ESCAPING CLUTCHES OF ADDICTION

With brothers Nicolas, 17, and Julian, 15, struggling with crack
addiction that was tearing the family apart, their parents sought
help for the boys at the Portage treatment centre in the Laurentians.
Chapter 3 of the family's story focuses on Julian's troubled road to rehab

On a dreary spring day at the end of April, Rodolfo Borello was in
his graphic design studio on Mount Royal Ave., finishing some
last-minute work in order to knock off early and drive his son Julian
to the Portage rehab centre. Nicolas had already been there two
weeks, and was doing well, but Julian needed a bit of time to get his
head around the idea of six to eight months of soul-searching therapy
away from home.

If they got away in good time, Rodolfo figured, they could beat
Friday afternoon traffic on the Laurentian autoroute and make it to
Portage in under an hour.

Itching for one last high, Julian hurried from his house, around the
corner to the Mount Royal metro, where he effortlessly scored a small
white rock for five bucks, slipped into the bathroom of a nearby
cafe, and held his lighter under the bowl of his pipe. The vapours
curled into the air. He closed his eyes as his head immediately
filled with the euphoric tingling he'd come to live for. He wasn't
ready to give that up just yet.

By the time he got home, his dad was waiting, a packed suitcase
already in the car. "I'm not fucking going," Julian announced
defiantly. Then he stormed out the back door into the alley where Cha
Cha da Vinci, the woman he'd always considered part of his extended
family, intercepted him.

"That bitch is out there," Julian screamed, running past his dad,
into the house and up the stairs.

Rodolfo heard glass shattering as Julian kicked several translucent
panes on the bedroom door that his father had installed during recent
renovations. His outburst was so violent, the door split in half
vertically, part of it still hanging from the hinges.

Julian stopped his raging long enough to hear his desperate,
exhausted father pick up the phone and dial 911.

He had no choice, Rodolfo reasoned with himself, fighting the guilt
climbing in his gut. Julian had always been difficult and defiant,
bucking authority, and he'd also been extremely moody. But he'd also
managed to win a gold medal in backstroke at the age of 10 in the
Jeux de Montreal and was adept at making things with his hands. What
happened to that boy? Where did that mischievous kid with the crooked smirk go?

"Are you crazy, calling the cops?" Julian screamed at him. "They're
going to take me away."

The ambulance that came in answer to the call didn't stick around but
two police officers stayed for an hour, chatting casually with
Julian, who skillfully managed to convince them everything was under control.

Once they'd left, Rodolfo picked up the phone to dial a number in the
450 area code he now knew off by heart. Nicolas had been anxiously
watching the clock in his classroom at Portage, counting down the
minutes to his younger brother's arrival.

For months the two had been inseparable, crack their shared
obsession. But the closest Nicolas had come to the drug since
starting Portage was in his vivid dreams, where he'd see himself
preparing a pipe, warming the rock till it crackled and, just as he
was about to inhale, he'd awake in a cold sweat.

He'd developed pneumonia, which threw him into such severe coughing
fits, he vomited thick black resin that had built up in his lungs for
months. Dentists would later tell both him and Julian they were lucky
they hadn't destroyed the enamel on their teeth.

At 2:45 p.m., he was summoned out of the room.

"Julian's not coming," a Portage counsellor told him.

Those three words, Nicolas recalled later, "really messed with his
head." Could he stay off drugs if his brother didn't?

He called home, demanding an explanation. The answer he got
devastated him. "We have to get Julian away," Rodolfo told him.
"We're thinking of going to Mexico."

Instead, in an attempt to shield her youngest son from the dealers
she felt had invaded their neighbourhood, Jennifer took Julian to
Halifax and Cape Breton to visit her family. He didn't find crack,
but spent the week secretly drinking from his grandfather's liquor
cabinet. While he was there, Rodolfo again made arrangements for his
youngest son to go to Portage.

Julian travelled home without his mother. As soon as he arrived, some
friends came over and they got high in his room, even though Rodolfo
was in the house.

"We were tired soldiers by this time, so it was 'whatever got us
through the night,' " Rodolfo said. "I didn't care if he got stoned
that night, because we could see the end of the tunnel. We had one in
Portage and the other was going the next day."

That day, May 6, Rodolfo drove Julian north to Portage. They arrived
early, so picked up burgers for lunch at a local casse-croute.
Neither spoke much, and Rodolfo recalls feeling intense apprehension,
nervousness and overwhelming fatigue. He felt badly that Nicolas had
been there alone for three weeks.

But once he was alone and heading back out that long driveway, past
the clapboard buildings, past the big school bell that all graduates
of the program get to ring, and on to the open road, he was overcome
with relief.

He drove down Highway 15 and turned off west, toward Pierre Elliot
Trudeau airport, and waited for Jennifer's plane to land from
Halifax. As she came out of the arrival gate, her eyes searched his
from afar for an indication of how things had gone with Julian.

Then it hit them - for the first time in years, the two were alone,
at peace knowing their boys were finally in the competent care of
professionals who could do what the parents had no training to do.
Still, they couldn't sleep. Was that someone dialing the phone,
calling a dealer? Was that the boys going out to score? Was someone
in the house?

They eventually built up enough courage to go through the boys'
rooms, where they found rolling papers, bits of cardboard rolled up
to act as filters in joints and pieces of broken pipes.

"They weren't hiding it any more, because they knew we knew," Rodolfo said.

It'd be another six weeks before Rodolfo and Jennifer could sleep
through the night. By then, the troubles with their own 25-year
relationship, and themselves, would start to surface. The entire
family was about to be transformed.

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.

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

Today: Chapter 3 - Julian makes it to Portage.

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

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

Thursday: Chapter 6 - Family therapy.

Friday: Chapter 7 - Bringing the boys home.

To read this story online or to catch up on chapters that you've
missed, go to www.montrealgazette.com