By Patrick McGroarty
Reporter Staff

For Liam O'Connor, the struggle with substance abuse started when he was 11 or 12 years old, hanging out at Garvey Park and looking for role models in all the wrong places.

"A lot of kids who grew up in Dorchester studied hard, were great athletes, then went off and got married," says O'Connor, 20. "I didn't want what they had."

He says he was attracted to kids a couple of years older than he who had already started smoking cigarettes and drinking. "I tried cigarettes, then pot, then drinking. Even if I'd known then the road of hell I'd be going down, I wouldn't have looked back."

From marijuana and alcohol O'Connor graduated to Benzodiazepines and cocaine; next came Percocet and OxyContin. And when buying prescription painkillers became too expensive, he started snorting heroin.

After a string of run-ins with the law and a car accident that led to serious surgery and the loss of a kidney, he made the first steps toward recovery.

"I realized I didn't want to live like this. I didn't want to die like this," he said.

Jack Leary, a state parole officer, said O'Connor's story is a tragically common one across the commonwealth, particularly among teenagers in white, middle class, urban communities.

"We confronted this problem in South Boston seven or eight years ago, and we weren't alone," said Leary. "It's a middle class problem right now, and predominantly in white neighborhoods."

Leary attended a recent community forum in at the Murphy Community Center to confront a problem that has been brewing at least since O'Connor was growing up almost ten years ago. Leary says his own experience comes from battling the threat in South Boston that garnered considerable attention when a rash of suicides among young adults was linked to substance abuse.

Mike Kineavy, chief of policy and planning to Mayor Thomas M. Menino, was also heavily involved in confronting the South Boston heroin epidemic, and he says the threat citywide remains very real.

"There has been a resurgence of heroin use after a somewhat dormant period, and this new heroin is cheaper and purer," said Kineavy. "Four to five years ago the presence of OxyContin also increased, and we're seeing the results of that in terms of abuse and addiction. None of that is specific to Neponset, but we are picking up concern from various areas."

Sergeant Detective Al Terestre, commander of District C-11's Drug Control Unit, has witnessed that infiltration into Dorchester first hand.

"The big change recently has been towards OxyContin and the move towards younger kids using heroin, and it's sickening," said Terestre, who's been with the DCU since 1999.

OxyContin pills are ground up and snorted like cocaine. Snorting the pill removes the time-release effect of taking it orally, and can lead to deadly overdoses.

Terestre said that dealers from South Boston have made inroads into neighborhoods along Gallivan Boulevard and in Neponset where the drugs are now dealt with regularity. Terestre also notes that pills are finding their way to the street from a startling source.

"There's also kind of a sleeping giant," he said. "A lot of elderly people that get prescribed OxyContin and Percocet, they're on fixed income, they sell half of [the pills] for a couple of hundred bucks and get to have some extra luxuries in their lives."

Dealers purchase the pills, then turn around and sell them, making a steep profit. Terestre said that OxyContin sells for approximately $1 per milligram, meaning one 80 mg pill sells for $80, with pills typically sold in 20-pill "bubble packs" that fetch upwards of $1400.

"That's an enormous profit. If I'm doing that with 30 or 40 elderly people, I'm making tremendous money," said Terestre.

However, the cost of supporting an addiction to OxyContin leads many towards heroin.

"We're seeing a trend now with a lot of young kids absolutely addicted to heroin because they don't have the money or the ability to steal enough to get OxyContin," said Terestre. Snorting heroin provides a similar high at a significantly lower price; a bag of heroin can be purchased for $40, he estimated.

O'Connor said that while substance abuse is a problem in every community and the choice to use is, at its root, an individual one, the reality of growing up in an urban environment is that drugs are more readily available in the city. As prescription painkillers first started to gain popularity among teens, it is possible the residual presence of heroin in Boston may have made the jump from expensive painkillers to cheaper heroin easier for young addicts.

"I think the minority community got devastated by heroin 20 years ago. They have a healthy disrespect for it now," said Leary.

Opportunists that they are, many of the same drug dealers that today provide OxyContin are also selling heroin.

"There's a heroin supply coming from South Boston, and it's a Caucasian connection, white people in Southie that are selling the Oxy, and when it becomes too expensive, they start selling heroin too," said Terestre.

While a serious habit snorting large doses of OxyContin puts the user at risk of overdose, the health dangers spike sharply with a move to heroin, particularly if the drug is injected intravenously.

"There's no way to know how pure the drug you're buying is, how strong or how many times it's been cut," said O'Connor. Paullete Shaw Querner, executive director of the Neponset Health Center, said that HIV and hepatitis also become serious threats.

O'Connor never made the jump to needle use. After several months in a residential treatment program, he turned to a twelve-step program for support.

He didn't stay sober on his first try, but he's been clean for almost three years, and says he now draws strength from working with others struggling against addiction.

Some of those addicts include O'Connor's closet friends. He was devastated recently by the loss of 21 year-old Patrick Joseph Flavin, a childhood friend who died of an overdose on June 9. O'Conner has stated publicly that Flavin died because he could not find an open bed at a center that would de-tox addicts without health insurance.

Other sources and de-tox centers contacted by the Reporter said a bed can usually be found for an addict in need, and the state operates a 24-hour hotline (800-327-5050) for addicts seeking immediate medical attention. There are many city, state, and private programs designed to help abusers kick their heroin addiction, including public and private de-tox centers, residential treatment programs, and halfway houses. In addition, several outpatient methadone clinics operate within the city (methadone is a prescription drug used to wean heroin, and occasionally OxyContin, addicts off their dependence) and in Dorchester the Neponset and Geiger Gibson Health Centers have opened Suboxone clinics within the past six months (Suboxone is a methadone substitute). But opinions vary widely on the merits of each path to recovery, and success rates can be misleading. Everyone seems to agree that in a system dominated by state and federal funding and regulations, there is too little money to provide adequate services, including the de-tox bed that could have saved Flavin's life.

State Representative Martin Walsh, a staunch advocate for substance abuse recovery programming and funding, said a recession early in this decade led to the elimination of many vital recovery programs.

In the legislative session that closed late Monday evening, Beacon Hill lawmakers overrode a Mitt Romney veto that would have shaved $8.25 million in funding to the Bureau of Substance Abuse. Walsh said the restored funding is an important victory, but that it shouldn't stop people from confronting an epidemic that stretches far beyond Dorchester.

"It's time to stop talking. The forum the other night was good. We elected officials need to stop talking about the great things they are doing and get them done."

Walsh's commitment to step up as a political leader was paralleled by the high currency placed on personal responsibility by people like O'Connor, who know that's what it takes to defeat addiction.

"I can't blame Dorchester for my addiction," said O'Connor. "Neither P.J. nor I have any excuses. The fact of the matter is we're dealing with a disease."

Reporter News Editor Brian Denitzio contributed to this report