I've had the same problem today. What I found out is that you have to execute an entire separate SQL statement to get it to work.
I did this:
<textarea name="txtmtext" id="txtmtext" rows="28">
<%
mydsn="dsn=chconn"
mysql="select minuteid, mtext from tblminutes where minuteid = " & mminuteid & " "
set conn=server.createobject("adodb.connection"

conn.open mydsn
set rstemp=conn.execute(mysql)
response.write(rstemp(1))
%>
</textarea>
Explanation:
minuteid = The main id of the SQL Server table
mtext = The text data type field in the SQL Server table
rstemp(1) = Is the text field I was trying to display within the textarea. It's the second column of the SQL statement result (the first column is 0 (zero) or minuteid.
I hope this helps. Someone clued me in on using SQL statements because they didn't use recordset methods. Thanks Steve!
Good luck! Chris