Weather
Local NewsMiddle Schooler Snorted Rx DrugsBy Tom Murray
MUSKEGO - At least one boy admitted to police that he snorted prescription medication in a bathroom at Lake Denoon Middle School on April 3. Four kids had their hands on the bag of attention deficit drugs, according to Muskego police.
Richard Drury, superintendent of Muskego-Norway School District, said the punishment for using or carrying drugs at school is expulsion. He would not release the specific penalties handed down in this case, citing the district’s privacy policy.
Many drugs now abused by teens are found in the family medicine cabinet.
“The most important thing is that parents need to be aware of their kids,” said Paul Zenisek, senior psychotherapist at Aurora Psychiatric Hospital. He said parents “need to be aware of the medication if [their kids] are prescribed attention deficit medication.”
One former addict is not surprised that middle school kids abused attention deficit pills. Jordan Neary, 23, said he started on the same destructive path in his early teens.
“I ended up in the ICU at the age of 16,” he told TODAY’S TMJ4 reporter Tom Murray. “I overdosed right in my high school.
Doctors prescribed Adderall and Ritalin for Neary’s attention deficit disorder, but medical use turned to dangerous abuse.
“That right there was really a beginning for me. After that, Vicodin, Percocet and some of the weaker pain narcotics, then OxyContin and morphine,” Neary said.
He’s been sober for four years and now counsels incoming addicts at Teen Challenge of Wisconsin, a Christian-based drug rehab program. He said he sees a lot of his own struggle in the people he treats.
“So many of them make statements of how, as a young boy, they started snorting and taking larger amounts of their Ritalin," he said. "It made them more comfortable with taking a pill.”
|
On Demand |
