ADDICTS HUG WAY OUT OF THE SPIRAL

It's not about the drugs -- it's about a lack of hugs. With a house
constantly full of 60 male hardcore addicts, Mark Goheen, clinical
addictions specialist with the Maple Ridge Treatment Centre, said a
lack of emotional connection with other people, as well as a lack of
meaning, belonging and purpose in the world are what usually drive
people to drug and alcohol abuse.

"The drugs aren't necessarily...the main issue -- it's a way of coping
with issues," said MRTC alumnus Jeff, who didn't want to give his surname.

The MRTC has a five-week core program for addicts, where they learn to
deal with the issues that drove them to use, and learn about
connecting and hugging and giving up traditional masculine attitudes
about expressing emotions.

Jeff had a good life -- he had loving parents growing up in Kelowna as
the youngest of five children. As a young adult, he was living with
his girlfriend. They had bought a house and everything seemed to be
fine -- until one day, she came home from booking the hall for their
wedding and announced it was over. Jeff spiralled downward into the
merciless world of a crack-cocaine addiction.

"I was raised with a great family -- I was taught the difference
between right and wrong," Jeff said. "All of that disappeared when I
started using drugs."

He started missing work and lying to his mother and got creative about
ways to fund his addiction.

He was also borrowing money from five different payday loan companies,
and then needed to go to a payday loan company outside his community
to get money to pay the other companies.

His life revolved around using drugs, thinking about drugs or thinking
about how to con some money to get drugs, Jeff said. He would go three
to four days without eating, and then eat half a hamburger and drink
some water so that he could continue using drugs.

"You're eating...to keep using," Jeff said.

One day Jeff looked in the mirror and didn't like what he saw. Not
only had he physically wasted away, but morally, he was doing things
he could no longer accept -- lying to his mother and conning people
for money.

"I made up my mind to stop because I felt like s#&%," he
said.

His first step was to tell his mother -- previously he had told her he
had a gambling problem -- the weight loss he put down to stress of
trying to avoid creditors.

"It was the hardest thing I had to do in my life," he said. But four
hours later he was calling his dealer.

He started seeing an addictions counsellor in Kelowna -- after six
months he started blaming his counsellor for his lack of success,
saying he was still using and accused his counsellor of not noticing.
His counsellor told him he wasn't a babysitter -- he said Jeff needed
to take steps himself to deal with his addiction.

Addictions are a very complex thing, Goheen said, and many addicts
start negotiating with themselves, making deals with themselves and
often blaming others for their failures.

Although Jeff told his counsellor he wanted to quit using drugs, what
he really wanted was to get his addiction under control and use drugs
casually.

Finally, his counsellor pulled out a list of treatment centres and
Jeff closed his eyes and pointed at one -- it was Miracle Valley --
the name above it was Maple Ridge Treatment Centre.

"I'm not ready for a miracle yet," Jeff told his counsellor. "I'll go
to Maple Ridge."

Within a few weeks he had a bus ticket to Maple Ridge. He then called
up his dealer and said he was being sent to Vancouver for a videogame
project -- a convoluted story he had used before to get drugs from his
dealer -- so he needed enough dope to get him there. He arrived at
MRTC at 7 a.m. on a Saturday morning and 15 minutes later walked into
the auditorium where it said House of Miracles.

"Wow -- I found the right place," he said -- perhaps he was ready for
a miracle.

Through counselling, Jeff said he had to alter his perception of being
a man as the provider, the head of the family, someone who can't show
emotion - "suck it up and bury it in the pit of my stomach." Through
addictions counselling, he learned that these were false beliefs.

"Where I am now, I am a man -- where I was then, I was a child," Jeff
said. Goheen said a natural reaction for men when things go wrong is
to say "F* it - let's get a beer."

"That compulsion to use drugs is gone," Jeff said. But that's not the
experience of every addict, Goheen said.

While some get rid of their craving for drugs and alcohol through
rehab, for others it's with them for the rest of their lives. And
while for some addicts, jail will help them get clean, others go
downhill while incarcerated.

"The only thing jail taught me was don't get caught," said MRTC
alumnus Lee, who also didn't want to give his surname.

Lee spent 45 years abusing drugs and alcohol -- 10 of those as a
heroin addict, 10 years drunk and the rest smoking pot and using other
substances. His youth in the 1960s was spent on chemical row in
Vancouver's Kitsilano, and his addictions took him around the province.

Highlights included waking up in a car he didn't recognize -- which he
assumed he had stolen -- in Vancouver while the last place he
remembered being was in Vernon.

In the late 1990s, after spending a year at the Miracle Valley
Treatment Centre, first in treatment and then as an employee, he
thought he was ready to move on. He bought a trapline in Kamloops to
be near his elderly mother, and smoked pot daily. But when he injured
his knee in a car accident, he was put on prescription pain medication
and this led him to reconnect with heroin.

"It woke the beast," Lee said. "Once I started using I was right back
to where I was. I went downhill very fast."

In December, 2005, he ended up in St. Paul's hospital in the
psychiatric ward -- from there he took a cab straight to the Maple
Ridge Treatment Centre.

Finally, after 45 years and an eight-week program at MRTC, he finally
feels he's in a space where he can move on with his life.

He's currently planning to become a drug and alcohol counsellor, and
would like to work with seniors' addictions problems.

Jeff calls Maple Ridge a "great recovery town" with support groups
available to him twice a week.

Jeff, Lee and Goheen all laugh when asked whether the men at the
treatment centre are clean and whether there are drugs in the building.

"You've got 60 addicts (here) -- it's a no brainer," Goheen said. "In
any of the treatment centres, there's going to be drug and alcohol
use." But Goheen said there is a zero tolerance.

"These are people with serious histories of substance abuse," Goheen
said. "If someone brings any substance into the building, they're gone."

Not everyone who's comes to MRTC is in the right headspace for
treatment and about eight clients leave the centre monthly, Goheen
said.

MRTC is a treatment centre solely for men, but Goheen points out that
most women who are addicts and prostitute themselves for drugs have
been sexually abused.

One heroin addict told Goheen that when she was a child, she'd cry
herself to sleep every night and hope that no one would crawl into bed
with her.

When she started using heroin, it felt like someone was wrapping their
arms around her and was protecting her.