WHERE DID THINGS GO WRONG?

With sons Nicolas, 17, and Julian, 15, struggling with crack
addiction that was tearing their family apart, Rodolfo Borello and
Jennifer de Freitas sought help for the boys at the Portage rehab
centre. In Chapter 5 of the family's story, the parents attend a
support group - and do some soul-searching

The summer of record-breaking high temperatures continued into the
fall. On a sticky Tuesday night last September, 34 parents of drug-
and alcohol-addicted teens sat in a tight circle in a room in a
building next to the Salvation Army on St. Antoine St. Their children
were all at the Portage rehab centre at Lake Echo in the Laurentians.

Sounds of young children laughing and playing on a slide and climbing
structure next door wafted through the open windows, forcing the
parents to speak louder.

The meeting was led by Marie-Chantal Bergeron, a criminologist who
makes a weekly journey from the Laurentians to Montreal for these
gatherings. In the five years she's been with Portage, she's learned
that most parents suffer incredible guilt and shame and feel very
much alone in their struggle - until they attend these meetings.

They aren't mandatory but provide the parents with badly needed
support through a difficult period, as well as offering them some
practical tools on how to deal with their unpredictable teens.

A father whose daughter had already completed the program at Portage
began: "There were things I didn't want to see and it took time for
me to admit my daughter had a problem. I thought it was a phase that
would pass."

Jennifer de Freitas and Rodolfo Borello have attended these meetings
religiously since their sons Nicolas, now 17, and Julian, 15, entered
rehab at Portage.

The meetings are full of parents just like them - educated,
articulate professionals confused and hurt over what has happened to
their children. Here they found people who had been exactly where
they'd been just months before - dealing with the lying, the violent
outbursts, the stealing and the destruction of their once peaceful
home. And once a few months had passed, they became the veterans,
offering solace to the new parents just arriving on the drug rehab scene.

This evening, Rodolfo came alone, tanned and jet-lagged from a flight
from Paris. He was silent the entire evening but nodded in
recognition as parents described his world.

"What I found difficult were the lies because these teens lie like
they breathe," said one mother. "I was completely lost. I couldn't
eat or sleep. The teachers were saying one thing and my kid was
saying another."

Rodolfo, 49, remembered that when he was growing up in Mendoza, a
city in the midst of Argentina's best wine-producing region, the few
kids that took drugs were seen as outcasts and losers. But when he
moved to the United States at the age of 20, then two years later to
Halifax to attend the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, he saw a
lot more drugs. He and Jennifer, whom he met at the college,
experimented regularly with recreational drugs - after all, it was the '80s.

They married in 1982 and, after graduation, headed to Argentina,
where they toured and worked for almost two years.

Finally, they moved to Montreal, settling into a duplex in the
not-yet-trendy Plateau district, and built up a successful graphic
design business together.

Not having any family in the city, they instead built a close network
of friends, and Jennifer was the first among them to become a mother
when Nicolas was born in 1988. Julian followed two years later.

Being at home alone with a newborn was a huge change from her earlier
independent life and she often felt isolated and alone. Finding a
home daycare on Jeanne Mance St. run by a lovely Rwandan woman all
the kids called Tita, was like discovering a whole new supportive
family for Jennifer and the difficult early years got easier.

There were lots of get-togethers with friends and visits from
out-of-town relatives. There were homemade birthday cakes, Halloween
costumes, vacations to Barbados and Cuba. And the boys' growth was
painstakingly recorded in myriad photos, and pencil marks on the kitchen wall.

The boys grew up, as so many Montreal kids do, playing in the back
alley with friends. Jennifer and Rodolfo took turns with other
parents dragging a lawn chair into the alley to supervise the bike
riding, skateboarding and general rougRating 2 ousing.

Nicolas was the more sociable of the two, with never fewer than five
friends around him. He starting playing soccer at age 6, then got
into hockey with Sun Youth.

The boys played sports and were average students. Like many siblings
who are close in age, the two competed for attention - Julian by
being difficult and Nicolas by being good. The elder son was easily
learning three languages before he was 2, while his younger brother
became frustrated at not being able to speak any language
sufficiently by the age of 3.

So where did things go wrong?

Like almost all parents of kids on drugs, Rodolfo and Jennifer spent
countless hours going over it in their heads, wondering if they'd
done things differently, if they'd been different people, would their
kids have ended up on crack?

"Maybe if I'd known pot was 10 times stronger than when we did it,
maybe if I'd stayed home more, maybe if I'd talked to them more about
what they were doing," Jennifer said.

One mother at that September meeting explained how, after numerous
meetings with schools to sort out her son's behavioural problems and
trying everything, including putting him on Ritalin, they took him to
Portage two weeks before.

"I hope he doesn't give up and I wonder if these feelings are
normal," she said, eliciting laughs and nods from the group. "It's
weird because you take care of them all their lives and suddenly, you
let them go."

"It's normal to feel afraid when we send our kids to Portage,"
Bergeron said in a reassuring tone. "They call you and say the food
is horrible and it's a crazy place. When they do that, just say 'Mmm
hmmm,' which means I'm listening, I hear you, I understand.

"It's hard to do. I think it's the hardest thing to says 'There's no
home for you here.' "

Another mother broke down in tears, barely able to express her grief
at having sent her youngest of four, her 14-year-old "baby," off to Portage.

"It was so hard to send him there," she said, sniffling and blowing
her nose. "I told him I wasn't proud of him and if he wanted to leave
Portage, he'd have to go to a foster home."

"It's very hard," conceded another mother, whose son has almost
finished the program. "But I'd rather break my heart that way than to
see my son strung out beyond repair on drugs."

As the meeting wrapped up, there was a palpable feeling of relief in
the air, of having made it through another week, of having been
understood. As the parents shuffled out of the room, a few parents
handed bags of clothes, stuffed animals and letters to Bergeron -
small tokens of love for the kids many fear they've lost for good.

A family's fight against crack

Julian, Nicolas and their parents agreed to share their very personal
story with The Gazette in the hope of helping others battling addiction.

Saturday: Chapter 1 - A drug problem uncovered.

Sunday: Chapter 2 - Nicolas on the road to rehab.

Monday: Chapter 3 - Julian makes it to Portage.

Yesterday: Chapter 4 - Sticking with the program. Daily life in rehab.

Today: Chapter 5 - Support group for parents. What went wrong?

Tomorrow: Chapter 6 - Family therapy.

Friday: Chapter 7 - Bringing the boys home.