FAMILY BRAVELY BATTLES TO DEFEAT DEMON DRUG

'We've Lost Everything But Hope'

"I've lost friends over this, good friends," says Mary, as she looks
out the window of her comfortable home on an acreage just outside
Calgary city limits.

"They just couldn't deal with it, they didn't agree with my
decision."

In the eyes of some who know her, Mary made a mistake when she chose
to continue her relationship with her 28-year-old daughter Catherine
(both names have been changed to protect their identities).

Their reason? Catherine was a crack addict. But Mary is philosophical
over those lost friends, and steadfast in her choice to not shut the
door on her daughter, despite years of heartbreak.

"I know some would say I am enabling her," says the former TV reporter
who once won an ACTRA award for a parenting series she produced. "But
rather than leave her to the streets where she might die, I chose to
be there for her when she wanted to come home."

For more than a decade, Catherine has been addicted to cocaine in one
form or another. As an athletic teenager who was obsessed with her
figure, she began snorting the powdered form of the drug to control
her weight.

"When we went on vacation," her mother recalls, "people followed us
around. They thought she was some movie star, she was so thin and
beautiful. Society rewarded her for her efforts."

If Mary seems an unlikely candidate to raise a drug addict, her
daughter is also not what comes to mind when one hears the oft-used,
disparaging term "crackhead."

The daughter of two accomplished professionals -- her father is a
university professor -- Catherine was born into a life of comfort and
security.

"She was our bright, beautiful girl," says Mary of the daughter who
excelled in a variety of sports and had many friends growing up.

But over time, Mary began to suspect that something was very wrong
with her daughter. A constant round of hospital stays and visits to
various doctors and psychiatrists did nothing to quell the mystery of
her daughter's physical and psychological problems.

"They diagnosed her with everything you could imagine, except
addiction," says Mary, who was told at one point that her daughter had
bipolar disorder and was put on the first of many prescription drugs.
"They did everything but test her for drugs."

She may have been able to hide her powdered cocaine addiction, but
once she turned to crack, things quickly went downhill for Catherine
and everyone else around her.

On this recent day, as Mary tells her story, her daughter, battered
and bruised from head to toe and suffering from withdrawal, paces
excitedly around the living room and kitchen of her parents' home. The
week before, she'd relapsed and was back on the streets, only to be
severely beaten by a male acquaintance. Mary called the police to
report the assault, but felt she wasn't taken seriously.

"The second I mentioned the A-word," she says, referring to addict, "I
could hear him put his pen down."

At times, Mary felt like she and her family -- Catherine's brother and
his wife are currently raising her toddler daughter -- were alone in
their concern.

It was a love that withstood many assaults from the young woman
hell-bent on causing her family, and herself, an endless river of grief.

"We call it the crazy-making time," she says of the period when the
family became aware of her crack cocaine addiction. "She stole our
TVs, computers and she's stolen my car so many times I've lost track,"
says Mary. "She even stole her grandparents' silverware. They started
locking their doors at night because of her."

"Crack takes away your conscience," says Catherine as she listens in
on the story of her destructive downward spiral. "You'd rather have a
hoot than a house."

Over time, Mary settled into a pattern of constant cleanup after her
daughter's crack binges. "I got to know every pawn shop in every
quadrant of the city," she says. "I don't know how many times I bought
back my own possessions."

A keyboard she'd once given Catherine, for instance, was bought back
five times before Mary gave up. "She loved to play the piano," she
says of her daughter.

The exhausted mother also stopped going to the police. "If she steals
my car now, I just steal it back."

Catherine says that getting a fix meant more to her than family, love
or self-respect.

"I've sold my body for crack, I admit it," she says. "I'm not proud of
it and I didn't do it too often."

Her constant need for a fix also got her into trouble with the kind of
people no one would want their daughter mixed up with. "Once I was
told I had three days to pay up, or else," she says.

In response, Catherine cashed in several thousand dollars from a
registered education fund her parents started for her when she was
just six years old. Other times, she'd forge her mom's signature on
cheques to get cash.

At times, Mary grappled with her own issues of self-respect. "You
become secretive and you isolate yourself from others," she says.

Mary hopes that by sharing her story, she might be able to help others
who find themselves in a similar situation, especially those who've
yet to uncover their child's addiction.

"She'd go out for the weekend with $5 in her pocket, and come home
with new clothes and perfume that even I couldn't afford," says Mary,
who has been running her own successful business for several years.
"Men in expensive sports cars, the glass all tinted, would pull up to
our driveway to pick up this young girl."

She urges parents to insist on a drug test when their child starts
behaving strangely. "It would have saved us years," she says. "Don't
ask -- insist."

Most important, she advises that if possible, they get the child to
agree to a living will, so decisions on their treatment can be made
for them when they're incapable.

"Once they're 18, you lose your rights," she says, noting that such a
document is in place for Catherine.

A few days after the interview, Catherine will once again visit a
treatment centre in an attempt to free herself of the drug that has
robbed her of her youth and could quite easily end her life one day.

Her mother, as always, will be there by her side, her heart filled
with hope that, maybe this time, Catherine will finally conquer the
demon drug that has caused them all such heartbreak.

"We've lost everything but hope," says Mary. "I have to choose between
hanging on to that hope or planning her funeral."