And that's when things got bad.

Unfortunately Julie's case is not unique. According to Drug Enforcement Administration officials, nearly one in 10 high school seniors nationwide has admitted to abusing powerful prescription drugs. Forty percent of teenagers and a roughly equal number of parents believe prescription drugs are safer than harder drugs like cocaine and heroin. And local DEA officials said those trends mirror what's being seen in Indiana.

Julie's older sister got her high the first time. The 18-year-old had been sneaking out of the house and shared marijuana with her 12-year-old sibling to stop her from telling.

At first, Julie got high about once a month. She used more frequently -- about once a week -- after she turned 13, which was also when she started drinking. She would sneak out of the house and go to friends' houses, parks or abandoned houses to party.

When she was 14, a 16-year-old boy gave Julie two Xanax pills to try. Typically Xanax is used to treat anxiety and depression. At the time Julie was also being prescribed the stimulant Adderall to help with Attention Deficit Disorder.

The Xanax made Julie sleepy. She slurred her words and stumbled around. She said it was like being drunk and high at the same time.

"To be honest, it was like a better high because it was stronger," she said. "That's why I liked them."

Mark Giuffre, a 22-year vet of the DEA and resident agent in charge of the Merrillville office, said prescription drug use among teens is a relatively recent phenomenon, about five years old. Giuffre said teens in Indiana and across the country have learned many homes contain pills that provide powerful highs, and as a result they're developing dangerous addictions.

"Our medicine cabinets have become the drug pushers of our lifetime," he said.

The Internet is also factoring into the problem, Giuffre said. Teens no longer have to physically seek out a drug house or corner in their neighborhood. Scoring pills can be as easy as e-mailing a friend with access to an open, fully-stocked medicine cabinet. In some cases prescriptions can even be ordered online.

Joseph Baunoch, a psychologist with a number of addiction certifications, said when a person misuses prescription drugs they essentially alter the brain's chemical components. People have about 300 different components in their brains such as dopamine, the brain's feel-good neural transmitter. When someone uses drugs to manufacture the feel-good feeling their brain eventually becomes dependent on the drugs to release dopamine.

Baunoch, who is on staff at the Samaritan Health and Living Center in Elkhart, said such chemical manipulation is especially dangerous for teens as a person's development isn't considered complete until age 21. Teens misusing prescription drugs are essentially inhibiting their development and putting their psychological and emotional development on hold. Baunoch said it's not uncommon to find a 35-year old recovering addict going through stages of adolescence because of the growth they missed while on drugs.

The brain has a great potential for healing, Baunoch said, but teens that abuse prescriptions put themselves at risk for permanent brain damage. Users have reported short-term memory loss, severe emotional mood swings and are without coping mechanisms to deal with stressors on their own.

Julie's Xanax use escalated quickly. She started taking pills every weekend, and increasing her doses. Two pills became three, then five, then seven. The pills were often combined with alcohol, marijuana and Julie's prescribed Adderall.

"Usually I'd just pass out and fall asleep," she said.

Run-ins with police began almost immediately after Julie's drug use. She was first taken into custody when she was 14, before her Xanax use had started. Officers found her drunk and high at a party. She wasn't arrested, was given six months of good behavior- told to remain in school and stay out of trouble- and was released to her parents.

For a long time Julie's mom didn't know what was going on with her daughter. Julie was never high in front of her parents. But warning signs were starting to go up. She spent most of her time at home asleep. When she was awake she was always irritable and she constantly fought with her family.

Her mom tried to intervene. Julie was grounded and had her cell phone taken away. It didn't work. Julie's mom would still wake up the next morning, or sometimes in the middle of the night, to find her daughter had snuck out of the house.

Julie's mom had been preoccupied with Julie's older brother. He had been arrested for marijuana possession and was on the verge of being sent to Bashor Children's Home, an alternative school and emergency care shelter that offers substance abuse treatment. With so much going on with her son, Julie's mom said the warning signs for her daughter went unnoticed.

During her freshman year at Memorial High School Julie often skipped class to hang out with friends and get high. Typically the only time Julie went to school was to sell marijuana and her Adderall or get marijuana herself.

Shortly after her mandated six months of good behavior had ended Julie was arrested during a party for underage drinking and being a common nuisance. She was given six months of intensive probation, which included community service, a curfew and drug testing.

Julie didn't take well to the probation. She resented having a probation officer on her case and thought she could beat the drug tests, in some cases by using other people's urine.

She was wrong. Each failed drug test resulted in a 48-hour stay in the Juvenile Detention Center. She was also placed in a recovery program at Oaklawn Psychiatric Center, but she didn't take the program seriously.

Seeing her brother facing a term at Bashor because of marijuana use scared Julie, and after a second failed drug test she cut back on smoking marijuana and upped her pill use, believing the pills would leave her system faster. Xanax was still her drug of choice but she also used methadone and OxyContin. How the drugs affected health was the least of her concerns.

"I told myself, 'If I'm going to die, I'm going to die,'" she said.

Luckily Julie's probation officer intervened. He arrived at her house early one morning and demanded she take a drug test.

It wasn't the best time for her. Julie was just one month off of house arrest, which she'd been placed on after her third failed drug test. She had Xanax in her system and tried to convince her probation officer she didn't need to use the bathroom. She stalled for two hours before giving in.

"Finally I was just like, 'screw it, I'm caught,'" she said.

When the test came back positive for pills in addition to THC Julie was sent back to JDC, but this stretch was different. This was the first time pills had shown up in one of Julie's drug tests, and probation and court officials familiar with her case wanted to stop Julie's cycle of addiction. Julie was kept in JDC for one month to detox. Then, just a few months before her 16th birthday, she was sent to live at Bashor for one year.

Giuffre said the majority of the DEA's efforts are spent trying to keep prescribed drugs out of the wrong hands. Lately the administration has been focusing on preventing the illegal importation of prescriptions via the Internet. It's also charged with ensuring prescribers are properly licensed and investigating claims when a prescriber abuses their authority.

The local fight is more reactive. Elkhart Lt. Ed Windbigler said a drug like Adderall looks similar to Advil and won't be detected by a drug-sniffing dog during a drug search. The biggest preventative tactic police take is warning parents to keep an eye on their medications to make sure none is missing and that their kids are taking any medicine they've been prescribed correctly.

If a teen is caught unlawfully possessing or distributing non-narcotic prescription drugs they can be arrested, charged with a Class D-felony and, if they're under 18, sent through juvenile court. Fallout can range from probation to incarceration. The consequences are more severe if the drug is a narcotic such as OxyContin, Windbigler said.

Bashor was rock bottom for Julie. The separation from her family was overwhelming, and for the first few months all she could think about was getting out so she could get high again. But being off drugs for an extended period of time changed her mindset, she said. Julie began addressing the issues that led to her drug use, and the Bashor staff weaned her off the Adderall.

Today things are considerably better for Julie. She's been out of Bashor for several months and is enrolled in the LIFE alternative school program where she said she's doing well. Her probation is over and she's working at a local restaurant.

It took several months in recovery before Julie was able to admit that she's an addict. Today she belies she's lucky to be alive, and knows nothing good will result from a relapse.

"I know if I get in trouble again it's not going to be Bashor," Julie said. "It'll be a lockdown facility."