FIVE YEARS LATER, HE WOULD BE A HEROIN ADDICT

VANCOUVER -- The photograph barely hints at trouble. The handsome
blond boy is standing on the beach with a windsurfing board at his
feet. He's grinning, but there is bemused distance in his curled
lips. His hand dangles by his hip, as though he's too cool now to
pose for family photos. The picture was taken in 1991 during an
outing at Vancouver's popular Jericho Beach, when Ross Hall was 11.
That was the same year he started drinking and smoking marijuana.

Living with his parents in a two-storey, wood-frame house in
Vancouver's comfortable west side, Ross -- like his older brother
before him -- would quit high school, steal from his family and his
friends' families, and panhandle on the streets of his well-heeled
neighbourhood. Before school each day, he would head downtown to buy
smack. One day, he would assault his father in their living room for
a cigarette. And he would be in and out of treatment programs, seldom
staying clean long enough to finish them, before he was even old
enough to drink legally.

Ross stopped using heroin four months ago, when he was accepted into
a methadone program. He is still addicted to crack cocaine. Now 21,
he is tall, with an athletic build and clear blue eyes, a far cry
from the scrawny, hollow-eyed addicts that inhabit Vancouver's
Downtown Eastside. His hair is cut short. His clothes are West Coast
casual.

Yet the first thing Ross thinks of when he wakes up in the morning is
getting high. If he lets his guard down, for even a few minutes, he
finds himself downtown, in an alley, with a piece of tinfoil and a
lighter, burning a rock of cocaine until it curls into smoke.

"Sometimes my addiction will come on so strong," he says, "I will go
down to Hastings Street and I don't know if it's Comet or bleach that
I'm buying. But I'm ready to punch out my own mother to get it."

There are an estimated 12,000 injection-drug users in the Greater
Vancouver region. Last year, 239 people in British Columbia overdosed
and died, 96 of them in Vancouver. Many of them lived in the
Eastside, Vancouver's notorious ghetto for drug users. Not Ross Hall.
He lives on the "good" side of town. But that doesn't seem to have
done much to protect him.

Ross should have led a charmed life. He was born in 1980, seven years
after his parents settled in Canada and four years after his older
brother came. Ross's father, Ray Hall, an Australian by birth, was a
documentary filmmaker who went on to teach at the University of
British Columbia. His British-born mother, Nichola, is now UBC's
program co-ordinator in continuing studies, but she lived all over
the world in her youth, working in publishing and television.

She met Ray in the Middle East, were she worked for the CBC and he
was making films for the United Nations. When her children were born,
she spent 12 years as a stay-at-home mother.

Ross's childhood was filled with travel, elite schools and the
attention and love of his parents. Vacations often took him abroad,
on visits to Ray's relatives in Australia or Nichola's family in
England. The family also loved B.C.'s outdoors. When their kids were
small, the Halls joined a camping co-op on Hornby Island, and it's
been a summer tradition ever since. Ross and his brother snorkelled
and went fishing with their dad.

As a child, Ross loved maps, especially of cities. He drew his own of
Vancouver, detailing the major roads and traffic patterns. He is
still fascinated by traffic, freeways, even ramps. When Vancouver
city council was debating its official plan, Ross accompanied his
mother to public meetings and often went to the microphone to give
his opinion.

"He would say: 'I think you should put the road there. That's where
it's needed,' " Nichola remembers, laughing. "He wasn't afraid to
give his opinion."

As he got older, Ross learned to play the piano, composed his own
songs and skied like a daredevil.

But family life soured for the Halls when their boys reached their
teen years. Both boys had trouble in school. The elder, John (not his
real name), was bored. Ross was a loner, and he was diagnosed with
attention deficit disorder. On a trip to Australia in 1995, the Halls
discovered that their boys were drinking regularly and concealed
alcohol in their suitcases. On the plane home, 15-year-old Ross got
furious when his parents refused to order him a drink.

Soon, both boys were smoking marijuana. John dropped out of school in
Grade 11. For months afterward, he complained of flu symptoms and
backaches. One morning, six years ago, Nichola walked into the
bathroom and saw John with a piece of tin foil and a lit match. John
told his mother that it was heroin. He said he had been trying to
quit for months and told his parents that he needed help.

Nichola and Ray were terrified. They put John on a plane to Toronto's
Bellwood Centre, a long-term treatment facility. He completed the
three-month program, but on the plane home, he drank to quell his
nerves. He started using heroin again within weeks.

To pay for his habit, he stole from his parents. Once, Ray returned
from a business trip to find that his video cameras worth more than
$7,000 were missing. John confessed to hocking them, and they drove
to the Granville Street pawn shop. The owner claimed never to have
seen John, but in the shop Ray spotted two other still cameras that
had vanished months earlier. John had stolen those as well.

John started shooting speedballs, a potentially lethal mixture of
heroin and cocaine injected into the veins. It cost him $100 a day.
Eighteen months after he confessed to using heroin, his parents threw
him out. Once he came back in the middle of the night, high, and
banging on the door. Ray called the police, who took his son to a
downtown shelter. "The officer said, 'You're doing the right thing,'
" Ray recalls. "I couldn't believe this was happening to our family."

Ross witnessed his brother's spiral -- a cycle of using and thieving,
followed by doomed attempts to quit cold turkey. During one bid, John
spent four days in his basement bedroom, vomiting and shivering with
a fever. He told his parents that he had the flu. Ross knew he was
withdrawing from heroin.

Still, when John's friend asked Ross if he wanted to smoke heroin, he
said yes. "I knew that [John] had been going through withdrawal," he
says now, "but it was like, 'I'll never get to that point.' I'll just
enjoy this and experience this." Within months, Ross also was using
every day, securing a fix before school started at 8:45.

For a while, Ross tried to maintain a front of normality, to spare
his parents the pain of knowing that a second son was also addicted.
"We'd go to Hornby [Island], and I'd detox. I'd be really sick for
the first couple of days. I'd tell my dad I had the flu."

Ross got himself a dealer who delivered to his house in 25 minutes,
"faster than a pizza." When the dealer demanded a $40 minimum
purchase, Ross dropped him, preferring to make the daily trip to East
Hastings Street to buy a $10 hit to get him through the day at his
North Vancouver private school.

Other times, he would panhandle or steal shampoo and meat from
Safeway for resale at variety stores on the Eastside. As John had, he
mined his parents' house for cameras, computers, jewellery, anything
of value. When his parents began locking valuables in their room,
Ross ripped off his friends' parents.

Sometimes, his mother would give him $50 to go skiing, which he would
spend on drugs, then return home, fabricating a story of snow
conditions on the slopes.

Nichola says she had known Ross was troubled, but she never
considered that he was using hard drugs. But in 1997, the Halls
discovered Ross was using heroin. It was just before Christmas,
according to Nichola's journal, but she cannot recall the exact day.
"We had been struggling with the ADD and his marijuana use. [John]
was already using. It's hard to sort out."

She does remember what she felt -- fear, grief and helplessness. She
confided in no one, not even her mother, who died suddenly last year.
"It's a very, very hard thing to tell other people."

Ray says his wife was inconsolable. "It's been excruciatingly
difficult for Nicky. She couldn't get past all the promise they
showed."

Ross was asked to leave school. The teachers were fed up with his
truancy and drug use. After that, the Halls plunged themselves into
trying to get him help. In the spring of 1998, Ross went to Edgewood,
a private centre in Nanaimo, but he was asked to leave after a month
because he disobeyed ground rules and distracted other clients.

What followed was a string of failed efforts at treatment centres and
alternative schooling. Ross's parents sent him back to Edgewood, but
he was discharged again; this time they said Ross's problems were too
complex for the staff.

Mother's Day, 1999, Nichola says, was the worst day of her life. She
ended it by fleeing her own home with a friend, her valuables tucked
in the trunk of a car.

She had been home alone with Ross. Ray was in Australia, visiting
relatives. Ross was in withdrawal, struggling to detox on his own,
agitated and edgy. Still, he presented his mother with a card: "You
are the best mother in the world."

Nichola and Ross went to church and then to lunch. She knew her son
was waging a physical and emotional struggle to stay clean, right in
front of her. She suggested that he go swimming. Ross agreed, but
when they got home, he made a phone call, which he didn't want his
mother to hear. "My antennae were up. I had seen this before." She
knew he was buying heroin.

She drove Ross to the pool, and was going to give him the money for
the gate entrance, but thought better and bought him the ticket
herself. She watched him go in and waited. A few minutes later, he
emerged. Nichola caught up with him and confronted her son in public.

"I started crying," she recalls. "I said, 'Please, please don't do
this.' " Ross was embarrassed and mother and son went back to the car
to continue the conversation. They drove home and finally Ross handed
her a piece of tinfoil and said, "Okay, okay, I've given it to you.
You can flush it down the toilet."

Nichola flushed the tinfoil, but she noticed Ross had slipped
something else in his pocket before going to his room. A few minutes
later, he was on the phone, this time trying to get into a detox
centre. While he was talking, Nichola went into his room and grabbed
a box from underneath his bed. In it was a primed needle, filled with
heroin. She took the needle to her room and locked the door.

Within minutes, Ross was banging on her door, shouting, "Where's the
box?" He kicked down the locked door and tried to grab the needle
from his mother. "Here I am standing in my room with this needle
waving around in the air."

But Ross was stronger. He grabbed it from his mother's hand, ran
downstairs and locked himself in another room. His mother was banging
on the door, screaming, when a friend walked up to the front door.

By now, Ross had used the heroin and had calmed down. Nichola was the
one who was hysterical. Her friend urged her to leave, and the two
gathered up the valuables. She stayed at her friend's house until Ray
returned a week later.

"The only thing you can feel," she says now, "is despair. If you have
one child that goes that route, you can say to yourself: 'Well,
perhaps that is the way he is.' But if both your children are drug
addicts, you have to say, 'Something we did was wrong.' "

Ross himself is not so sure about that. "I had this longing for
something, like I had this emptiness inside and it wasn't getting
filled," he says, sitting on his parents' back porch. "And it wasn't
because my parents weren't loving. I started to develop this
dissatisfaction, it was like a gnawing dissatisfaction. And when I
smoked pot, that went away. It was like that was the thing I was
looking for the whole time."

The smiling photo of Ross with the windsurfing board was taken when
he was 11. In Grade 4, he had been diagnosed with ADD and he coped by
erecting a shield of defiance and bravura. "If anyone dared Ross to
do anything, he would do it, no matter what the consequence," Nichola
says.

When he was 4, he threw his teddy bears out the window on a dare from
a neighbourhood friend. When schoolmates dared him to climb the wall
around Crofton House, a private girls school, he agreed.

As a young child, Ross had been self-sufficient, curious and "a joy
to be around," his mother says. "He was such good company. He liked
cooking and arranging flowers. He could entertain himself for hours."

His parents now think that intensity was part of the ADD, but they
didn't know it at the time. Ross was interested in fire hydrants,
then chimneys, then traffic lights, and sometimes he would focus on
such objects to the exclusion of everything else. In Grade 4, a
teacher discovered him in the middle of the road outside his school,
directing traffic, because he said the busy intersection needed
lights.

Teachers complained that Ross was distracted. He had difficultly
dropping one task and switching to another, and if he had to change
classrooms, he would forget his books and supplies. His parents put
him on Ritalin, but Ross complained of side effects and showed no
improvement.

In Grade 6, he was expelled from Kerrisdale Public School after a
run-in with a teacher. Ray says his son accused the instructor of
being unfair to another student. His parents put him in a private
school in North Vancouver, but by then Ross already thought of
himself as an outcast.

"Ross had such a hard time with his peers," Nichola says. "He was
never able to pick up on the vibes of other kids, so he would say the
wrong thing. I think that's why he was always up for a dare. The
other kids could get him to do anything and I think he did those
things as a way to belong."

And, eventually, this anxious child turned to alcohol and marijuana.
When he is asked how his drug use began, Ross shakes his head and
looks down, the same distant smile curling his lips as in the
childhood photo. Each time he is asked a question, he takes a deep
drag from his cigarette before answering. When he thinks of his first
experience with pot, his eyes widen with animation. "It was like a
fairy tale," he says.

"This porch was just being built. And I got this joint the day before
and I came out under the porch. I was thinking, 'Oh, this smells
good.' It was like all my senses perked up. It was rather like the
euphoria I first experienced with heroin, but not as strong, and not
as disconnecting. I was still in reality when I smoked pot, [but] all
the harshness was taken away."

By the time he was offered heroin, Ross says, "I had broken all those
mental barriers that I had toward the dangers of drug using. So when
he offered me heroin, it was not so much a danger as it was an
opportunity to get a better high."

Ross's marijuana partner was Gavin Ruttan, his best friend since
Grade 4. They both loved music and high-risk pursuits, especially
skiing the "black diamond" runs at Whistler. Today, Gavin is also a
recovering heroin addict.

The Halls knew Ross was drinking and smoking pot and tried to clamp
down. They withheld his allowance, grounded him and cut him off from
favourite activities, such as swimming and windsurfing. But he was
difficult to discipline, says Nichola, because he never understand
the consequences of his actions (another possible symptom of ADD).

Ross says he realized almost immediately that he had a problem with
marijuana and sought counselling -- a gesture that became a recurring
theme throughout his addiction. In Grade 9, he started seeing a
counsellor regularly for two years. "It didn't help," he says. "No
counsellor has ever helped. You leave with a head full of knowledge
and advice, but it won't have any effect on you unless you make a
conscious effort to take it to heart," he says. "I didn't."

Both Ray and Nichola have searched their pasts, looking for genetic
traits that might have contributed to their sons' addictions.
Alcoholism was prevalent in Ray's family: His mother drank every day,
and two aunts died alcoholics. But neither Ray nor Nichola drink to
excess or even smoke. Their backgrounds are filled with professional
achievements, hard work and social activism.

Lawyers and police officers have scolded the Halls, accusing them of
being too soft on Ross. Nichola says she has struggled with the
accusation. They tried the tough-love approach with John, and he went
into a spiral on the street. "You walk a very fine line as a parent,
between being supportive and being what they call an enabler."

Some counsellors have said Ross won't get better until the safety net
is ripped away and he hits rock bottom. "For Ross, rock bottom would
be death," Nichola says. "So what do you do?"

They even ordered Ross out several times. Once, when they sent him to
Toronto's Bellwoods Centre, they gave him a one-way ticket. He would
get the return ticket only when he was clean. He was kicked out of
the program for using.

When he called his parents, they told him to go on welfare. But Ross
wasn't eligible, because he hadn't lived in Ontario long enough. He
was considering moving in with a drug dealer. It was February.
Toronto was in the grips of a cold snap. The Halls agonized four days
before sending a ticket.

"Ross could have died in a snow bank in Toronto," his mother says. "I
know if we let him stay at home, it is easier for him. But if we kick
him out and he dies of an overdose, we will blame ourselves for the
rest of our lives."

"It's like a bell curve," Ross says, describing the inward battle he
wages every day. "At some point on the curve, your mind starts to
switch over and you don't remember the pain you've caused. You may
start off thinking you're going to have a sober day, but then
something triggers a feeling and then you start thinking, 'I'm going
to use,' and once you start thinking that, it's impossible to go
back."

Ross and John are now both on methadone, which controls the powerful
physical cravings heroin addicts experience. John has a job at a
supermarket (to protect it, he asked that his real name not be used
in this article), and Ross just completed him GED exams. John lives
in the Halls' basement suite with his girlfriend; Ross lives upstairs
with his parents.

The Halls have ground rules: No lying, stealing or panhandling. Ross
has complied. He goes to support meetings, where he has made some
sober friends.

The problem is, he is still addicted to crack.

"He's using cocaine," Nichola says. "He doesn't tell us because he
knows it upsets us. He uses marijuana and he would abuse alcohol too,
if he had the money."

Ross is luckier than most drug addicts. He has a large cheering
section of family and professionals, all tasked with keeping him
safe. His doctor phones the Hall residence if Ross skips an
appointment. The pharmacist also calls if Ross is late for his daily
methadone dose. His music teacher, his math tutor, his parents, his
brother, his sober friends in support meetings -- they're all rooting
for Ross to beat his addiction.

Ray Hall said he has watched Ross struggle with the "bell curve" and
it breaks his heart. "He will lie, cheat, betray, steal, feel
remorse. He will hate himself, white-knuckle himself for the next
three days, then relapse again."

The Halls have come to think of their sons' addictions as lifelong
diseases for which there is no final cure. Last year, the Halls and
Gavin's parents, Rob and Susie Ruttan, started a support group, From
Grief to Action, for families of drug addicts. Nichola says talking
publicly has helped to quell her feelings of helplessness. The first
meeting, last year, was held in a Kerrisdale church and attracted
more than 150 people, largely a middle-class group -- including
Vancouver Mayor Philip Owen.

The group wants policymakers to treat drug addiction solely as a
health issue, lobbying for more treatment centres and safe injection
sites where addicts can use in clean, supervised surroundings. The
Halls know their income gives them political weight. Politicians take
their calls.

Earlier, this year, Owen unveiled a new drug policy that, for the
first time, puts as much weight on harm reduction and improved
treatment as on law enforcement. Nichola says there has been a sea
change in public opinion about hard-drug use and its effects on the
community. "People are starting to realize this is happening
everywhere, even in the suburbs. All parents and teenagers have to
realize that it is so accessible, even in our neighbourhood. You have
to be on your guard."

Yet as Ray Hall says, sometimes even personal experience does not
help. A UBC colleague recently asked for advice about his own son's
drug problems, and Ray says he was dismayed at how little he had to
suggest. "I realized that I didn't have anything useful to tell him.
All the things we tried to do were predicated on the fact that logic
or good sense would kick in at some point." He recalls a school
counsellor telling the Halls that Ross just needed to make more
friends.

Today, Ross goes to support meetings and is looking for a job. He
doesn't steal or panhandle. But he can stay free of drugs only for a
couple of weeks at a time. He would like to be an urban planner, but
he hardly knows where to begin. "I have this fear of success," he
says. "It's a fear of the unknown, even doing something that's good,
like studying. I know drugs. I know my own isolated world of drugs
and procrastination and dependence and immaturity. And I don't know
another world."

He still feels like an outsider, especially with his peers, most of
whom are in university now.

The last time he admits to smoking crack, in June, was a bad
experience. Walking home from the Eastside, he looked longingly at
some kids on the street who looked to be his own age. "They're
laughing and going to concerts and I have this heavy crack headache.
And I think, 'I can't live like this. I want to have a life, like one
of those kids on the street.' "