For someone so young, she has seen the seamier side of life and has come through the hard times a better person.

      Now she wants to help kids stay away from the drug scene.

      "This town is flooded. Marshall has a huge problem," said the 16-year-old Marshall High School junior who spoke on the condition of anonymity. For purposes of this story, she is called Heather.

      "I could get drugs in five minutes," Heather said. "Parents are in denial. Just because their kids are getting good grades, they assume the kids are not on drugs. Kids are using cocaine and marijuana."

      Heather, a bright, forthright young woman sat on the couch in her mother's living room recently while her mother, "Hope," a divorced 44-year-old Marshall resident, sat in a chair nearby. They both agreed to talk about how drugs have affected their lives.

      Heather began using at the age of 12. She smoked cigarettes, then marijuana. She used marijuana for a year-and-a-half before trying other drugs.

      "I thought it would be a cool experience," she said.

      Since then, she has used pot, crack, cocaine, acid, opium, and other drugs. Sometimes she partied in Minneapolis, but she said the same drugs are available in Marshall.

      Heather prostituted herself in exchange for drugs. Luckily, she did not get pregnant or get a sexually-transmitted disease, she said.

      "All the sex was unprotected," she said.

      Heather's school life was affected. In her freshman year, she flunked all her classes. She was disrespectful, missed curfews and did not call to say where she was, said her mother. Then she began to stay away from home.

      "She left home on a Friday night," Hope said. "After a day-and-a-half, I reported her missing."

      Heather said she ran away from home 13 times and once from a treatment center.

      "It started to affect my job," Hope said. "I didn't know where she was. I was calling her friends. The police knew exactly whom she was with. They were usually able to locate her within an hour."

      Heather said she liked methamphetamine the best.

"I felt like I was on the top of the world when I used it," she said. "I would be up for days."

      Heather said meth manufacturers use rat poison as filler.

      "So many chemicals are laced in it, a person on the street gets 10 percent of the real stuff," she said.

      Her reputation at school suffered.

      "If someone called me a whore or a slut, I would say I was going to be the best whore there was," she said. "Now, it's like nobody says anything to me like that."

      Heather was sent to two short-term treatment programs. After one 30-day program, she was using again in two weeks.

      Her solution came, finally, when she was sent to a long-term girl's ranch.

      "(It was the) best thing that's ever happened to me in my entire life," Heather said.

      "It was tough love," her mother said. "But it was worth it."

      Hope said the girls were in that facility for a variety of reasons.

      "Guns, truancy, alcohol," she said. "One girl was 12 and had a baby."

      The girls learned responsibility at the ranch, including taking care of horses. They had to do chores to receive privileges such as phone calls.

      Heather has been clean since September 2000.

      "She made up two years (of schooling) in nine months," Hope said.

      Since returning to Marshall she has avoided temptation, Heather said.

      Heather said she now has self-determination, integrity and self-advocacy.

      Where once she was a follower, she has learned to stand on her own, her mother said.

      "If the thought (of using drugs) comes, I think of the consequences. I'm afraid of drugs. I know what they did to me," Heather said. "It would be worse if I did them now. I could die soon if I did it, you know?"

      Heather has a strong support system around her now ― she is in contact with a psychologist and a social worker.

      The psychologist said that Heather is immature because she started drugs at such a young and critical stage of her emotional development.

      "Marijuana stunts their maturity," Hope said.

      It will take four or five years for her to make up those lost years, Hope said.

      "Marijuana is the dumbest you could ever use," Heather said. "It's a downer. You're depressed, lazy, tired, fat. It made me feel like I was nothing."

      If Heather sees a friend trying drugs, she reads them the riot act, her mother said.

      "One of my friends started using crack," Heather said. "I finally dropped her."

      The new, drug-free Heather keeps busy.

      "I work a lot, go to school, go bowling, drive around, hang out, watch movies," she said.

      Heather plans to attend college and become a psychologist.

      "I have high morals, high standards, high values," she said.

      What should parents do if their kids are abusing drugs?

      "Send them away," she said.

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