Young Addict's Advice: Don't do it!

Thirteen-year-old Morgan Dapo is an admitted drug addict. But her drug of choice isn’t bought on the streets. It’s found on the shelves of every drug and department store around.

“They call it Skittles, Triple C, DXM, or Red Devils,” explained her mom, Barbara Paige. “Hundreds of kids are doing this.”

When she was only 11 years old, Morgan, a former student at Ashworth Middle School, began taking massive dosages of Coricidin, which contains a huge amount of dextromethorphan, a narcotic derivative found in more than 80 over-the-counter cough medications.

A growing number of young people are becoming addicted to the hallucinogenic effects caused by taking as much as 12 times the recommended dose.

“I felt like I was floating on a white fluffy cloud,” Morgan said. “One time this bush turned into a person with leaves and it was telling me a story.”

But it wasn’t always fun, her mom interjected.

“When she was high, she was semi-agreeable,” Ms. Paige said. “But when she was coming down or couldn’t get any pills, she become violent and out of control.”

Ms. Paige said she suffered the wrath of her daughter’s violent outbursts many times.

“She’d hit me or throw things at me,” she said. “There are holes in our walls where she threw things across the room.”

But Ms. Paige said she did not know what was causing her daughter’s erratic behavior.

“I thought she was being a typical, hormonal pre-teen,” she said. “I didn’t know anything about the pills until much later.”

Morgan’s journey began when she agreed to run away from home with a friend, she said.

“She wanted to run away, so I went with her,” Morgan explained. “We met up with her boyfriend who had stole some pills and we took them.”

Dalton Police officers found the girls walking along the street asking for rides.

“She was stoned out of her mind,” Ms. Paige said. “I took her straight to the doctor for a drug test, but it didn’t show anything. The doctor said she was fine.”

Ms. Paige said she was completely puzzled by her daughter’s drugged-like behavior, but later learned that Coricidin does not show up on the newer drug tests. It wasn’t until her fiancé Billy Mitchell discovered an empty Coricidin package that they knew with what they were dealing.

“I had found these empty packages all over the yard, but thought it was just from people littering,” Ms. Paige said. “But after he found that package in her room, I knew something wasn’t right.”

A more thorough search of Morgan’s bedroom produced even more empty packages.

“She had hid them under her bed, under the carpet, everywhere,” Ms. Paige said. “She cut a hole in the window screen so that she could push them outside.” Morgan was able to obtain the pills through her friends at school or by shoplifting them herself.

“I took her picture to every store in town asking them to watch her closely if she came in,” Ms. Paige said. “But she was just a cute, skinny, innocent-looking child and nobody saw her as threat to steal cold medicine.”

Morgan again ran away from home and was found by Calhoun Police.

“I knew if I took her home that she would go out of control, so I called an ambulance to come get her and take her to the hospital,” Ms. Paige said. “Morgan broke the antenna on the ambulance while they were struggling to get her in and after she got to the hospital, she broke out of her restraints.”

The effects of the drug led to problems at school, her mom added.

“Her grades went down and she was suspended several times,” she said. “One time the school sent her to the hospital where she had her stomach pumped.”

Because of her conduct at school, Morgan was placed on informal probation, which ultimately led to her being sent to a rehabilitation facility in September. The result of taking as many as 13 pills at a time led Morgan to also experiment with alcohol, methamphetamine, and marijuana.

“When we went to court, her own lawyer recommended that she go to rehab or she’d be found dead in a ditch,” Ms. Paige said.

When the judge entered his ruling for Morgan to enter rehab, Morgan said she couldn’t believe it.

“I was mad,” she said. “They put me in handcuffs and put me in a holding cell.”

But the mad feeling didn’t last for long, she said.

“They didn’t search me very good and I still had some pills in my pocket,” she said. “So I took them.”

She spent one week at the Youth Detention Center in Rome before being transferred to a group home in Decatur.

Currently she is staying at a rehabilitation center in Marietta and is determined to turn her life around. She holds the distinction of being the youngest person ever to be treated there.

“When I first got to rehab, I was constantly thinking of ways to get pills in,” she said. “The first two months were really hard.”

But now she’s learning how to have fun without drugs. She is also learning about responsibility and respect.

“Her attitude is completely different now,” her mom said. “She has finished her seventh grade requirements and is almost finished with the eighth grade.”

Her treatment is expected to be completed in June or July.

A 12-step program similar to the one used by Alcoholics Anonymous has aided Morgan in kicking her addiction. “She’s back to being a normal teenager,” her mom said.

For other kids, Morgan has a simple message concerning Coricidin. “Don’t do it,” she said. ”I wasn’t told that it was addictive and it’s not worth it.”

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[AlexArchie]

11...ha

[hitmang11]

This might be proof that the psychological effects of high doses of DXM might be a little so much for such a young person, who hasnt yet developed mentally or pyshically. That might explain her crazy, out of control behaviour.

[TODD BLANKENSHIP]

“I felt like I was floating on a white fluffy cloud,” Morgan said. “One time this bush turned into a person with leaves and it was telling me a story.”

DEAR GOD THESE KIDS ARE RETARDED

haha remember the 20/20 show where the kid said he felt like a fetal pig

[AbsurdityOfLife]

I used to live in Calhoun, for about 10 years; thoes kids ARE fucked up, and it has nothing to do with DXM. Calhoun is a small, fairly inbred Georgia carpet mill town. This is the place I first saw people huffing gasoline out of a washing machine

[Kaiserin]

[/QUOTE]which contains a huge amount of dextromethorphan, narcotic derivative found in more than 80 over-the-counter cough medications. [QUOTE]

Is that why is says non narcotic on the bottle? Honestly the word narcotic has no business being in that article whatsoever. I upsets me how the media uses words like that to shine a bad light on the substance.