DRUG ADDICTS TELL THEIR STORIES

Filmmaker David Adkin Chronicles the Lives of Several Drug Users,
Including Scott Mcallister, Who Got Clean Using Methadone, and Ben And
Chad, Whose Addictions Led Them to Suicide. the Film Was Screened
Yesterday As Part of Mental Health Week, Tony Lofaro Reports.

Scott McAllister used to be a panhandler, always begging strangers for
money to buy his hard drugs of choice.

The 36-year-old man lived that way for years, and he knew he would
probably die that way. That is until a friend suggested he go for
treatment at a methadone clinic.

"Methadone saved my life," Mr. McAllister says in the documentary
Prescription for Addiction, an unsparing look at the increasing
addiction to prescription opiate pain medications, or prescription
drugs.

The 85-minute documentary tells stories about individuals, including
Lisa, a car accident survivor and prescription drug addict, and Ben
and Chad, who committed suicide because of their addictions to
prescription drugs.

It also looks at the growing dependency on prescribed drugs among
those living on a First Nation reserve, and it examines Thunder Bay,
where an epidemic of opioid use has caused a rash of drug store
break-ins and more drug use in the community.

The film was screened yesterday at the RA Centre, as part of a
kick-off to Mental Health Week.

"Methadone doesn't work for everybody. Some people get off and on it
quickly, but it worked for me," said Mr. McAllister in an interview
yesterday.

"My teeth were falling out, I was 30 years-old and living in a hostel.
I knew there was a better way," said Mr. McAllister, who has been on a
methadone program for six years. Methadone is a synthetic narcotic
used to wean patients off opiate-based painkillers and heroin.

He said he's back in touch with his family, which he had abandoned
during his years on drugs, and he's reconnected with his teenage
daughter. He is unable to work and he expects to get a disability
pension because his heavy drug use caused many medical ailments,
including severe vertebrae problems, osteoporosis and hepatitis C.

There are no accurate statistics on the number of people in Canada who
engage in the non-medical use of prescription drugs or who experience
dependence on prescription drugs, says the Ottawa-based Canadian
Centre for Substance Abuse.

But according to a report by Columbia University's National Centre on
Addiction and Substance Abuse, the number of Americans who abuse
controlled prescription drugs has gone from 7.8 million to 15.1
million since 1992.

Several years ago, U.S. conservative radio talk show host Rush
Limbaugh admitted to listeners he had become addicted to painkillers
and had to undergo a treatment program for his addiction.

Mr. Limbaugh had been under investigation for allegedly buying
thousands of pain pills, including the powerful drug OxyContin, from
his housekeeper.

Filmmaker David Adkin expects the documentary to be used as an
educational tool and said it was made to raise awareness about the
problem of prescription drug addiction.

"Since the mid-'90s when drugs like Oxycontin were produced in the
United States and then in Canada with many times the dosage of
oxycodone (a powerful pain medication) in them, you started to see an
increase in the numbers of people coming to hospital emergency rooms
and at addiction programs," said Mr. Adkin, who wrote and researched
the documentary.

The documentary was commissioned by the Ontario Federation of
Community Mental Health and Addiction Programs from a Health Canada
grant.