Kailua teen kept
'ice' addiction
from parents until
his health failedThe boy hid his habit behind
good grades and team sports
even as a nightmarish binge
seriously damaged his lungs
School had just let out for the summer, and 15-year-old Philip Mueller told his mother he wanted to celebrate the end of his sophomore year by going camping with a friend.
"I didn't like it, but when you've got boys, you've got to let go," Barbara Mueller recalled recently with a weary shrug. She asked to speak to his friend's parents, and got a confirming phone call. While Philip was away, he called his mom every day to reassure her that he was OK.
In reality he was not. Holed up in a hotel room, Philip was bingeing on crystal methamphetamine -- a drug he had sampled at the start of the school year and never let go. The "father" who had called was actually his drug dealer.
Barbara and Alfred Mueller thought they were doing all the right things to keep their children safe. They have lived in a stable Kailua suburb since Philip was a toddler, sharing their four-bedroom home with a lovable black dog. They both worked long hours to send their children to an exclusive private school.
When warning signs started to crop up -- angry outbursts from their son, little lies -- the Muellers chalked it up to typical teen rebellion. They never imagined Philip was using "ice."
"Not my kid," Barbara Mueller figured. "Not this school."
When Philip finally came home from his four-day "camping trip," he collapsed in bed and slept for four days straight. He must have caught a bug, his mother thought. It's summer. He's exhausted.
Philip vividly remembers that hellish week in June 2002. "I was so sick," he said. "I was sweating. I had diarrhea. Your body just shuts down. You just sleep all day and all night."
By the fifth day he was having trouble breathing. Barbara Mueller rushed him to a night clinic.
"I had no idea it was drugs; I just figured he got sick," she said, shaking her head at the thought.
She wasn't alone. The doctors didn't pick up on Philip's addiction. They gave him an asthma treatment to help open up his lungs.
RICHARD WALKER / RWALKER@STARBULLETIN.COM
Barbara Mueller's teenage son, Philip, was a user of ice but kicked the devastating habit.
The reality didn't hit until Philip's parents found two glass pipes used to smoke ice and other paraphernalia in his room after his health crashed.
"My first reaction was total rage," said Barbara Mueller. "How could he? What did I do wrong? I blamed myself. Ultimately, I had a breakdown. It made me emotionally sick and physically sick."
Philip had tried Ecstasy as a freshman but switched to ice in his sophomore year, smoking it for the first time with a friend from school. The feeling was overwhelming.
"Ice is like ridiculous amounts of Ecstasy," he said. "It's pretty intense. Everything that you feel is multiplied by 10, everything you see is multiplied and everything you touch. It's like having extrasensory powers."
"You feel you're above everything, invincible, really strong, confident," he said. "And you can get so much done. When I was up on ice, I would do my homework for the whole week."
A gifted student, he managed to hide his habit. He smoked mostly on weekends, starting as early as Thursday. When school rolled around the next week, he'd begin to drag. He would doze through classes, hidden in a sweater with a hood, but usually had the answer if called upon.
"That was like my shield," he said, "getting good grades. I would go to school, but I would just sleep in class."
During one geometry test, he fell asleep after answering just three questions. He flunked that test and wound up with a D in the course. But otherwise he kept up his grades.
Even as the drug began to waste his body, he kept competing on the swim team. A 6-footer, he dropped to 120 pounds and size 28 board shorts. His mother noticed he was thin, but said "he still looked good because he was a swimmer."
A fellow student reported to school authorities that Philip was using ice, and he got called in to see a counselor but didn't get busted. His parents weren't told of the accusation. Philip quit smoking it for a couple of weeks, then quietly resumed.
"Unless you do it at a school and they catch you, they can't kick you out," he said.
On weekends his mother chauffeured him and his friends to activities and parties because she figured she could better keep tabs on him that way and make sure he didn't get into trouble.
He told her about drug use among his peers, but never his own.
In retrospect, she realizes she didn't pick up on it because she didn't want to believe it.
"Your first reaction is denial," she said. "I look back on it now, and I know what I should have seen. I think what would have helped is to recognize the fact that it's there.
"If you can't get through to your son, you'd better go get help for yourself, which is what I did after I found out."
Her husband's advice: "Don't take for granted what your kids tell you," he said. "Check if you can. I never thought it would be him." After a pause, he added, "And don't give up hope."
The Muellers agreed to go public with their story in hopes that other families could learn from their experience. They asked only that Philip's school not be identified.
"Maybe we can help someone else," said Alfred Mueller. "That would be my only purpose in doing this interview, because I'm certainly not proud of it."
Once Philip's addiction was uncovered, the doctor prescribed three months at Bobby Benson Center, the only residential drug treatment facility for adolescents on the island. But there were no beds available, and he resisted in any case.
"I couldn't get him into any program," Barbara Mueller said. "They were all for adults. I was angry because the family needed help now, not a month from now."
The threat of going into rehab, however, helped Philip come to grips with his problem and quit on his own.
"I decided that it was just not what I wanted to do anymore," he said. "It wasn't productive. It was just the same thing over and over. ... It kills your brain. You have to do more and more, and you're trying to get the feeling of the first time, and it doesn't work."
The consequences had caught up with him: His body had virtually given out. Someone in his drug-using circle got caught and sent to prison. And a girl at school steered clear of him when he started smoking ice.
Now 16 and starting his senior year, Philip hasn't used ice or any other drugs for a year and three months. He enjoyed his last school year, earning good grades and getting back into his hobby of being a disc jockey. He didn't swim competitively because his battered lungs couldn't handle it, but his body has beefed up to a healthy 180 pounds.
Quitting ice, he said, was one of the hardest things he has ever done in his young life.
"You can't do it because somebody else wants you to," he said. "The only way ever possible is that you personally must want to do it. I've seen a lot of people try because other people want them to, and it doesn't work. You need to want to do it."
The physical longing still returns -- but he can resist it now.
"I still want to smoke ice. I want to do it right now," he said, munching on a chicken Caesar salad at a Ward Centre restaurant. "It's just not worth it anymore."
