Inhalant abuse in Maine: Part 2

    In last week’s article inhalant abuse was discussed. The following is an excerpt from an article printed in the Morning Sentinel on March 9, 2008. The article presents the story of Brian Robert Buzzell II of Waterville.
    Brian Robert Buzzell II of Waterville has permanent memory loss and slurred speech as a result of huffing. Now 21, he first used inhalants at 13. He and eight schoolmates bought whipping cream cans at local supermarkets and used them to get high [in between classes].
    "I was like a vegetable. When I'd go into my next class, I'd stare out into space. I wouldn't do the work."
    Buzzell, who stopped huffing at 19, said while he was getting high he would have sudden nose bleeds, frequent headaches and blurriness in his eyes. "I could hear something in my head. It felt like my brain cells were dying — a popping sound. I was 15 when I started noticing memory lapses.”
    Now, he will be in the middle of a conversation and forget why he placed the call. "It happens all the time," he said. His mother, Dawn Buzzell of Fairfield, took him to doctors when his memory problems surfaced. "A doctor at the emergency room said I was killing my brain cells." Chest X-rays showed his lungs were congested from heavy smoking and huffing. Withdrawal from inhalant use was difficult, Buzzell said. Symptoms included shakes, cold and sweating, vomiting and diarrhea.
    As bad as those side effects are, things could have been worse for Buzzell and his friends. Annually, there are 1,000 estimated deaths in the United States from inhalant abuse. In Maine, inhalants are related to roughly one to two deaths about every two years, according to the state Medical Examiner's Office in Augusta. "The number of deaths is probably an underestimate," said Portland's poison control center director Dr. Karen Simone. "Unless you see evidence right where the death is, it is often unclear why they died…" she said.
    Most inhalant deaths are caused by irregular heart rhythms or "Sudden Sniffing Death" and explosions or fires caused by vapors escaping in a small enclosed area, she said.
    For Buzzell, things began to turn around about one year ago, after he took a 20-week course on anger management with licensed counselors Maxine Wolph-Johnson and Donnajean Pohlman at Anger Management in Waterville.
    "I've never had a kid admit to me they are addicted to inhalants," said Wolph-Johnson, who had been a substance abuse counselor for 16 years at Lawrence. "What I have seen is that people now in their 20s are telling me, in retrospect, they were badly addicted to inhalants," she said of clients like Buzzell.
    David Aho, clinical director of Phoenix Academy of Maine in Augusta, a residential treatment center for adolescents, said huffing has an affect on brain function, especially [in] adolescents. Kids' decision-making abilities, reason and judgment are affected, he said. "That is why we have some healthy, good kids who do something dumb, get busted or killed. That has a lot to do with that brain development."
    At Lawrence, Buzzell's addictive behavior did not escape notice. "I got caught being high quite a bit — a lot of in-house suspension and detention," he said. His treatment was strictly punitive. He was not referred to a counselor. Instead, he was put in a small detention room at school with about 20 other kids, to do his school work. "It was horrible. If I didn't do it (work), I got longer and longer sentences. I did the ninth grade three times," he said.
    Phoenix Academy director Aho said addiction is the most democratic process there is. "It doesn't matter how smart, how rich, how good looking, how fat or thin. Addiction grabs on to whoever it wants," he said. "There is no valid profile. People who think kids are never going to abuse, because they aren't the kinds of kids who do that are mistaken. Parents can't rely on that," he said.
    Huffers are just as often girls as boys. "Females had significantly higher rates of lifetime use of inhalants, but no significant different existed between genders, according to the 2006 drug and alcohol survey…
Huffers typically experiment with other drugs. During his high school years, Buzzell said he had also smoked pot and drank alcohol.
    "I would suspect that this (inhalant) abuse is one of the more difficult symptoms to find. In the middle school, we see more of that; at high school, there's alcohol and prescription drugs," said Skowhegan High School substance abuse counselor Dan Riley. Sadly, this is also the case in Aroostook County.
    What can you do? Participate in a free online inhalant abuse training for parents. Contact ASAP to get information about how to access the training – 521-2408.
    This article was brought to you by Aroostook Substance Abuse Prevention. For more information about ASAP and its prevention efforts contact Clare Desrosiers, project director at 521-2408.