OAKLAND, Calif. -- Addiction specialists say a disturbing trend has overtaken teenagers, especially those in affluent communities such as Marin County. It is addiction to pharmaceutical opiates, painkillers, including Vicodin, Percocet and especially the more powerful Oxycontin.

“I was not on my way to hell, I was in hell,” Zach, a recovering addict told us. “I stole from family and friends to pay for drugs,” says Eddie, another recovering addict who first tried drugs prescribed after his mother’s shoulder surgery.

“The drugs were easier to get than alcohol,” says Brad, who first experimented with drugs in middle school.

Stolen from their parent’s medicine cabinets, or purchased from schoolyard drug dealers or from internet websites, these drugs, doctors say, create an insidious and powerful addiction often within a few weeks.

“Many parents went through the drug scene of the sixties, but they don’t get that this is different,” Eddie’s mother told us, adding that when she told parents of her son’s friends about the drug use, many were indifferent.

Our investigation took us to Mill Valley and the clinic Recovery Without Walls. Dr. Howard Kornfeld described what he called a dramatic advance in addiction therapy. It is buproprion, also an opiate which can block the effects of the powerful painkiller drugs.

“Often patients can feel better in days, and with appropriate therapy and family support, can recover far more easily than with traditional methods,” Kornfeld says.

Buproprion has been available for addiction treatment for several years, but Kornfeld says, it has been underappreciated by therapists. The FDA requires special training and oversight for the use of buproprion. Kornfeld says he’s successfully treated more than three hundred young adults.

New data from the federal government suggests the epidemic is reaching into younger and younger children, many of whom see drug advertisements in magazines, on television and the internet.

Doctors advise parents to be on the alert for significant mood changes, lying and theft among youngsters; and they should lock up prescription painkillers and dispose of any excess pills.