When 13 teens were caught popping pills in a Hillsboro park last month, Peter Brigham expected his office to get busier.

Brigham directs the town's youth services department and typically deals with juvenile diversion cases, providing drug and alcohol intervention classes to kids once they've been arrested. In this case, he offered the class - free of charge - to the teens who were at the field but weren't charged with a crime.

"I did it in hopes that the parents would voluntarily sign them up," Brigham said last week. "And who's taken me up on it? Nobody."

What happened at Grimes Field on Oct. 12 was troubling, said police Chief Dave Roarick, who responded about 2 p.m. to a report of suspicious behavior. There, he found a group of teenagers, ages 13 to 19, hanging out with backpacks. Roarick thought that was odd because it was Columbus Day and school wasn't in session. The 19-year-old - Stephen Martel of Hillsboro - was drinking alcohol and arrested. The rest, whom the police have not identified because they are minors, were taken into protective custody, he said.

As the teens were brought back to the station, Roarick said the police learned that the majority of them had taken multiple doses of Benadryl, an antihistamine, and that four had mixed it with Prozac, an antidepressant.

"We probably found four or five boxes of Benadryl on them . . . and a baggie containing a lot of Prozac. Some of them had (consumed) alcohol, too," Roarick said. "As we're finding this, one of the girls appeared to be really out of it, acting very, very strange."

Roarick said the girl, who looked "extremely tired and intoxicated," began having seizures on the floor of the police station. She and others who had also taken a combination of the pills were taken to the hospital after showing signs of elevated heart rates, he said. Two of the hospitalized teens had left the group shortly before the police arrived and were tracked down in Deering.

In the weeks before the incident, Roarick said at least one local store owner called the police to report that the store had been selling a lot of Benadryl. Roarick said he's advised store owners not to sell to kids if they think something "isn't right."

The Prozac was provided by a teenager who had a prescription and was present among the group, he said.

Too common

For kids, experimenting with drugs is "pretty serious, but not uncommon," Roarick said.

The police met with high school officials and the youth services department to decide how to move forward. Roarick said he expects to arrest up to four others who were involved. Three of them face charges of possession of a controlled drug. The teenager who provided the Prozac could be charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

The rest of the teens were offered the educational program via letters to their parents, he said.

"This is not uncommon, but to have this sized group of kids doing it so nonchalantly at the field is troubling," Roarick said. "I don't know that there was anything to that combination (of drugs), other than that's what was available on that day."

Nicole Soroko, who manages the Adolescent Substance Abuse Treatment program for Child and Family Services, a private nonprofit organization, said her office has seen an increase in kids being treated for abuse of prescription drugs.

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