Elkhart drug-rehab facilities lack visibility, leaders sayBy Teresa AuchThe (Elkhart) Truth

ELKHART – Dawn Waggoner wanted her son to get into trouble with the law.
The way she saw it, being put on probation was the only way Chris Waggoner could get a referral into rehab to help kick his drug habit.
“It’s pretty bad when you want your kid to get nailed in court,” she said.
She accepts the 15-year-old would have found a way to use drugs, but she believes he might not have died April 19 if she had been able to find him help.
Programs are available to help parents in Dawn Waggoner’s situation, but officials say more resources, improved communication and better advertising are needed.
Chris had dabbled with marijuana, Adderall and magic mushrooms in the past, his mother said. But his problem came to a head April 10 when he and a friend took jimson weed, a legal, naturally growing drug that causes hallucinations and a faster heartbeat.
Police had taken him into custody because he was aggressive and trying to break into a car that he thought was his friend’s. They released him to his school, Life Program at the Elkhart Area Career Center, where administrators noticed he was high.
The hospital wouldn’t keep him, though, his mother said, because his blood and urine tests came back clear.
Jimson weed does not usually appear in normal tests, said Ken Norman, manager of addiction programs at Oaklawn, one of the clinics where Waggoner tried to get her son admitted. Without a referral from the courts, police or hospital, Oaklawn couldn’t take him, she said.
A medical facility in another city finally agreed to admit him, but only long enough for him to come down from his high, she said. He was discharged after a day, but the hallucinations continued. He kept looking for a cigarette he never had, chased around a dog that wasn’t there and at one point didn’t recognize her, his mother said.
Chris died 10 days later from an accidental overdose of methadone.
“I figured it was just a matter of time until he wanted a bigger high,” his mother said.
Waggoner says she had tried getting her son help for a year – asking police, doctors, family and friends for referrals.
But she did not learn of any programs offering help with drug addictions.
Richard Pedler, president of Recovery Journey in Elkhart, which offers counseling to juveniles, said that is one of the problems with counseling programs in the county.
“The public is not aware of the resources available,” he said.
An umbrella group, which the county lacks, could help distribute information to the public about where to find help, he said.
The group would have other benefits.
The county has the resources to help adolescents battle drug abuse, Pedler said, but the programs and centers lack a central group that could be used to come together.
“The treatment options are fragmented to the point that I’m not sure anybody is really sure what anyone else is doing,” he said.
Cathy Blum, an Elkhart drug-abuse counselor, says more programs are needed, though.
“The programs that we have here are good, but there just aren’t enough of them,” she said.
Clyde Riley, principal of Elkhart Community Schools’ alternative programs, said his program has about an 80 percent success rate, but it can only help so many people.
“We can’t accommodate all the kids who need to and want to be in a program like this,” he said. “We have to turn people away.”