Going From Being A Portland State XC Runner To A Heroin Junkie In Two Years

No big deal but its Crater High.

Its too bad the PSU program didnt do much to help him.

Rojo, do you read oregonlive.com? how did you find this article so fast?

What a nightmare. This is like something out of Requiem for a Dream.

rojo wrote:

The one thing that I found odd about the article was there was no mention of his family. I've heard it's very hard on parents for a child to be on drugs but I just found it odd they weren't mentioned.

They may be dead. The article says,

Just two weeks ago he suffered at least his third relapse, cashing in an inheritance check for enough smack to keep him high for a day.

He has inherited some money from... someone, at any rate. Unfortunate.

A well-written piece & very much worth reading. Thanks for the link. Good looking kid too--looks like he could have been a model for A&F.

As a child of the 70's we did everything back then except heroin. We did pot, coke, LSD, uppers, downers, even mushrooms. I think I only knew of one guy who did heroin; most people were just too afraid of it. And in the 80's I ran across one or two who did it, but it was still rare--largely still unthinkable.

I don't know how it came about but somewhere along the line 'heroin-chic' happened and it became thinkable again. I imagine that the supermodels & Hollywood stars, those who made it seem cool, could afford the best rehab to kick it, but the Ryan Santanas they leave in their wake cannot.

Scratch that: the inheritance check was from his grandfather.

"The last time Santana shot up was Sept. 2, when he cashed an inheritance check from his grandfather and scored $150 worth of heroin."

I should've read the whole article.

According to the article this all transpired in less than one year, not two years. Article says he first tried heroin in November '09.

Yeah, heroin isn't something you easily bounce back from. It seems to be the drug of choice amongst the artsy rich set, but most druggies I've known stay the hell away. It's common knowledge that your life implodes after you start using heroin.

Rojo, asking people on this board not to make crass comments is like saying "please don't smoke weed" at an Ozzy Osbourne concert.

Both of my mom's brothers died as a result of heavy drug and alcohol use. Both were wonderful, smart and talented men. Drugs and alcohol are plague upon every country of the world that and are very difficult to get rid of. Hopefully this young fellow will find the end to the downward spiral and start digging himself out of it slowly. It can be a long lonely and hard road.

Yo, heroin, meth, and coke - once you start down one of those paths you might as well be walking in traffic. The drugs themselves are bad enough but the people you have to associate with to be in that crowd are nearly as bad. I worked in restaurants during undergrad and saw a lot. Some people were unlucky but most were self-destructive in some way to begin with.

rojo wrote:

A very interesting article on former Craven HS and Portland State runner Ryan Santana can be found here:

http://wweek.com/editorial/3645/14513/

The guy was a contender for the Oregon state high school crown in 2007 and started doing drugs just last fall. Now he's a homeless, drug addict with a big-time criminal record. Let's hope he can turn things around.

Please don't make crass comments without reading the article.

The one thing that I found odd about the article was there was no mention of his family. I've heard it's very hard on parents for a child to be on drugs but I just found it odd they weren't mentioned.

Anyone know Santana?

Wow, you really show your ignorance in your paragraph about parents.

As someone who is educated in counseling people in addiction recovery, I can tell you that the biggest myth about drug addiction is that it is the addict's fault.

While it is absolutely the addicts opportunity and therefore their responsibility to get clean or sober...and many drugs are super addicting... In almost all cases an addict uses due to a desire to self medicate emotional pain. What 3 year old says they want to grow up to be a prostitute and a heroin addict???

Yes in some cases there is a genetic predisposition towards addiction, and it runs in families...but so does incest and the pain and addiction incest often causes. Once it was discovered that a human beings brain physiology can be markedly changed by stress in the womb or in the first 6 years of life...the blame the addict approach withered in the early 80's.

Yeah, duh, it is painful for parents to have addicted children. The human mind is also prone to deny or minimalize personal responsibility in causing a child to turn to drugs or alcohol. The greatest cause of addiction is parental neglect or abuse.

Each situation is so different, and often subtle, so subtle that it can take years of therapy, with brilliant therapists to discover the most likely cause of an addicts descent into addiction. But it almost always has to do with neglect, abuse, or improper parenting (overly strict, rigid rules, anger addicted parents, violent parents etc.)

Generally blaming the addict never works. Tough love, isn't. Neither does coddling them. Sometimes the only thing to do is to wait them out until they decide they are done with it.

I've seen two heroin addicts who just decided one day, after decades, that they were done with the drug.

...The biggest addiction problems in the USA are alcohol (grossly under reported) and work. (Ask some Europeans.)

One would think with Dr. Drew in his second media decade you'd know more.

Sad story about Ryan but PSU is a program with many with substance abuse issues. Common knowledge that the team parties more than it trains and I know of at least a half dozen who showed for practice stoned. While most not nearly as bad a case as Santana this kinda explains why the program as a whole sux.

Oh, and the real message of the article, which is under "Editorials," is the heroism of these judges, the cost of budget cuts.

The message of Ryan's story...is basically the parents raised a kid who could be stupid and self loathing enough to say "what the f" and accept an offer of opium to smoke?

I mean, who does that?

A kid from a truly healthy family?

I cannot imagine my kids or my nephews ever taking that leap.

Parents want to blame it on a "bad influence," or a "bad element," kids from truly healthy families (or families healthy enough) do not roll the dice with an offer of "opium."

Something in this kid wanted to gamble with opium, and was open to a path of opiate addiction to get high...get out of his anxiety etc.

The addicted adult child is a delayed arriving telegram message about how healthy or not your parenting behaviors were as a parent.

These judges know that blaming the addict never works.

Unfortunately once they learn how well the high kills their psychological emotional pain...most don't want to get clean. High FEELS better.

Cigarettes are harder to kick than heroin. Most smokers want to quit, few heroin addicts want to quit.

Get Real Real wrote:

The message of Ryan's story...is basically the parents raised a kid who could be stupid and self loathing enough to say "what the f" and accept an offer of opium to smoke?

I mean, who does that?

A kid from a truly healthy family?

I cannot imagine my kids or my nephews ever taking that leap.

it must feel SO good to be judged by you!

me next! please!

this get real real character sounds like a satire of a 'counselor.'

"Santana had no criminal record before this year and says he never did drugs beyond pot in high school."

Boom, gateway drug.

rojo wrote:

The one thing that I found odd about the article was there was no mention of his family. I've heard it's very hard on parents for a child to be on drugs but I just found it odd they weren't mentioned.

Get Real Real wrote:

Wow, you really show your ignorance in your paragraph about parents.

Out of that paragraph you got "I blame the addict"?

I thought rojo was going to be offering us some sort of challenge here.

I don't care how messed up his parents were, it was still HIS choice to take that first hit. He made the decision, it's all on him.

As someone who became a raging alcoholic for a few years (20+ beers a day) because of some depression at first I did blame everyone else around me and when I finally went to alcohol classes everyone spat out the same shit you did that it wasn't my fault, other people made me do it. Horseshit, it was all on me. Yeah I was depressed because of what other people had done and wanted to feel good but there are other ways around that and it was my decision to turn to a drug. Same as this kid. Good luck to him.