Methadone: The Latest Teen Threat

By Jaclyn O'Malley • jomalley@rgj.com

The last thing 15-year-old Austin Riley Jones told his mother was “good night” and that he loved her.“I love you, too, Bubba,” Cathy Bandoni told her son, who had spent the day cleaning to raise $20 to take his girlfriend to the movies and then had dinner with his parents.But the next morning, Jan. 18, Austin did not wake up. Bandoni and her husband, Davy Jones, discovered their only son died in his sleep of a methadone overdose.
Austin’s parents have teamed up with local anti-drug coalition members to warn the public about the dangers of methadone — a prescription painkiller that authorities say is cheap, accessible and increasingly has been causing fatal overdoses.
Local drug abuse task force officials will be meeting Monday to discuss ideas for a public anti-methadone abuse campaign that will also extend throughout the school district. They are hoping it will be as successful as the recent anti-methamphetamine efforts in Washoe County that authorities say contributed to a decline in its use.
Bandoni and Jones learned that the two tiny methadone pills their 6-foot, 200-pound son took after a party the night before created a deadly combination with his routine depression medication.
Washoe County Medical Examiner Dr. Ellen Clark ruled Austin’s death accidental and found that he died of acute combined methadone and fluoxetine intoxication. He had a prescription for the latter drug. Clark described him in her autopsy report as a “naive user,” meaning that deadly dose likely was his first time trying it.
“Our son died on two methadone tablets,” Bandoni said. “He didn’t know what he was getting himself into. This is just so shocking. I never thought in a million years this would happen to us.”
“It wasn’t a handful of pills he took, he took two and was just experimenting,” said Jones, who memorialized his son by having a tattoo of his face etched into his arm. “It’s insane. There is no forgiveness to this drug. It’s deadly. Austin had the whole world in front of him.”
Sgt. Mac Venzon, who heads the regional Street Enforcement Team, which targets drug and prostitution activity, said more local youths are experimenting with prescription drugs in general and believe they are safer than drugs purchased on the street.
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“We’ve done a really good job at shining a bad light on methamphetamine and illicit drugs, but we haven’t done enough to warn kids about the dangers of prescription drugs,” he said. “The problem is people just don’t understand it. This is definitely a trend parents need to be aware of.”
Because methadone is slow to metabolize, its effects are not felt until hours later. Experts say a toxic level can be achieved by taking multiple pills because the user doesn’t immediately feel a “high.”
The drug is best known for curbing heroin addictions by blocking receptors in the brain that make people crave the drug. When combined with other drugs or alcohol, methadone’s effects multiply, and can lead to respiratory and heart failure.
Venzon said methadone pills are sold on the street for about $10 a tablet, compared to about $40 a pill for Oxycontin. He said more prescriptions of methadone have been written over the years, making it more accessible. The Drug Enforcement
Administration said that from 1998 to 2006 that number of prescriptions increased by 700 percent.
“It’s easier for kids to get these pills from a medicine cabinet than them trying to get drugs or alcohol,” Bandoni said. “This is something that needs to be talked about. Austin probably thought he was just popping a couple pain pills.”
Clark said she has seen an increasing trend of methadone used as a party drug for teens and that methadone poisoning deaths in the county have risen. Statistics were not available at press time.
“We don’t want to put out an alarm and say this is another epidemic, but we want the community to be aware about methadone dangers before another child overdoses and dies,” said Kevin Quint, executive director of the local anti-drug coalition Join Together Northern Nevada. “We want to use what happened to Austin as a prevention opportunity so this drug will be kept out of the wrong hands.”
Katherine Loudon, head of the substance abuse and sex education programs in Washoe County School District, said that some parents don’t know what methadone is or consider that their prescriptions will be stolen by their children or visitors.
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“Parents don’t always keep track of their medications,” she said. “And then you have to be aware that they may be going over to grandma’s or their uncle’s house and getting the pills somewhere else. I’ve heard Realtors say that people are showing up for open houses, walking through and stealing prescriptions.”
Kids think prescription drugs are sexy, compared with street drugs, such as methamphetamine, which can rot teeth and skin and cause hair to fall out, said Denise Everett, executive director of the Quest Counseling and Consulting Co., which provides counseling and drug testing for adolescents in Reno.
“More kids are getting suckered into taking a prescription drug when they would never take a street drug because of a false perception that it’s safe, and they can’t overdose,” she said. “If you have a variety of pills at your home, your child doesn’t have to drive, doesn’t have to spend money or really put in any effort other than opening the cabinet door.
“Families unknowingly have a smorgasbord of drugs for their kids,” Everett said.Adolescent psychiatrist Edward Lynum said methadone has unique properties that make it much more dangerous than other medications. He said it’s likely that youth are lured to using it because of its availability and low cost.
Lynum said deaths typically occur when teens take the drug at evening parties, take too many because they don’t feel high and die during sleep.
“It’s easy to misjudge and misuse,” he said. “It also takes days to disappear from your body. So if you take a dose to get high, and feel nothing, you might take it again days later with some alcohol. It all adds up, and you can stop breathing, even if you don’t even feel the effect of methadone.”
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