Addiction carries a heavy weight on a drug user, but one of the main issues that an addict must deal with is the prejudices of society.

"They face a lot of challenges in a lot of different areas," said Del Camp, supervisor for outpatient services at the Ozark Center. "Recidivism is pretty high in this particular business."

Recidivism is the subsequent returns of an individual to a treatment center. The areas in their lives that are affected include financial, relationships, employment, and physical cost. In many cases, the patient enters a rehabilitation facility with financial problems, which are increased when they leave.

"Unfortunately the individual generally spends a couple of weeks in a structured environment, unable to work, which only compounds the problem," Camp said.

Some of the people who enter the program at the Ozark Center have been sent there by their employers. After they have received treatment, they have to face their fellow employees once again.

"Co-workers often times have an 'eat the wounded' mentality," Camp said.

In these cases, the returning individual is treated differently, sometimes harshly. This prejudice at the workplace can lead to a relapse for the recovering individual.

"Very rarely does substance abuse develop in a vacuum," Camp said. "There are relational dynamics that usually operate to continue the abusing behavior."

"Leonard" and "Jane" are a couple in their twenties who live together in Joplin. They have been drug addicts since their early teens. The extent of their usage includes crack, crystal meth, cocaine, and heroin.

"I think that when people finally found out that I was hardcore into drugs, they looked at me a little different like 'you're the crazy guy,'" Leonard said.

Leonard and Jane began, like many other teenagers, experimenting with alcohol and marijuana, and later graduating to amphetamines.

"I started off once a week," Leonard said. "The older I got the more I did it."

Leonard started using drugs when he was eleven, and entered rehab, for the first time, when he was sixteen. He said he would go through a gram or two of "speed" a week.

"That's really not as much as someone that is worse than I am," Leonard said.

"I wasn't like most of the people in the rehabs I've been to. I wasn't toasted and I didn't have mental problems that affected my life and screwed me totally up."

However, Leonard admitted his drug habit did cause him to act violently on occasion.

"I got violent at my house," Leonard said. "Not towards anyone, but as in breaking things because I was out of my mind from smoking cocaine."

After three stays in rehab, Leonard said people treat him differently now.

"There's been prejudices from my family," Leonard said. "To this day still, they won't accept me and I'm not really hardcore into drugs like I used to be."

Leonard said, while in school, his brothers scrutinized his every move, expecting him to get into trouble.

"My older brothers would be watching me in the parking lot [at school] making sure I was doing the right things."

His family was concerned about him, yet made it clear that his problem would not remain in their household.

"My parents were like 'if you do drugs, you are out of here' and that's pretty much what happened."

Leonard dropped out of school and left home when he was sixteen. He lived with different friends and his ex-girlfriend, who he had a baby with in 1994.

Leonard has been with his present girlfriend, Jane, for a little over a year. They have been clean for several months and Jane also had an extensive history with drugs.

"Everybody thought they could have a good connection because I grew up in the drug world," Jane said. "My father was a bipolar manic depressant plus he was a drug addict, and my mom had twenty three felonies in 7 different jurisdictions and ended up getting the second highest bond since Bonnie and Clyde in the state of California."

Jane's family were reputed drug dealers and frequently in trouble with the law.

"I was basically raised in it," Jane said. "On my sixteenth birthday, my dad put a needle in my arm. He was the first person to ever do that."

Jane was treated differently by her peers and teachers as a youth because of her family's reputation.

"Teachers looked down on me," Jane said. "Some people thought they were better than me."

Jane also did not finish school because of the turmoil in her family.

"I quit school when I was thirteen to go on the run with my mom," Jane said.

With the chaotic pasts that both Leonard and Jane have endured, they still continue to move forward and live one day at a time. The prejudice they face as drug addicts is only a small part of the road to recovery.

"Everyone has known I've done drugs forever," Leonard said. "From the time I started doing them, people realized that I was a little different than I used to be."

Published by The Chart on 3-31-00 in the "Discrimination: Society's Crimes" supplement.