing teens strung out on pills and alcohol at parties are added and viewed daily.

A stigma-free stimulant

It’s a drug pattern that’s common among “good kids” who say they’d never consider using heroin or cocaine. Because it’s a doctor-prescribed drug, it seems safer, even if the prescription isn’t written to them.

Susan said she stayed away from “hard” drugs, but didn’t think pills were that risky.

But painkillers like Vicodin and OxyContin have the same chemical effects as using heroin, Gomel said.

“You’re not going to get much heavier than that,” he said. “I guess that’s one of the concerns that we have. It’s prescribed by a doctor so there’s a feeling that it’s not as dangerous.”

And while there might be a social stigma of using heavy drugs, prescription medication is accepted in society.

“We’re in a quick fix society,” he said. “If you want to lose weight, take this pill. There’s such an acceptance level of this drug culture that’s being pushed forward, it’s altering the societal norms of these kids. We have kids less and less frightened about experiencing new drugs, not realizing the danger.”

Keeping kids away

Warning children about the dangers of drugs only helps slightly, Dr. Stanton Peele said.

Peele, author of the book “Addiction Proof Your Child,” said keeping children away from drugs isn’t the way to prevent abuse.

“It’s the one thing that parents try that doesn’t work,” he said. “Parents say, ‘Let’s just protect them from ever being exposed to it.’”

Peele said that instead, parents should raise their children to be independent, value achievements and teach them to have control over their lives.

“In a person’s life, they are going to encounter something that seems overwhelming at a time,” he said. “The one thing parents can give them is that support and confidence to overcome that.”

While many teens, such as Carolyn, said stress led them to the pills, giving up the drugs can be even more stressful.

When teens try to get off the pills, they often find everyday situations overwhelmingly stressful, Marsha Baker, the administrator of the teen treatment facility Phoenix House, said.

“Their bodies are so used to being medicated,” she said. “They’re going to feel lots and lots of stress that they’ve not felt for a long time. That’s why it’s going to be really, really hard for them to stop using on their own.”

Carolyn said it was difficult to ignore the cravings while she got used to a drug-free life. Some days, she still wants them.

But instead, she focuses on the bigger picture. She’s about to leave for college and study to become a kindergarten teacher.

“I asked for a second chance and I ended up getting about 20,” she said. “Not everyone is that lucky.”