Buena’s Raymond Sees Light Through the Haze : Football: Twenty-day incarceration convinced lineman that drug abuse leads to a dead-end.

John Raymond was in juvenile hall, locked in a room with windows he couldn’t see through, when he finally got the message.

“I was seeing the people that were in there, some for murder, some for possession of an ounce of cocaine,” says Raymond, a senior offensive tackle at Buena High. “It was enough to scare the . . . out of anybody.”

Raymond landed in juvenile hall because he was arrested and charged with possession of controlled substances for sale. His 20-day incarceration over the summer was enough to convince him that drug abuse leads to a dead-end.

Today, Raymond is three months removed from juvenile hall and four months out of an inpatient drug rehabilitation program. He says he is drug-free.

The 6-foot-7, 270-pound mountain of a 17-year-old spends his free time working on the poems he started writing during drug rehab. He studies, too, preparing for next month’s Scholastic Aptitude Test and making up for the work he missed when he dropped out of school in February.

And, oh yes, he plays football.

Once a clumsy oaf whose idea of offensive line play was falling on smaller opponents, Raymond is a finely tuned blocking machine. Such quick and agile feet under a huge body make Buena Coach Rick Scott speak in reverent tones.

“The football gods reached down and touched his body and blessed it,” Scott says.

College recruiters are equally impressed with Raymond’s physical skills, but they must also try to figure out what goes on inside his helmet. Is Raymond, as he insists, truly clean?

“I don’t think there’s a question that with his ability he can play at any major university,” one West Coast recruiter says. “But it’s a decision that every school is going to have to make: Do you take a chance on the kid who’s had problems in the past? I’m sure there’s going to be some to shy away from him, but whoever gets the guy, if he can keep a clean slate, they are going to get a prized possession.”

Raymond, who already has seen several colleges drop out of the race for his services, is fully aware of the risks of publicizing his past problems. He hesitates to reveal details of his abuse, such as the types of drugs he used. He says simply that he’s clean, and he intends to stay that way.

“I am setting an example,” he says. “I realize there is no future with substance abuse. I want to show if you are getting into some trouble, there is a way out of it.”

*

John Raymond’s problems began long before anyone noticed he had them.

He now admits he had been using drugs to some degree throughout high school, but his abuse began to grow more serious last fall, during his junior season.

“It was just all the pressures of school and football and stuff,” he says. “I never had a way to release the pressure.”

Football was no longer fun. Practices were like work. And school? Forget it. His grades slipped and his interest slipped more.

Shortly after last football season, teammates noticed Raymond drifting away from school.

“He was just disappearing and you started hearing rumors about stuff,” senior fullback Nate Coyle says. “And then when you hear it’s true, you were shaking your head because it’s such a waste of talent.”

Raymond’s drug-induced highs became the focal point of his life. By February, his parents discovered was smoking marijuana. He was failing most of his classes, so he dropped out of school, ostensibly to finish his education through a correspondence school.

“With the things I was doing as far as the drugs, I just didn’t want to be (in school),” Raymond says. “I would rather get my high than be in school.”

But the care-free life he imagined without school never materialized. Instead, he found himself in the back seat of a police car just weeks after dropping out of school.

He says he tried to sell drugs once, but never got the chance.

“That was the only time I had ever sold anything and I got caught,” he says. “I was arrested with the stuff on me.”

After that harsh awakening, Raymond’s parents had him undergo private counseling in Ventura. But the sessions had only a marginal effect.

“I really didn’t care where I was going,” he says. “I was just looking for another high. All I was thinking about was where I was going to get my next fix.”

Despite the arrest and despite the counseling, Raymond was undeterred. He continued dodging his parents and using drugs. All kinds.

“Anything I could numb myself with,” he says.

In June, after Raymond’s attorney advised him that the court would view him more favorably if he entered a rehabilitation clinic, he spent three weeks at Vista Del Mar Hospital in Ventura. There, he discovered poetry, the outlet he never had while abusing drugs.

But Raymond’s turnaround was not complete after rehabilitation. Just after he was released from the hospital, he went to trial for his arrest five months earlier. He was found guilty and sentenced to 30 days in the Clifton Tatum Center, the juvenile hall in Ventura.

After rehabilitation--the positive reinforcement method of curing drug abuse--Raymond got a heaping dose of negative reinforcement in juvenile hall, and that was much more effective, he says.

“That was the turning point,” he says.

Wearing blue pants and white T-shirts that were too small, Raymond attended classes during the day. At 6 p.m., he was locked in a cell with blocked-out windows.

“It gives you a lot of time to think,” Raymond says.

His neighbors in juvenile hall were murderers, gang members and other drug abusers, he says.

“I really didn’t belong in that place, but I forced myself in,” he says

Raymond got out after 20 days, gaining release because of good behavior. He decided that high school wasn’t so bad after all.

“I saw all the people in there and that’s when I contacted my coach and I said, ‘I want to be clean and sober and get back on the team,’ ” he says. “I saw these people had no future on the streets. I wanted to play football and get a scholarship.”

*

John Raymond’s battle hasn’t ended, but it has changed.

While once he struggled with drug abuse and the law, he now faces skeptical college coaches and a difficult year of school work.

As soon as Raymond was released from juvenile hall, he enrolled in summer school so he could earn enough credits to return to Buena. A grueling year of extra work awaits him if he is to graduate with his classmates in the spring and earn NCAA eligibility.

When he has free time, he sticks close to his teammates, who must stay clean because of a random drug testing program for athletes started at Buena High this year.

Scott, Buena’s football coach, says the testing was not a reaction to Raymond. The program finally was approved this season after Scott lobbied for it for three years.

“He’s on the right track,” Scott says. “But there’s no way of assuming that a 17-year-old is not going to have a problem again. But one of the things I try to do is watch him daily. We talk a lot.”

Says Raymond’s father, Jim: “I think everything is looking positive. It’s still a little shaky. There are peaks and valleys, peaks and valleys, but I think this is the plateau. There is always that little nagging doubt, but it is diminishing rapidly.”

Raymond has no doubts.

“It’s over,” he says firmly. “I learned my lesson on the streets.”

Raymond’s teammates agree that he appears clean. It shows on and off the field, they say.

“He’s really turned around,” Coyle says. “He looks physically better. He plays better. . . . I don’t see him hanging out in the same groups as he used to, and that’s a good sign. I think he’s really cleaned up his act.”

Raymond worries about next month’s SAT test, saying it’s his biggest obstacle to a college scholarship. He has told inquiring coaches from Fresno State, Colorado, Arizona and Washington State that his drug use is in the past.

He’s making more believers every day.