“If somebody had told me, ‘In 10 years you’re going to wake up every day and wish you were dead,’ maybe I would have listened.”

Over coffee at Eat’n Park, Melissa, 26, was reflecting on a drug habit that began when she was a student at West Hempfield Middle School.

It started with a little alcohol and a little marijuana when she was 12, Melissa said. She asked that her last name not be used to protect her employment prospects.

“Before I even got out of middle school, it had progressed to acid,” she recalled. “By the time I got to high school, acid and weed and drinking had become an everyday thing.”

Now a slim college student with French-manicured nails, Melissa said her drug problem escalated into a full-fledged crack cocaine addiction after she graduated from Hempfield Area High School in 2001.

“At 24, I was living in my car, living to use, using to live,” she said.

Melissa has been clean for almost two years with the help of a 12-step program, but she has watched with concern as Hempfield confronts what district officials say is a growing drug problem at her alma mater.

“I can remember the things that were going on around Hempfield when I was there,” she said.

Ten students have been expelled this year, compared with five last year and three the year before, said school Director Randy Stoner. In December, seven were expelled for possessing prescription drugs at school, and one had to be hospitalized after overdosing.

In response, the school board formed a Drug Awareness and Prevention Committee in January, and school directors have organized public assemblies to educate parents.

“I think it’s an issue that’s been there since I graduated from high school in 1977,” said Stoner, who chairs the committee. “But it’s gotten so much more dangerous.”

Since Melissa’s time at Hempfield, prescription pills apparently have become students’ drugs of choice.

Several Hempfield students estimated that 20 percent of their peers were using pills, though they said drugs in general may not be as rampant as authorities believe.

“If you’re not looking for it, you’re not going to find it,” said senior Grahm Tidwell-Lyon, 17, “but it’s pretty available.”

Though Hempfield officials are the only ones drawing attention to the problem, it’s not the only school affected.

“It’s in every school district, in every part of this county,” said Westmoreland County Detective Tony Marcocci.

Marcocci, an undercover narcotics investigator for more than 20 years, said he has seen more prescription drug abuse in the past two years. And because the drugs are legal, law enforcement cannot target the original suppliers.

“Nobody’s bringing any shipments up from Florida,” Marcocci said. “It’s local doctors writing local prescriptions.”

Vicodin, Percocet, OxyContin and other pain medications can be swiped from a relative’s medicine cabinet, Marcocci said. Teens also have abused Adderall, which is prescribed for attention deficit disorder, as well as Suboxone, used to wean addicts off narcotics.

Once addicted to prescription narcotics, teens and young adults sometimes turn to heroin, which is cheaper and chemically interchangeable, Marcocci said.

Clean-cut and articulate, with short, brushy hair, Mark, 20, began using heroin after becoming addicted to prescription narcotics in middle school. He asked that his last name not be used because he didn’t want his past to follow him.

“It’s a pill and doctors give it to people. Why would it hurt me?” Mark said, explaining his reasoning at the time. “I really didn’t realize I was addicted until I started heroin.”

Mark, who moved from Randolph, N.J., to Greensburg after graduating from high school, said he had been clean since Thanksgiving, after numerous attempts at rehabilitation. In the face of a recent hepatitis C diagnosis, he is working to get his life together with the help of a 12-step program.

Recalling his years as a teenage addict, he wished that his parents and school officials had been stricter, and that anti-drug education had been less simplistic.

“I had D.A.R.E. when I was a kid, assemblies and that,” he recalled with a shrug. “It was pretty much them telling us that drugs are bad.”

Recently, Mark told his story to young people and their parents as part of the “Reality Tour,” a program held at the Westmoreland County Courthouse nearly every month. On March 30, Stoner, the school director, will bring a delegation of up to 75 parents and students from Hempfield.

Meanwhile, the Hempfield committee has discussed drug-testing students and hiring a police officer to patrol schools. But though anti-drug efforts have long been a staple of American high schools, it is difficult for educators to determine what works.

The Mt. Pleasant Area School District, which borders Hempfield, is facing a similar problem, said Superintendent Terry Struble.

“Everyone’s experiencing the same things,” he said.

Mt. Pleasant has had state troopers discuss signs of drug abuse with teachers, Struble said, and it uses drug-sniffing dogs. Students caught with drugs are automatically suspended, with the requirement that they seek counseling, though Struble declined to say how many students had come under the policy this year.

Every district in the county hosts classroom-based drug education by St. Vincent College Prevention Projects. National research has shown such long-term, small-group programs to have a moderate effect in preventing students from using drugs, but educators said their true impact is difficult to prove.

“I always look at the prevention services as, if you manage to convince one kid at the back of their mind that it’s not the right decision, it’s worth it,” Struble said.

Melissa, the Hempfield graduate, said she hoped her story might inspire teens with drug problems to seek help and keep others from trying drugs.

“I was just like them,” she said. “If someone my age had come in and talked to me when I was in high school, I don’t know if I would have listened to them, but it might have had an impact.”

Additional Information:

To get help

• Community Prevention Services of Westmoreland

724-834-1260

• Narcotics Anonymous

412-391-5247

• Alcoholics Anonymous

724-836-1404

• SPHS Comprehensive Substance Abuse

724-832-5880

• Westmoreland County Crisis Hotline

800-836-6010

---

Copyright ©2026— Trib Total Media, LLC (TribLIVE.com)

---