TRANSCRIPT
Mike: Hey what's up?
I'm Mike, and I'm here with Erika Christensen from the movie “Traffic”.
Erika: Hey, thanks for having me…So you may know them as E, X,
K, GHB, acid, speed. They're called the club drugs. But people are taking them
at home now, you know, hang out with your friends, maybe at school, and you may
think they're harmless fun but when the high wears off, reality sets in.
Mike: You know, you’re absolutely right. I remember an
experience I had with a couple of friends, and we tried it and the high wasn't
as good as the turn around. Like the next day, extreme low and it just wasn't
worth it.
Erika: You may think you're never gonna do something, like
you're "aw, nah dude, I'm not gonna do cocaine", but like then you’re
high on E, someone offers you something and it's like "okay
whatever", you know
Pause
Erika: You know, in “Traffic” I played a drug addict, so when
the cameras stopped rolling, I could just walk away from it and be fine. But we
talked to some kids in rehab who didn't have that choice of just walking away
from it. Even after it stopped being fun.
Start/Progression/Home/School
Michelle: When I first started using drugs, I was about fourteen
years old. And I think, you know, I first tried weed and stuff like that and
then it progressed into ecstasy and acid.
Jim: And I started off smoking weed, and eventually it was
like, you know, I was still getting high from it, but it was just like alright,
it was familiar. I wanted something new.
James: When I first starting doing drugs, I was around
fourteen going on fifteen, around there. I'd just moved into a new town, and I
wanted to fit in. And that was the way I could fit in that town, was by doing
drugs.
Michelle: What got me started was basically like, the curiosity
and this drive to fit in because I just began high school
James: And then it
just went from like, from once a month to the weekends. Then from the weekends
to every day a week, and it just got like, way out of hand, just, everything
got carried away, and I couldn’t stop. And I’d actually tell myself that I
could stop whenever I wanted, so it would still seem alright with me.
Jim: I’ve taken pretty much all of the club drugs there are.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a club. The closest I came to a club is like, I
don’t know, someone gave me one of those little advertisement cards, you know.
James: They’re still at clubs, but I mean they’re just
everywhere else, at school, in yeah, at your house, you do ‘em or whatever.
Michelle: …You know, taking ecstasy in Spanish class and stuff
like that.
Ashley: I did E for the first time when I was twelve because my
friend’s older brother was doing it, and I wanted to be cool and fit in, so I
did E.
Justin: I started to do ecstasy, mes, mescaline, cocaine,
heroin.
Rebecca: My boyfriend was
like ohh, you know, this is ecstasy and I want you to do it with me, or
whatever, so I was like, I was scared at the time cuz I really didn't know,
know what I'm sayin, I thought that I would never try it.
Ralph: And I always told myself nah, I'm never gonna do
ecstasy, never, you know, and now I learned, never to say never cause it can
happen. Ecstasy’s a real serious drug.
Ecstasy
/Serotonin/School
Meghan: Once you came down from your high, well, at least for
my high, I was the most miserable person in the world I just wanted to curl up
in a corner and die.
Doctor Alan
Leshner, Director of NIDA: When you take ecstasy, what happens
is it, of course, rushes to your brain and then it stimulates two types of activity.
One, it causes a release of seratonin, and the other, it causes a release of
dopamine, and the euphoria, the high, is actually a combination of those two
chemical systems in the brain spiking. And then over time the levels of those
brain chemicals actually decrease and can go lower than they had been before
you take the drug.
Michelle: I'd just sit in my room for like hours, and I wouldn’t
leave my room until I was, you know, ready to get up and go get high again.
Basically, like I just, like I’d get depressed and like I’d get high to cover
that up, and it was just like a vicious cycle .
Jim: I got thrown into a pretty bad depression when I tried
to go clean, and it didn’t happen. And I got thrown all out of whack, and I
tried to kill myself. I remember I was just like really, really like kinda felt
like this isn’t working, and the kind of little baby "I don’t wanna be
here anymore" type of mentality. And I winded up pouring gas all over
myself and lighting it and burnt 30% of my body.
Doctor Leshner: Modern neuro-imaging techniques are allowing us to look
into the brain of living, breathing, awake individuals. What you see on this
chart is the brain of a normal individual. And then an E user, three weeks
after the last time that person used E, and what this image shows is very
straight forward. So bright is more,
dull is less, bright is good, dull is bad, and what we’re measuring here is the
ability to use seratonin in the brain. Seratonin is involved in the normal
control of mood, of cognitive function of memory, of the experience of pain and
sleep. And so if you think about it, if you disrupt your normal seratonin
functioning, you’re disrupting many aspects of an individual’s core life
functioning, their personality, their ability to do well in school, this is a
serious change in brain function.
Ralph: Through ecstasy I messed up, messed up on a lot of
stuff. You know, I used to be on a high school football team, I stopped going
to practice.
Michelle: I was a cheerleader when I first went into high school
my first year and then like my second year I was barely in school.
Driving/
Accidents /Unprotected sex
John: The way you think on ecstasy is that you’re safe from
anything. So, you can look at any person and you’re like no, this person’s
like, nothing’s going to happen to me, even if I have sex with this person. And
you’re not going to be cautious at all, you’re not aware at all.
Ashley: And you’re
feeling good, so you’ll do whatever you want, do whatever makes you happy for
the moment. And the next day you sit down and you think about it and you’re
like, oh my God, I had unprotected sex with this guy, you know. I don’t know
how many girls he’s ever been with, what if I got something. And I was in that
situation, I went and I got tested, and HIV tested, and everything because you
can really do things you wouldn’t normally do when you were sober and thinking
straight.
Michelle: A friend was drinking and I think he took valiums or
something like that. Some type of pill; I don’t even think he knew what it was.
And he was driving home with his friend and they, he lost control of his car,
and he hit a tree, and he died. And he was about eighteen years old. And now
the kid that was the passenger, whatever, he’s like paralyzed and stuff like
that. How many times I got into a
car with people that were drunk, or on ecstasy, or on acid, or any kind of
drug, or just smoked weed like. How many times I got into people’s cars and
like and something could have happened. I’m very grateful for it.
Memory/Grinding
Ralph: One thing I fear is from smoking weed and doing
ecstasy, you can face memory loss. Like I try to think of my friend’s numbers,
phone numbers and some girl’s numbers in my neighborhood. I can’t even remember
them.
Doctor
Leshner: We’ve heard people talk about ecstasy
causing holes in the brain and of course that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but
there is a core truth to that. We
know that many people report that they’ve had some memory loss, and now
scientific studies have documented that, actually, repeated ecstasy use leads
to an interference with normal memory processes, and actually broader thought
processes as well.
Ashley: We were just going over simple math problems, like
problems, like addition and division and multiplication. It was just real hard
to remember, and I kinda had to re-learn everything I learned like when I was
in elementary school cuz a lot of the stuff I forgot.
Overdose
Miami Cop: Here in south Florida, we have seen over the last few
years such a rapid increase in drug overdose as a direct result of club drugs,
via taking the club drugs individually or mixing and combining the club drugs.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been walking in a rave club, and I’ve seen
kids on the floor going into convulsions or suffering from serious dehydration,
or having mild heart attacks. In these clubs, in homes. Most of the kids think, you know I take a
tablet, it’s a small little pill, how is this going to hurt me?
Ralph: Like, one time, I popped two in a night. And I was
scared after I popped the second one. You know, my heart started beating real
hard. I started sweating.
Doctor
Leshner: One of the things that people don’t
think about with E is that it is a stimulant.
It does in fact cause racing of the heart, it causes a dramatic rise in
blood pressure, it’s been said to cause strokes in some people.
Michelle: You know, I know people right now, only like sixteen
years old, and like they shake from it. Like, they don’t stop shaking .
Doctor
Leshner: It also has the effect of raising the
body temperature. That’s why you hear reports of people having convulsions one.
What’s actually happening is that their body temperature has gone so high,
often in raves or other hot places, they actually have the convulsions associated
with a fever. You have no way to know if you that person who has that terrible
reaction.
Ralph: You keep telling yourself, "it's not gonna happen,
it's not gonna happen", that's when it does.
Radio
dispatcher : Post 53 respond at 45 Mansfield
Avenue, 17 female possible overdose.
Will: Man53 responding to 321 Cleveland Road.
Trish: Post 53 is a group of highschoolers from 14 to 18 who
provide 100 percent volunteer ambulance service, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
We respond to anything from a motor vehicle accident on the highway to elderly
emergency to a sports injury or drug overdose.
Will: The thrill of driving an ambulance at seventeen years
old is just amazing. I consider it a job even though it is volunteer. I really
enjoy helping people.
Trish: If you already called 911, and your friend has
overdosed on a drug, it important to return to your friend immediately in case
they've gone unconscious. If they're
still unconscious, you want to make sure they're in an upright position so that
when they vomit they won't choke on their own vomit. Also if they've gone
unconscious, it's important to lay them on their side in what's called the
recovery position so that the vomit would drain from their mouth. And also just
monitor then to make sure that they have and open airway and their breathing
the whole time until the ambulance arrives. If you're at a party with your
friend and your worried calling 911 because your afraid that your friend might
get in trouble because they had too much to drink or a few too many drugs. It's
better to call 911 if they need to go to the hospital because you have to think
of the long term effects. There might not be death involved but any sort of
brain damage or permanent injury could occur. Your friend would appreciate it if
you save their lives rather than then getting in trouble for a couple of weeks.
Mixing/EMT
Michelle: I’ve had some bad combinations of um, you know, being
drunk, smoking weed and on acid, or like being drunk, smoking weed and on
ecstasy. Just anything with like another drug is like really bad, like it just,
like it has different effects on you. So you know, you never know what could
happen to you.
Doctor
Leshner: GHB is a very frightening drug
because, first of all, it combines with alcohol, cause it works on the same
brain chemical systems, and in addition to that it can easily lead to coma, and
in fact that’s what it’s doing. It’s shutting down your brain. Initially, it
sedates you and then it sedates you some more, and then whoops, you’re out!
Meghan: Just being on K makes you feel like you’re drunk, and
then being drunk on top of it makes you feel like you’re just in another world
because, it’s scary.
Jim: The K-hole. You’re pretty much like, like your kind of
comatose. You don’t want to do anything, don’t wanna talk.
Doctor
Leshner: Ketamine is actually a veterinary
anesthetic. It’s an anesthetic used to treat animals for surgery. So combining
alcohol and ketamine produces a tremendously dangerous combination of two ways
of shutting down your brain, in effect.
Laced
pills/Logos
Jim: I think the biggest misconception about ecstasy would
be yeah it’s real, how do you know? It could be cut with anything. Ranging from
Ajax, to rat poisoning, you have no idea what’s in this thing you’re about to
take.
Ashley: The drugs that you buy get passed down from like so
many people, and everybody cuts it.
John: I had this one kid selling fake ecstasy for me and then
I felt real bad for him because the kid gets jumped because of me, gets robbed,
and got his whole rib from here to here got cut open.
Justin: Some people will buy the pure MDMA, like the pure
ecstasy, and they’ll cut it up, and they’ll get a pill press, and they’ll mix
up what they want to mix up. With, like, speed, anything. Then, like to catch attention,
people will put little stamps on it like a clover in the middle of it or
something.
Justin,
John, and Group: Mitsubishi, 007, diamonds, Nikes,
Supermans, Y’s, smiley faces on them, lucky charms, white doves. There are a
whole bunch of different brands.
Miami Cop: The manufacturers are going great lengths to
manufacture tablets with logos that appeal to the American youth, and it's
effective.
Justin: You know. It’s sort of like shoe ads or cigarette ads.
Ashley: You know, if someone showed me a bunch of E pills, and
asked me which one I would want to take, I would take the one you know, that
everyone talks about the most.
Stealing
Michelle: So it became, you’d do anything to just get this money
to do all these things.
Meghan: I used to steal money from my parents. I would sell
anything I could get my hands on.
Jim: I was the type of person that you don’t wanna leave
alone in your house. I used to have parents like we’d leave and they’d be like,
“What did you take”. Like I’ve actually had them pat me down, like yeah.
Legal, Cop,
DA
Miami cop: Where there’s drugs, you’re going to find undercover
cops. We’re everywhere in this city, and in every city where I’ve ever worked.
Ralph: A lot of cops are trained to know how you act, know how
you walk, when you have drugs, when you’re high, how you are when you’re high,
you know, and when you least expect you’re gonna get caught, bam, a cop will
roll up on you.
Justin: I’m walking down the street, and this guy, he’s
drinking a forty. And there’s this other guy that’s standing on the side of
him. And I go up to the guy on the side of the guy drinking a forty because he
says he’s got dope. And I bought it from him, and three seconds later that same
guy that was drinking the forty came up and tackled me on the ground. He was an
undercover cop. I had no idea.
Drug bust
footage
Miami cop: I think it’s important that we don’t discriminate. If
you’re a kid, if you’re an adult, we’re going to treat you the same. Many of
the youth believe that there are no penalties for simply possessing club drugs.
Ecstasy, GHB, ketamine, the entire gambit of club drugs, and that’s false.
Jeannine
Pirro, Westchester County D.A.: Ecstasy, ketamine are in the same
class as heroin and cocaine. That means that if you’re sixteen years of age,
your name gets in the paper, you get arrested, you get a criminal record,
you’re fingerprinted, you are mugged. Your photograph is part of a criminal
history sheet in New York State. Young people can’t assume that maybe because
it’s their first offense they’re going to get away with it.
Ashley: My boyfriend put me in a lot of risks getting trouble
with the cops, because I was fifteen and he was eighteen, and you know whenever
we were in the car and the cops pulled us over, he would always give me all the
drugs and the paraphernalia. And I would like stick it in my bra or stick it
down my pants.
Pirro: if the police find that you are driving while you are
intoxicated or under the influence of drugs, they are going to inventory that
car to impound it, and whatever’s in that car, you’re going to be charged to
presuming to have possesssion of.
Ralph: Reality strikes you in your face, and before you know
it, you’re behind bars.
Bar banging
Ralph: Here I am with guys, you know twenty, thirty years old
in the cell, in the precinct, waiting to go to court, and I’m waiting for my
mom because I held some ecstasy for some kid.
Pirro: If you are charged with a misdemeanor, that means if
you are charged with the possession of one tablet, you face up to a year in
prison. But in the spectrum of things, you can face a thousand dollar fine, you
can face three years of probation, you can face community service, a permanent
criminal record. You may be forced to go into a rehab program.
Pause
As the number of pills go up, as I said with twelve, you
face up to seven years as a felony.
Jail montage
Justin: Since I’ve been sixteen, I’ve been locked up on three
separate occasions. And altogether I’ve spent almost ten months in jail.
Ashley: I was in shackles and cuffs, when I came in.
Justin: The cells is horrible.
Ashley: The walls are just made up of concrete bricks. And it's
real cold in there.
Justin: There are bugs are all over the place, the toilets got
no toilet seat on them, they're dirty.
Ashley: The bed are so uncomfortable, they're like thin little
pleather mattresses and pleather pillows.
Justin: The showers are cold all the time.
Ashley: I had to sleep
with the light on cuz they make 15 minute checks.
Justin: You’re in your cell 22 hours a day, you come out for
two hours if you’re lucky.
Ashley : You have to walk in line with your head down you can't
talk with anybody
Justin: You got to fight for your blankets, your underwear,
your shirts, your socks, you got to fight for everything, there's savages in
there.
Justin: It’s horrible. It’s like the worst thing anybody can go
through. I never want to go back to jail again.
Pirro: There is no guarantee that if you are prosecuted for
the possession of these drugs that your record will be sealed. In fact, the presumption is that it will not
be sealed. Trying to get into college and explaining why you have a record, an
arrest and a conviction for drug possession is going to be very difficult for a
young person.
Addiction
Ralph: I never thought I was addicted to E, until I noticed,
started to notice, how much money I was draining from my pocket my family's
pocket. Where it started taking me, how it affected my body.
Doctor
Leshner: There has been a lot of discussion
about whether E is addicting and, of course, from a scientific point of view
that is actually a very difficult question. We do know that an increasing
number of people are coming into treatment settings saying, “I can’t get
control over my E use.” Now,
clinically, that is the definition of addicting.
Meghan: I just thought I was going to try it. You know, see
what everyone’s raving about. And, I like fell in love with it basically. But I
never thought that it would be to the point where I had to have it because I
just didn’t think I was one of those people that I saw on TV, you know. Would do anything for money just to get
drugs, I thought I had to be thirty to be a drug addict.
Michelle: I thought I was different. Then all of a sudden, things
get out of hand and it hits you, you know, and you wake up in like a hospital,
you wake up in a rehab, and you don’t know, you search for answers. And like,
why did I do this. And where was the point that it started getting like, out of
hand.
Doctor
Leshner: There’s tremendous individual
differences in how vulnerable people are to becoming addicted. Some people
become addicted very, very rapidly, other people become addicted more slowly.
Ashley: It’s so easy to just do it, and to just increase how
much drugs you do. And it’s just, you don’t really notice it, and you kinda
like deny because you don’t want yourself to know that you have a problem.
Doctor
Leshner: What’s happening in addiction is that
your brain is, of course, being changed by the drugs, and what we’ve learned is
that the areas of the brain that are changed are those responsible for your
normal motivations. So what the drug is actually doing is hijacking your
brain’s motivational systems. And drug
comes to be the top priority.
Rebecca: I was always interested in being a lawyer, and then
once I started doing drugs, forget it. I lost interest in that. I didn’t want
to be a lawyer no more.
James: Back then I didn’t care at all about school, to tell
you the truth. Be like time to go to school, and in my head is what I’m
thinking is, time to do drugs.
GET HELP
Jim: Like all of us said the same thing. I’m never gonna
wind up in rehab.
James: For me there was no way I could stop by myself.
Jim: One of the hardest realizations I had was the fact that
I had to ask for help no matter how much I didn’t want to.
Ashley: After I was in juvie for two weeks, I went back to
court and the judge mandated me to residential treatment and that's when I came
here.
Ralph: I'm with people with the same problems. This person
actually knows the exact feeling I felt, knows everything I went through, you
know it really feels good to let out your feelings.
Ashley: It not only helped me with my drug use, but it helped
me with a lot of things getting my life on track. I was way behind in school
work and now I'm all caught up.
Justin: This place has helped me a lot because now I know that
if I went on the road I was on I’m not going to go anywhere, I’m going to end
up hitting a brick wall and either ending up six feet beneath the ground or in
jail for life doing something really stupid.
John: Now that I realize when I go home I got to face
reality, and I gotta get money without selling drugs. I have to support, I have
to help my mother pay the bills, I have to get food on the table.
Justin: I can go home and I still do anything I want. I can do
anything be a lawyer, DEA agent. Whatever I want to be, you know. That’s what
keeps me going because when I go home I want to get a nice job, get a nice
house, family, you know, get a car. Just do things I never got to before when I
was on drugs. Like have fun without the drugs because you can have fun without
drugs. And this place has proved it to me.
Michelle: All this stuff, it was fun at the moment but it really
wasn’t worth all the things I put myself through.
Jim: Everyday it’s like, wow, I’ve been clean this long,
longest in my life and I can actually say that everyday I like how it sounds.
Meghan: It teaches you how to be you and not worry about what
other people think about you and not try to fit in. If you’re going to fit in,
you're gonna fit in, and if you’re not then you’re you.
Michelle: I wish I did listen to like my friends you know, that I
wasn't getting high with but like you know, my parents and stuff like that you
know, the people that really cared about me who are still here and like you
know the people that I used to get high with you know, there not here.
James: I’m a lot happier overall. A lot more alive, aware.
Everything is real to me now. It’s just not something that I made up by using
drugs. It’s not just a dream, a big drug world. Now like when things are fun,
they’re really fun. They’re the real thing.
Jim: I have to say it'd be like walking around with a
blindfold on because you have no idea what you’re getting yourself into. You
open a door, you don’t know where you’re going, you don’t what you’re doing.
You really have no idea what you’re getting yourself into. Like you have no
idea if you're ever gonna come back out of the room you just walked into
because you have no idea where you are. That’s like the best way I can put it
because that’s what happened to me.
Wrap ending
Erika
Christensen: You know in life we're faced with
difficult decisions all the time. Before you take that pill that someone offers
you, you have to think of about the consequences.
Mike: The simple fact are you don't know what you're getting,
you don't know how your body would react to the certain drugs, or a combination
for that matter. So don't think cuz
someone testes your pill or there is a familiar logo that your safe. Cuz real
ecstacy is just as harmful as laced pills.
Erika: I just say "no thanks" and then
you know, I get up on the dance floor and I'm just as crazy as everybody else
and no one knows that I'm not on something and I havin' a great time dancing.
You know, you love your friends and you trust your friends and you want to be
like your friends, but you really got to think for yourself. Getting off drugs can be really hard
especially if you try it alone. So if you or any of your friends are having a
problem with drugs and you need help don't be afraid to ask for it. You can
call this free hotline. The number is 1-800-999-9999. The nine line. It's open
24/7 and all the calls are confidential. Also if you have any questions about
drugs you can call this number. It's 1-800-662-help. That also open 24/7 and all the calls are private. So nobody is
gonna know who you are. So if your not happy, if your having trouble in school
are with your family or whatever you can get help. Because drugs are not the
answer to any of those problems. They’re only gonna hide your problems for a
little while and then make a bunch more.
Song
End of Show