ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, October 29, 1996 TAG: 9610290067
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MATT CHITTUM STAFF WRITER
MEMO: ***CORRECTION***
Published correction ran on October 30, 1996.
The name of the mother of a Botetourt County boy who died from
ingesting antifreeze was incorrectly spelled in Tuesday's paper. Her
name is Kathryn Weddington.
BRIAN MITCHELL,16, had been about to enter a treatment program for his "huffing" addiction. His mother wants to raise awareness of inhalant abuse.
For more than a year, Brian Mitchell had been inhaling or "huffing" common household products - air fresheners, cleaning products, gasoline - for a quick, cheap high.
Last week - just before he was supposed to begin a treatment program - the 16-year-old Lord Botetourt High School student went too far. He drank several small doses of antifreeze he got from the trunk of a friend's car that was broken down in the driveway of his parents' farmhouse.
Wednesday night, after watching Brian slip further away into a coma until his brain activity stopped altogether, the family gave permission to turn off his life support.
In the wake of her son's death, Katryn Weddington is resolute about one thing. No matter how much it hurts, she wants to tell her son's story, "so that Brian's death won't be such a waste."
Her last promise to her son was to raise the level of awareness about inhalant abuse. It's a problem experts say is nothing new, but is becoming common among younger and younger kids.
"It's kind of a gateway drug," said Pam Melton, a counselor with the Changes substance abuse clinic in Roanoke. Kids with serious addictions often start with "huffing" - spraying a substance into a bag or cloth and breathing it deeply.
Monday, Weddington settled into her sofa and - with remarkable composure and focus - told the story of how her "freckle-faced" boy with "shining Irish eyes" brought his life to a close.
She traces the start of Brian's problems to her divorce from his father when Brian was 8. Brian took the divorce hard, but kept it inside, she said.
The hurt didn't manifest itself until three years ago, when Brian failed the eighth grade.
She sent him to a military school in Valley Forge, Pa., where he got in trouble for smoking cigarettes. He started his second year there on probation, but just a few weeks after he arrived, he was expelled for smoking.
Weddington now knows that smoking was the smallest of Brian's problems at Valley Forge. That's when he started using inhalants.
Two months ago, Brian became so consumed by his need for inhalants that he confessed it to his mother.
"It was Russian roulette, and he knew it, but he couldn't help himself," Weddington said.
One of the brutal ironies of inhalants is that kids often use them as starter drugs because they are easily accessible, yet they are among the most lethal.
The most common are gasoline, butane found in lighters, and nitrous-oxide used in whipped-cream cans, according to Melton, the counselor at Changes. But kids might spray anything into a paper bag and try to breathe it.
An exacerbating factor is the "adolescent bravado" so typical of teen-agers, said Roanoke drug abuse counselor Ted Petrocci.
Seventeen percent of teens have tried some form of inhalant at least once, according to the latest National Institute on Drug Abuse study. Experts agree that the great majority of kids who have drug abuse problems bad enough to warrant treatment start out huffing.
The effects of long-term abuse are devastating. Adolescents who use inhalants typically have significantly smaller brains than their peers who don't abuse drugs, according to H. Patel, a Roanoke physician who works with Changes. Liver and kidney damage are typical. Seizures are common, and when death occurs, it's usually from heart failure.
Of late, local drug counselors say, inhalant use has become more prominent among kids as young as 10 or 11.
"I see people sitting in class sniffing Wite-Out," said Brian's 12-year-old brother, Colin, a seventh-grader at William Clark Middle School.
Weddington tried to get Brian into an inpatient treatment program, but her Trigon Blue Cross Blue Shield policy didn't cover inhalant addiction, she said.
She turned to Botetourt County's Family Assessment Planning Team, arguing that Brian needed to be in an inpatient program to be insulated from substances he might inhale.
"There's no way you can childproof your home against inhalants," she said. Even if she gets them all out, he only has to make it as far as the nearest gas station or convenience store.
The planning team agreed to provide funding for an outpatient program at the Changes clinic.
On Oct. 21, Brian was to start the Changes program, but he came home from school pale and feverish.
"We could tell he was loaded on something," Weddington said. It was unusual, because inhalants usually generate only a short-lived high of a minute or two. Brian said he'd smoked some pot, so Weddington put him to bed thinking he'd sleep it off and start his treatment the next day - last Tuesday.
At 1 a.m., a smoke alarm went off because Brian was smoking a cigarette in the kitchen.
He told his mother he was scared and asked if he could sleep in his parents' bedroom, so they made up a makeshift bed for him.
When Weddington woke, Brian had vomited on himself and was unresponsive.
In the hospital, he couldn't speak. "He talked with his eyes," Weddington said. "There was a lot of fear.''
Tuesday afternoon, he slipped into a coma. Doctors tried in vain to use dialysis to cleanse Brian's blood.
Though he never admitted drinking the antifreeze, doctors found 12 tablespoons of it in his system. A third of that would have been lethal. Weddington's only explanation for why Brian drank the stuff was that somebody must have told him it would give him something he would try just about anything for - a buzz.
By Wednesday morning, Brian had no brain activity, and his organs were beginning to fail. After Brian's father arrived from New Orleans, the family members made their peace, and a priest said some final words. At 9 p.m., Brian's life support was turned off.
"It was such an honor," Weddington said, "to be there and watch him go to heaven."
But hindsight has been cruel.
Looking back, she realizes the signs of Brian's problem were there even before he cried out for help.
There were the aerosol cans she found in the bathroom with their nozzles missing. "We would find these lighters with their tops off," she said, picking up the pink Bic next to her pack of Marlboro Lights.
Then, there was his behavior. He was sleeping all the time, and his temper had grown short. "There was a violence in him we'd never seen before," she said.
But, like many parents, she didn't know the signs. That's a problem she wants to fix.
"My part of healing is to do this," she said - to educate kids and parents about inhalants.
"It's a selfish reason; it's for me to get through this," she admits. "But Brian would want this, too."
LENGTH: Long : 135 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: CINDY PINKSTON/Staff. Katryn Weddington holds a pictureby CNBof her son Brian Mitchell, 16, who died last week after ingesting
antifreeze. color. KEYWORDS: FATALITY