Santa Rosa mother's mission: Teach teens about the drugs that killed her daughter

Standing before a class of Santa Rosa High School students, Mary Sega took a deep, trembling breath and then described the moment she watched paramedics pronounce her daughter dead.

Once a gregarious student who played football and baked cupcakes, Hope Sega, 18, had fallen unconscious after inhaling a quick hit of nitrous oxide from a whipped-cream dispenser, her mother told the students.

The teen lay lifeless on the ground, surrounded by strewn canisters, whipped-cream dispensers and boxes of cough medication, evidence of what her family had hoped was just a phase of experimentation.

"To me, this looks like a decorated crack pipe," said Mary Sega, holding up a whipped-cream dispenser painted pink and embellished with green feathers. "This is something she told me she was never going to do."

Hope Sega died March 17, five days before her 19th birthday, in a field off Dutton Avenue in Santa Rosa. She was partying with friends in a homeless camp, less than a mile from her family's home.

Since her daughter's death, Sega has launched a campaign to raise awareness about the dangers of using household items to get high, telling her family's story in a series of talks with students and parents to warn them about the dangers of inhalants.

"As soon as I saw all this stuff I began picking all this up," the 51-year-old Santa Rosa woman told a classroom of students, holding up boxes and canisters she found at the site where her daughter died. "I know this girl didn't know she would die."

Just one inhaled "huff" of nitrous oxide can send the brain into a state of euphoria, a seconds-long high that's gone almost as quickly as it hits the body. Many users ingest the substance again and again to keep the high going.

Yet each use — even the first — comes with a deadly risk.

"It's like jumping off that 20-foot cliff and there's that rock below the surface," said Dr. Gary Mishkin, an emergency-room physician at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital. "Somebody is going to hit that rock."

Inhalants are a broad category of substances typically breathed in for a mind-altering effect.

Aerosols, gasses, nitrates and other volatile substances can be found in everyday items, from whipped-cream canisters and pressurized computer-keyboard cleaners to gasoline and paint thinners.

One of Hope Sega's last acts was to take a hit of nitrous oxide from a whipped-cream canister, said her mother, who spoke to several friends who were with her at the time. She earlier also had taken cough medication.

Eight months after Hope Sega died, Sonoma County coroner's officials have not issued an official cause of death. At the time, investigators noted evidence the teen and her friends had been inhaling chemicals from pressurized cans.

While alcohol and marijuana are the most common substances abused among local teens and adults alike, many of the students in Terry Swehla's health class nodded when Mary Sega asked if they knew people who had abused inhalants.

The students suggested Mary Sega talk to classes with younger students — fifth grade — who are on the cusp of experimentation.

Inhalants are "widely known as adolescent drugs," said Mike Maritzen, an addiction specialist and chemical dependency counselor with the behavioral health division of Sonoma County's Department of Health Services.

Among Sonoma County students, 13 percent of 11th-graders, 16 percent of ninth-graders and 9 percent of seventh-graders reported using inhalants at least once, according to the 2008-2010 Healthy Kids Survey.

Five percent of 11th-graders in the county said they had used an inhalant within the past 30 days — compared to 43percent who said they had used alcohol and 30 percent who reported using marijuana within the past month.

Inhalant abuse was greatest among students at nontraditional schools. Twelve percent said they had used inhalants within the past month and 31 percent said they had abused the substances at least once during their lifetime.

With fleeting effects, inhalants can become highly addictive when used over and over, Maritzen said. And impulse control is more of a challenge for adolescents because the frontal lobe of their brains has not fully developed.

Maritzen currently works with adults but for years worked with juveniles dealing with addiction.

"Working in adolescent treatment, I'd catch kids trying to huff felt pens," Maritzen said. "I could find three inhalants in any room."

Household chemicals and medications are the easiest items for young adolescents to access, he said.

"Start education early, after age 12 and up," Maritzen said. "It's not a popular subject when you talk to your kids. It's awkward, but it's important."