“It feels like someone came in with a vacuum cleaner and sucked out my brain, removing any trace of joy or excitement, leaving me with nothing but this overpowering hopelessness.”

The above quote is taken from notes hand-written by a 19-year-old Fountain Hills woman “detoxing” from heroin.

She had been reading books like Tweak and A Million Little Pieces in an attempt to make sense of her crazy young life so far, writing down phrases that struck home.

At the time of the interview, several weeks ago, “Christine” was waiting to be taken to Oklahoma or California for intense inpatient drug rehabilitation.

Her parents, Rich and Lucille, could be described as typical Fountain Hills parents living the middle class dream, thinking they were immune from the evil of drugs and the devastation they can bring to an entire family.

The family was willing to share its story here in the hopes of enlightening Fountain Hills to the prevalence of dangerous drugs here and to make families aware of certain warning signs.

The parents have been married for 22 years, the family sat down to homemade dinners the majority of the time and welcomed Christine’s friends to join them quite often for dinner and vacations.

The family was strong, full of good communication and encouragement.

Hints of things changing started in eighth grade, however, when friends were teasing Christine because she didn’t yet have sex with a boy.

“She finally gave in to someone she dated for months and thought it was true love, and not long after, he broke up with her,” the mom recalls.

“This was the beginning of self-esteem issues, guilt and an unhealthy need for a relationship with boys for love.”

Christine eventually started experimenting with drugs like everyone else around her.

“It started with drinking and progressed from there,” Christine says. “I was maybe 12 or 13. It would be mostly on weekends. Sometimes I’d even mix up a drink before going to school.”

There was weed, prescription pills….

Then one day Christine caught her new boyfriend doing heroin.

“She got mad that he would lie and hide something from her,” mom says. “Her anger made her say, ‘I want to try it.’

“She didn’t know much about heroin. She never thought she would get addicted to anything. She never did with anything else.”

Christine says for about a year she would only do heroin on weekends.

During this time Christine was attending Fountain Hills High School. She also took photography classes at the East Valley Institute of Technology in Mesa.

Another breakup, another boyfriend came along, mom says, this one also “a nice kid from Fountain Hills.”

Unfortunately, this boyfriend had even a bigger drug problem than Christine and had started doing major drugs at age 14.

“She started doing it daily with him,” Lucille says.

According to the Office of National Drug Control Policy, heroin is a highly addictive drug and is the most widely abused and most rapidly acting of the opiates.

Heroin is processed from morphine, a naturally occurring substance extracted from the seed pod of certain varieties of poppy plants.

Although heroin abuse has trended downward during the past several years, its prevalence is still higher than in the early 1990s, according to the National Institute of Drug Addiction.

These relatively high rates of abuse, especially among school-age youths, and the glamorization of heroin in music and films, make it imperative that the public has the latest scientific information on this topic,” the NIDA Web site states.

“Heroin also is increasing in purity and decreasing in price, which makes it an attractive option for young people.”

Easy to get

Rich, the father, says that heroin is easier to get in Fountain Hills than alcohol.

“I personally know eight kids who are on heroin, and two of them do it with their parents,” Rich says.

“It might cost up to $80 for an OxyContin pill on the street, but you can get a heroin ‘balloon’ for $10.

“You do the math.”

A heroin balloon is one-tenth of a gram, maybe half the size of a dime.

Heroin can be injected, sniffed/snorted or smoked.

“A lot of people shoot it, but I never tried it,” Christine said. “I always smoked it.

“Any kind of prescription drug is here. Crystal meth, Ecstasy. It’s all easily available in Fountain Hills.”

Rich and Lucille ended up calling the latest boyfriend’s parents, discovering that their son was addicted to heroin.

“We approached Christine, and at first she denied it,” the mom says. “Finally, she broke down. Deep down she wanted help.

“She wanted to tell me many times, but she knew I would stop her and she liked heroin too much.”

Christine agreed to “detox” at home along with blood and urine tests to detect drug usage and to not leave the house for a while.

By this time Christine was already 19 years old.

“Everything seemed good for a month and a half when she was finally allowed out only with certain friends and with time limits,” Lucille recalls of this time period last year.

“The deal was if she tested positive, she would go away to rehab.”

One day Christine tested positive for Ecstasy and became hysterical, mean, belligerent and refusing to go away for treatment.

“She got in her car and left,” mom remembers. “We couldn’t stop her. All we could do was stare out the window as she drove away and cry.

“All we could do was pray for her, deal with sleepless nights, anxiety and the feeling of helplessness. By law, we couldn’t force her to go to rehab.”

Christine would call periodically looking for money, but the parents were determined to use “tough love” and not enable her usage.

“The only way we knew she was alive was checking online to see if she had outgoing texts or phone calls, since we kept her on our family plan with her cell phone,” the mom recalls.

Dad chips in, “We knew she was alive. That’s all we knew. We had no idea where she was or who she was staying with.”

Finally one day Christine called and was desperate for help.

She had no where to go, she had pawned many of her rings and iPod, she owed people money, she took out a payday loan she knew she couldn’t pay back.

Christine agreed to detox and go to rehab.

“When I left home, I was doing heroin every day,” Christine tells The Times. “It becomes a part of life. It was fun.

“I tried once during that time to get clean, but I felt it was impossible. Things weren’t fun then. There was no joy.

“I had to be high all the time.”

Yet Christine had no money to pay rent and deep down realized she had a drug addiction problem.

“I knew I had a problem, I wanted to get help,” she says.

“I just knew I couldn’t keep this up. I figured I needed to fix it and get help. So many people ruin their lives, and I didn’t want that to be me.”

As for the week of “detoxing” before leaving for the rehab facility, Christine says, “It’s been hell.

“My desire for it is big. I cry almost every night, feeling my need to get high.

“I’m scared. I can’t wait for my feelings to come back. I want to be excited for things again.

“I want to have a real relationship with someone, like I care for them.”

The father chimes in, “You have no idea how many times my daughter told us that all she wants to do is go see her dealer.

“We just hug her and let her know we love her and we will not let that happen. Basically one of us is always up to watch, to make sure she does not leave.

“She sits under the covers while one of us holds her and supports her.”

Rich has a warning for parents: “Are you one of the parents who do not trust your child? Do you have a feeling about drugs? Well, that feeling is probably true if your kid is over 14.

“By the way, it starts sooner than you think. Am I in a panic every day? You bet I am. There is not a day that I am not in one way or another.”

Mom adds, “She wants the cravings to go away, she wants the guilt of the things she did to go away, she is afraid that she might be one of those many people who can’t get rid of the demon that took her over.

“We are finally happy, and we are proud of her. But we still worry about what is going to happen if she comes back home to a town that she says in which parents are clueless about how many kids here are on drugs.

“We need a strong community bond to help prevent this stuff.”