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BILL is 16, pale and a bit withdrawn; his father is a New York City librarian. "There were no big problems with my family. The main thing is that the friends I was with—there was so much drugs that everybody was using them. My friends would say let's get high. I didn't want to say no, so I got high with them. I'd just say all right. I got started through drinking and then smoking reefers. I started heroin when I was 14. I wasn't really strung out [badly addicted]. I wouldn't get sick and upset. I used to take money from my father's drawer and ask for money on the street, some change sometimes. I used to get heroin from anywhere. I'd get it in my building, the next building, on the street corners. I got arrested with my friends. We were shooting up in the hallway, and a cop came along and busted us.
"My sister used to tell me all the time that I was stupid. My father, he's 37 or 38. He used to talk to me when he found out; he used to sit down for about 45 minutes or an hour and talk to me and then I'd say O.K., I'm not going to use it no more. He used to touch me sometimes, and I would cry. Once I left the house and went back out, it might be in my mind for a little while not to use drugs, but once they showed it to me and I had money, I'd just say well, I'll get high. Right after my father talked to me, I'd go right back out and get high."
Bill's mother confesses: "We knew nothing. Billy used to come in after a high, but he would act animated and alert. A couple of times we found him passed out on the couch. We just figured he was tired. He could have stayed right on the couch and died of an overdose. We wouldn't have known." Adds his father: "Last summer, we thought Billy was on something. We hoped it was pills or pot. What if it's heroin? What can you do then? You just kind of wish it away. Now I feel as if I have nothing left."
JEFFREY, 19, slight and almost frail, started on marijuana at 15 and went through LSD and amphetamines before he got into heroin at 18. "I started on smack exactly on the third anniversary of the first time I smoked pot. I'd never stuck a needle in my arm before, and I was petrified. I didn't know what to expect. A friend hit us up. For me, it was a thrill thing. I spent whole weekends hitting up. I was enjoying it more and more. I started hitting up once a day, and a couple of months later I started shooting two and three times a day.
"It's not the high with heroin. It's that rush for the first minute, when it hits your bloodstream. It's one minute of heaven, that first jolt. Right after, you feel good. In two or three hours you get nervous, wondering where your next fix is coming from. I started begging, doing anything. All my time was spent raising money for a fix."
Except for marijuana, Jeffrey has now been clean—off drugs—for several months. "Heroin is a death trip," he says today. "I really enjoyed it. But once you get the habit, you're in trouble. One good friend is in the hospital with an $80-a-day habit. Another is almost dead from hepatitis. Two others I know, one a girl, died from overdoses. Every time you stick that needle in your arm, you're playing with your life."