Editor’s Note: This week’s column features a letter we received recently from a young inmate at the Mountain View Youth Development Center in Charleston, a state-run correctional facility for juvenile offenders. We found the letter so compelling and honest – and so troubling – we passed it on to Bangor psychologist Jack Keefe for his response.

I have been reading the “Finding a Fix” articles for a while now and it really helps to hear what has worked for other drug addicts. I’m still working to find what works for me but I thought that maybe my story would help someone else who still suffers.

I am currently in Mountain View Youth Development Center in Charleston and am 18 years old. I have been here since I was 17 years old and have been released twice to two different rehabs, Day One and Wellspring. Both programs were great, so I guess it’s me who wasn’t ready.

A year after my father was sentenced to 47 years in prison for murdering my stepmother, I started using drugs. I was only 12 years old. I started small but my addiction progressed quickly. By the time I was 15 years old I was injecting heroin every day, all day. My friends were all much older drug addicts. I was hardly ever at home, and I quit going to school. My only focus was my next fix and it didn’t matter how I got it. I stole from family, friends, and people I didn’t even know. I was a liar and a master con and still so young.

Getting committed to two years in Mountain View is probably what saved my life. When I got here, I was mad at the world and only wanted to use more, even though just the day before I had overdosed and nearly died. I found out I had hepatitis C and so I decided maybe it was time to change. Almost two years later, I am hep. C free thanks to the treatment.

I have had two drug relapses since 2004 but haven’t given up yet. I just want to tell people that it does get better if you can find hope. I am due to be released in April. I’ve never been more nervous.

– Anonymous in Charleston

To my courageous young Anonymous:

I’ve been given the opportunity to respond to your letter. I’m writing this to you as well as to an ever-increasing number of people who find themselves in the grip of drug addiction. While your drug of choice happens to be heroin, the vast majority of the recent increase in drug addiction is in prescription drug abuse. And what follows applies to all who seek to recover from addiction.

Understand that your addiction has kidnapped most of your life. The group of people you got high with became a very unhealthy family for you. The cycle of “find the drug, buy-or-steal the drug, use the drug, swear you’ll never use the drug again, need the drug, find the drug” becomes more involving than any academic or career path will ever be.

At a physiological level, you have altered the chemistry of the opiate receptors in such a way that few activities will give you the level of satisfaction and pleasure they did before the introduction of heroin into your bloodstream. It is hard work to find the small joys in everyday life again.

At an emotional level, heroin provides a temporary cure for whatever negative emotions you face. But that same cure costs you the ability to cope normally with the stresses and hassles that other people hardly notice. Now that you have quit, all of your problems will seem huge, almost insurmountable. And there’s always the siren call of the drug, quietly promising to take away the pain and misery, if only for a little while.

But you have learned the hard way that drugs tell lies, and those that use them are just helpless marionettes, dancing on strings.

You must be ruthlessly honest with yourself. For the rest of your life, but particularly in the first hours and days after your release, every decision you make will lead you either toward or away from the addiction that put you in prison.

Your first and biggest challenge is to leave your drug-addicted friends behind. Reconnecting with people who still use greatly increases the likelihood that you will use again.

Do not ever think you can stay clean on your own. You did not become an addict on your own. You had a series of human beings who let you down, took advantage of you and failed to protect you. Now you need people who can offer you wisdom, compassion and support, without some manipulative gain.

Whatever path to recovery you choose, it needs to provide support and acceptance for you, while also holding you accountable for your choices and actions. Some people embrace support groups such as Narcotics Anonymous, others find religious belief and worship sustaining in times of crisis. Still others are able to build or rebuild close relationships that support them and also hold them accountable.

Not every addict does well with therapy, but with the losses and traumas in your young life, I’d recommend it. Interview a few therapists until you find someone that feels right to you. Any good therapist lives to work with people who are honest and courageous and motivated, as you clearly are.

Use every piece of help you can find. There are medications that can help, such as Suboxone, which will reduce your cravings without the druggy feeling some folks get from methadone. Another drug, naltrexone, prevents any opiates you use from taking effect.

I read your letter to a client, a young man who was addicted to methadone, which he was buying off the street. He never went to prison, but endured some significant hardship as a result of his addiction. He’s now in college, in love, and has been clean for more than a year.

“Tell her it’s worth it, all the work,” he said. “To wake up and look forward to the day, living clean, that’s the best high of all.”

Please join our weekly conversation about Maine’s substance abuse problem. We welcome comments or questions from all perspectives. Letters may be mailed to Bangor Daily News, P.O. Box 1329, Bangor 04401. Send e-mail contributions to findingafix@bangordailynews.net. Column editor Meg Haskell may be reached at (207) 990-8291 or mhaskell@bangordailynews.net.