Middle-Class Junkies : Heroin Now an Upscale Addiction
‘I’m treating people who pay their union dues, go to the PTA, take their kids to Little League. We’ve even got a program for executives.’
Dr. Forest Tennant
After a year of escalating cocaine use, Richard Chavez was snorting so many lines he was unable to enjoy the high anymore. Instead of the euphoric rush he once experienced, he was now anxious, paranoid and unable to sleep. A friend told Chavez that he knew of a way to salvage and prolong his cocaine high--heroin.
“I told him that I wasn’t a junkie and I hated the needle,” Chavez recalled. “But he showed me how to cut and sniff it. He was right. I got that coke rush, and before I could get too hyper I’d snort a little heroin to mellow out. Pretty soon I gave up the cocaine and stayed with the heroin.”
When Dallas Taylor bought his first ounce of heroin, he carefully rationed the supply. He cut an occasional line “to take the edge off” after a cocaine binge.
“A month after I bought the ounce I thought I had the flu,” Taylor said. “But a doctor told me it wasn’t the flu. I’d been using more and more heroin and had run out. I was kicking and didn’t know it.”
‘Middle-Class Addicts’
Chavez, a sheet metal worker from El Monte, and Taylor, a Los Angeles drummer who has played on seven gold and two platinum albums--both of whom recently kicked heroin habits--are typical of a new wave of addicts that are flooding hospitals and drug treatment programs. Called “middle-class addicts” by health professionals, they bear little resemblance to the stereotypical street junkie.
Most have jobs, families and health insurance. They began experimenting with the drug in their late 20s or early 30s, later in life than most addicts. Many never have shot up; they became addicted by snorting or smoking heroin. And they were exposed to heroin as a result of the pandemic use of cocaine, and eventually exchanged one problem for another, more pernicious one.
“In the ‘70s we rarely saw anyone who had both a cocaine and heroin problem,” said Dr. Forest Tennant, director of Community Health Care Projects Inc., a string of Los Angeles-based drug-abuse clinics, and a consultant for the state attorney general’s office. “But now, as cocaine use increases, we’re seeing more addicts because heroin is the strongest neutralizer around for cocaine toxicity.
Program for Executives
“And we’re not talking about gang members and derelicts. I’m treating people who pay their union dues, go to the PTA, take their kids to Little League. We’ve even got a program for executives.”
Heroin use among all segments of society has risen dramatically during the last five years. There is no statistical breakdown for middle-class addicts, but physicians and government health officials agree that the problem is on the rise throughout the country and at its peak in Southern California. The number of people who have died from heroin overdoses--more than 200 last year--or who were admitted to emergency rooms for heroin-related problems in Los Angeles County has roughly tripled in the last few years.
At clinics throughout the county where methadone (a legal synthetic drug) is administered to former heroin addicts, construction workers and salesmen gather in the lobbies every morning, wait for their daily dose and head off to work.
When evening therapy sessions are offered at Beverly Glen Hospital in West Los Angeles, the streets are lined with Mercedes-Benzes and Cadillacs. On the 27 acres of shaded walks and carefully tended gardens at Las Encinas Hospital in Pasadena, assembly line workers stay in quaint wooden bungalows next door to Hollywood producers; lawyers and teachers are lodged beside housewives and businessmen.
Well-Known Patients
Before Dr. Robert Fremont was named medical director at Beverly Glen last year, he treated more than 150 heroin addicts who were too well-known to enter a hospital and risk adverse publicity. Some lived at home and others stayed at the Beverly Hills Hotel while they underwent a detoxification program.
“Most of the people I treat make more money than me,” said John Randell, director of Century Institute of Living, a Century City drug rehabilitation program. “Even I get surprised by who comes through the door. I want to say to some of them: ‘What in the hell are you doing using heroin?’ ”
Many hospitals during the last few years opened expensive clinics designed for working people who had alcohol or cocaine problems. They were not prepared for the number of heroin addicts who sought treatment.
Three years ago, two-thirds of the patients at Beverly Glen Hospital sought treatment for cocaine dependency and only 5% were heroin addicts. Today, more than half are heroin addicts. At Las Encinas Hospital the percentage of heroin addicts admitted during the last two years jumped from 20% to 50%. Both hospitals specialize in alcohol and drug dependency programs.
Surprised at Patients
“When all these patients with heroin problems started showing up, we were really surprised,” said Dr. Marshall Lewis, Las Encinas’ medical director. “We figured they’d be few and far between. We even wondered whether we’d admit them because those kinds of patients usually weren’t too amenable to treatment.”
But doctors have discovered that middle-class addicts respond extremely well to treatment, and a far greater percentage give up heroin than do street addicts. Many enter treatment of their own volition and are highly motivated, Tennant said. They usually have been addicted only a year or two, a comparatively brief period, when they seek treatment.
And perhaps most important, according to Tennant, addicts with families and well-paying jobs simply have too much to lose if they do not clean up.
Doctors first began seeing an increase in middle-class addicts in 1980, after the Iranian revolution. Some Iranians who immigrated to the United States were unable to take their assets out of the country and exchanged them for heroin, which was easier to smuggle out, law enforcement officials said.
“Persian dust,” which flooded the market for a few years and is still trickling in, is of such high quality that it can be smoked, usually through a metal straw. Devotees call it “chasing the dragon (the plume of smoke).”
When the Persian heroin began to “dry up,” many who had become addicts turned to the streets for their supply, said Robert Roberton, who heads the state’s Division of Drug Programs. At the same time, cocaine use rose dramatically, and vast quantities of heroin began pouring into the United States. With more countries producing heroin, the product on the streets became purer and the price dropped to about half of what it was five years ago, Roberton said.
Some addicts can now support their habits for as little as $100 a week. Although a gram of heroin, at about $500, costs five times more than a gram of cocaine, a “coconut” spends more money on his habit, doctors say, because frequent use is necessary to sustain the high.
Prescription Drugs
In the past, amphetamine and cocaine users turned to prescription drugs such as Quaaludes, Seconal and Darvon to come down from a binge. But Quaaludes are no longer manufactured and the other drugs, as a result of tighter state regulations, are much more difficult to find. And many of the new sedatives on the market are unpopular on the streets because they do not have euphoric side effects.
The popularity of “speedballs”--a mixture of heroin and cocaine--also contributed to the increase in heroin addiction. The speedball is referred to on the streets as a “Belushi”--the legacy of actor John Belushi, who died from a drug overdose in 1982 after shooting speedballs.
“You get that coke buzz and then the heroin kicks in,” said Dallas Taylor, the musician who formerly played with Crosby, Stills and Nash and other rock groups. He recently was released from a clinic and has been clean for the first time in several years. “It’s the ultimate high.”
Arrests in Los Angeles County for heroin-related crimes have doubled in the last five years, according to police and Sheriff’s Department statistics. But few middle-class addicts sell significant quantities of heroin, commit crimes to support their habits or nod off on street corners, authorities said, so they are rarely arrested.
Co-workers Unaware of Habit
No one at work knew Richard Chavez was an addict. If he wasn’t too wasted or going through withdrawal, Chavez said, he made it to work. He was able to afford several hundred dollars of heroin a week by working overtime and “scoring” for friends and siphoning off a portion for himself.
After almost two years of heroin addiction, his marriage began to deteriorate and he entered a methadone maintenance program. He plans to move to Riverside, away from his former friends and the temptations of heroin, and give up the methadone.
“I’m not like some guys who don’t give a damn about their families,” said Chavez, who now works for a subcontractor who knows about his past. “I still want a house, a big job, a good life. I would have that now, but I lost all control somewhere down the line.”
For many who grew up in the 1960s, there is no longer a forbidden aura associated with heroin, Tennant said.
“This generation grew up with the idea that drugs were pretty harmless,” he said. “Many tolera-ted marijuana, pills and coke pretty well. So they see people smoking or snorting heroin, something that doesn’t seem that different from what they’ve already done.”
In the past, few recreational drug users had contacts that would lead them to heroin dealers. Now, law enforcement officials said, many Westside dealers offer both cocaine and high-quality heroin. Some addicts never have seen the lower-quality Mexican heroin, the staple of the addict in the 1970s. Many smoke “Persian dust” or snort “China white” from Southeast Asia.
A producer in his early 30s who has won several Emmy Awards said he had little difficulty obtaining heroin through his Westside cocaine connections.
“The first time I smoked heroin I took four puffs and felt like I was having an orgasm for half an hour,” said the producer, who requested anonymity. “I spent years trying to recreate that high.”
Not Addicted
For about a year, on and off, he smoked heroin and was not addicted. His co-workers and family were unaware of when he was stoned.
“I took all kinds of drugs in high school and college; everyone did. But I figured I’d never be a junkie. Hey, I grew up in the Pacific Palisades, I come from a good family, I didn’t shoot up. I figured I could stop whenever I wanted. But it catches up with everyone. . . . And it caught up with me.”
He began spending two- and three-hour “lunches” driving all over the city to score heroin. Several times he “nodded off” and was unable to come to work. Others on the production unit began to suspect he had a drug problem, and he eventually lost his job.
When he first experimented with heroin, he lived in Malibu and drove a Porsche. He currently lives in a Venice half-way house and works for a telephone sales firm.
“I consider myself lucky; I got out of it in time.” He was released from Beverly Glen Hospital five months ago. “Last week a friend of mine, a guy I was with every day for four months, got his head blown off for $50 worth of smack. A guy had $50 and my friend wouldn’t sell him that small a quantity . . . and that was it.
‘Successful Businessman’
“This wasn’t some scumbag dealer. He had a wife, a family and was a successful businessman; he only dealt and used occasionally. If I wasn’t clean, I would have been there. There’s no doubt in my mind that I’d be dead now.”
Drug officials hope the new wave of heroin addiction is a trend that will end when the dangers are fully realized, said Roberton, the state drug official. In the 1960s, shooting “speed” (methedrine) was popular, Roberton said, but it was so dangerous it soon passed. The use of PCP rose sharply during the last five years, but recently has decreased slightly. And when heroin addiction among the new addicts is brought under control, Roberton said, another drug problem inevitably will surface.
The problem for the mid-1980s will be “designer drugs”--synthetic narcotics that are more powerful and more addicting than straight morphine, Roberton said. The “fake heroin” is produced in illegal laboratories and has caused 69 deaths statewide during the last three years among street addicts, he said.
“If middle-class people are using heroin now, pretty soon they’re going to be exposed to the designer drugs,” Roberton said. “We’re just scratching the surface with these drugs. We’ve entered a whole new era.”