Calls on Drug Abuse Rise After Deaths of 2 Athletes

The cocaine-related deaths of sports stars Don Rogers and Len Bias have triggered a rash of calls to some San Diego drug treatment centers, but area experts say they doubt that the highly publicized deaths have had much effect on most users.

“Since last week, we’ve been getting five calls a day when we used to get one call every two days,” said Charles Nelson, director of the Family Treatment Institute, which runs a private cocaine recovery program. “I have a feeling that the fact that crack (a type of cocaine) has been getting so many headlines has something to do with it, and all of a sudden two guys die from cocaine, and everybody’s interested.

“It’s pretty scary, pretty amazing. . . . In a way it’s . . . heartening because people may be getting serious. A lot of people are questioning their use levels.”

Sharon Young, manager of CRASH Southeast Prevention Project, said calls and referrals had grown from two or three to 15 per day.

“There is one female that called yesterday, and she was really shaken up by the last death in particular,” Young said Wednesday. “She said she was definitely ready to quit because she didn’t want it to happen to her.”

Yet the tragic deaths--Bias had a promising basketball career as the first-round draft choice of the champion Boston Celtics of the National Basketball Assn., and Rogers was a standout safety with the Cleveland Browns of the National Football League who was to be married the day after he died--have not fazed most hard-core users, according to drug abuse experts.

“Most of our people have been involved in overdoses and have known people who have overdosed, and the incidents haven’t been a deterrent,” said Audrey Escalderon, resident program coordinator for CRASH Golden Hill House, a voluntary inpatient center with 35 beds. “They are used to that kind of thing happening in the drug population.”

Bias, 22, died June 19 after taking an unusually pure form of cocaine. Rogers, 23, died Friday of heart failure due to a cocaine overdose. He played safety at UCLA and for two seasons with the Browns. The exact amounts each took are not known.

One gram of cocaine costs between $35 and $100 on the street, depending on purity, and an average dose ranges from one-quarter gram to one gram. Nelson said an average person who ingests 1.2 grams of high-potency cocaine at once will die in half an hour. He said some users have died after taking as little as one-fifth of a gram.

According to Pam Blackwell, director of the county crisis team that handles 40 drug-related calls a day, the volume and types of requests have remained constant.

Dave Reiten, program director of the South Bay Drug abuse service, said there have been no large changes. “We have discussed it in groups and there’s a mixed reaction,” he said. “Some of the hard-core clients do not believe the scientific data is correct, and others say they knew about the dangers all along--that cocaine can kill and produces seizures--because they’ve had seizures themselves.”

Discussion has not necessarily led to more requests for information or treatment because of the common practice among users to dismiss the Bias and Rogers incidents as flukes.

“Unfortunately, part of the disease of addiction is the mental part that says: ‘I’m unique, I’m different, it won’t happen to me,’ ” said Pat Ragland, coordinator of admissions and referrals for alcohol and drug treatment at Sharp Cabrillo Hospital. “It’s still an acceptable drug.”

Cynthia Ryan, program director of Pathways substance abuse treatment education center, said there were only three or four patients seeking treatment who admitted they were prompted by the Bias and Rogers deaths.

“What we are seeing are two phenomena,” she said. “Some people who are in recovery tend to (see it) confirming that they made the right decision.

“But those who don’t have an addiction problem tend to rationalize and minimize their habit. They say: ‘Well, that was just his first time,’ or, ‘I’ve done drugs a lot and that’s never happened to me.’ It has created a lot of ‘yeah-buts,’ typical for younger people who are not involved in the disease process and are experimenting.”

The stars’ death may have a delayed impact, according to Dr. Ron Mineo, medical director of the McDonald Center for alcoholism and drug addiction treatment at Scripps Memorial Hospital, where cocaine-related calls have been up slightly in the last three weeks.

“We start seeing admissions six months to two years after the event,” he said. “The initial reaction is fear and some sort of resolution to knock it off or cut it out for a while. People don’t come in for treatment until those efforts fail.”

In 1984 there were 26 deaths--twice as many as in 1981--and 138 emergency room visits related to cocaine abuse in San Diego County, Mineo said.

Ryan said the athletes’ deaths might be used in a TV campaign to warn against drug abuse.