By Cate Lecuyer
BEVERLY — Jon Doherty began using OxyContin when he was 12.
"Young kids are hearing about it," he said. "OxyContin is a household name."
"Doctor shopping" — getting prescriptions from a variety of physicians — was easy. He got addicted, and got arrested.
"They think it's more important to punish people that are 'bad' rather than helping," Doherty said. He wanted to quit, but rehab and the Scared Straight Program weren't working.
"I think I was high when I went to Scared Straight," he said of a program that lets juvenile offenders visit jail to see what it's like.
Through his father — not the school district, not the police, not the courts — he found out about Beverly's Recovery High School.
"They don't divert people to recovery high schools," Doherty said. "I was never once asked by police when I was arrested."
Now, he's a junior there and drug-free. It's an option he wishes he had know about from the beginning and something that needs more awareness moving forward, he said.
Doherty and 2007 graduate Alyssa Dedrick told their stories on a panel last year before public officials, health care specialists and lawmakers during a hearing organized by the Massachusetts OxyContin and Heroin Commission.
Their testimony, along with that of many others, provided the basis of a 71-page report released earlier this month. It describes OxyContin use in the state as "an epidemic" and highlights support for recovery high schools as one of the ways to fight a growing substance abuse problem.
"We were asked to be there, and you could tell the people we were speaking to on the board genuinely cared about our responses," Dedrick said. "And you don't get that a lot when you're a recovering drug addict."
The commission recommended continuing support of the three recovery high schools, in Beverly, Boston and Springfield, as well as increasing in the number of schools in the state.
Recovery high schools were established in 2006 with state aid. In this year's budget, new legislation requires public schools to pay a per-pupil fee for the students they send there, in an effort to make the program self-sustaining.
On the panel, Dedrick stressed the importance of drug education at an early age and the need for more adolescent treatment centers.
When she was about 16 and trying to get help, her options were limited, she said.
"I was too old and mature for younger treatment centers, but not old enough for the 60-year-olds who still don't want help," she said.
Recovery high schools are effective, she added, because students choose to go there.
The statement was echoed by Sen. Steven Tolman of Boston, who said 92 percent of young people who go through treatment and return to mainstream schools start using drugs or alcohol again within two weeks.
"The young people bravely shared their deeply personal stories and eloquently conveyed the need to recognize this epidemic, the need for proper treatment and how integral recovery high schools were in their recovery," he said in a prepared statement.
Tolman said recovery high schools give students "a chance to succeed."
Staff writer Cate Lecuyer can be reached at clecuyer@salem news.com.
