BROTHERS STRUGGLE IN THE CLUTCHES OF CRACK

Nicolas, 17, and Julian, 15, have a drug habit that is tearing the
family apart. In the second of seven chapters of the family's story,
the road to rehab is bumpy - but Nicolas makes it to the Portage
treatment centre in the Laurentians.

Cha Cha da Vinci was a close friend and neighbour who had known
brothers Julian and Nicolas since they were in daycare. She'd often
see them playing in the alley as youngsters and, more recently,
hanging out, their faces hidden under their hoodies.

She was especially close to Julian, the more sensitive of the two. He
wore the jewellery she gave him, turned to her for hugs and often
sought her out to talk and share a laugh.

So naturally, when Rodolfo Borello learned his sons were addicted to
crack, he headed to her house on Marianne St. to seek advice.

The two sat in the kitchen, and da Vinci recalls him being shaken,
bewildered, hurt and afraid. He was crying. "We've discovered the
kids have been smoking crack," he told her.

Da Vinci, a recovered addict who lost her husband to the white powder
she calls "devil incarnate," immediately offered her support and help.

Her 15-year-old daughter grew up with Julian and Nicolas, and the
three were close until high school. Seeing crack take hold of the
boys hurt her as deeply as if it was happening to her own children.

"What do you need me to do?" she asked Borello. "What's the battle plan?"

They searched on the Internet and made some phone calls. The boys'
mom, Jennifer de Freitas, contacted social workers she knew.

The Argyle Centre told them if it was crack, a weekly therapy session
wasn't going to cut it. The CLSC said it had a counsellor there on a
drop-in basis. Batshaw Youth and Family Centres and Maison Jean
Lapointe were suggested.

In the end, they set up appointments at Portage, a boarding school
rehab centre on the picturesque shores of Lake Echo in the Laurentians.

Portage had space, and at $2,400 for each child, Rodolfo and Jennifer
saw it as a deal.

But getting the boys there wouldn't be easy. Crack had grabbed hold
of them and didn't want to let go.

Three weeks later, and after family visits to Portage, where the
boys' commitment to change was assessed, Nicolas, always the good
son, was to begin his journey toward sobriety.

Julian, who had always bucked authority, was still too attached to
his crack and needed more time to agree to going clean.

He was also still young enough not to want to leave behind the
familiar for the unfamiliar. "He was scared," Rodolfo said. "He
wouldn't have his crack, us, his room, his dog, Angel."

On April 15 - a cold, grey Friday - Nicolas's packed suitcase was in
the black Ford Focus for the trip north. Jennifer and Rodolfo were
anxious to get on the road, to get their son finally to a place where
he could be given the help they were unable to give him.

They wanted their own lives - and sanity - back. But that afternoon,
Nicolas ducked out of the family's home to a nearby parked car and
smoked a fat spliff with his friend JP.

Nicolas remembers little of the trip, other than he was mellow in the
backseat with Julian, listening to Non Fiction blaring from the CD player.

"I was hoping the drive would be really long because I didn't want to
go," he recalled.

Entering Portage's vast grounds is a bit like arriving at a summer
camp. A long, gravel driveway, lined with massive evergreens, maples
and birch trees, curves past a large, white clapboard building, which
houses the adult residents, then a fenced-in playground of swings and
slides, for the kids of the women enrolled in the mother-child program.

At the end of the drive is another white clapboard building that
houses about 40 teens at any one time. Above the door is a wood sign
that says, "La maison des ados."

Portage has been helping adults for more than 30 years. The program
for teens addicted to drugs or alcohol started out with six teens in
1991 and has grown steadily since. There is rarely an empty bed.

There's a wide wood deck at the back of the building, and beyond it,
a rocky, steep hill slopes down to a lake dotted with cottages, docks
and boats.

The Borellos pulled in at about 2 p.m., Jennifer and Rodolfo signed
over responsibility for their son to Portage, then there were quiet
goodbye hugs.

Jennifer and Rodolfo remember feeling overwhelming relief as they drove away.

Nicolas showered his boney 5-foot-7 frame, which had shrunk to 110
pounds, while staff went through his bags and confiscated a crack pipe.

He was shown his room, which he would share with another boy, and sat
down in the cafeteria to have a plate of spaghetti with the
boisterous gang of teens in various phases of detox.

He turned out his light at 10, as required, and fell into a deep
sleep - something he hadn't done since his drug binges began several
months before.

He had his first taste of pot one lunch hour at Sophie Barat School
when he was 11 years old, and learned to cover up the signs with
Visine and cologne.

By the time he was 13, he started dealing to fellow students - $10
for a small baggie of marijuana, until he was clearing up to $150 a week.

In the summer of 2004, when he was 15, a guy in a park offered him a
"juicy" - a joint with crack mixed in. "Right away, I asked him to
meet us again and I bought some," he recalled.

But it wasn't until the fall, after dropping out of school and
getting a full-time job at a butcher shop, that Nicolas really got hooked.

He was spending between $40 and $60 a day, and by December that had
increased to $100 a day. By the time Rodolfo and Jennifer clued in to
what was happening, the boys were spending up to $300 a day and were
thousands of dollars in debt to their dealer.

"I'd smoke it at home alone," Nicolas recalled. "I was pawning my
stuff, stealing CD players and whatever I could get my hands on from
parties, and stealing from my mom's purse."

He'd also pawned the digital camera, with all of Jennifer's photos
from Argentina, for $120.

Then, one day around Christmas 2004, Nicolas was out in the back
alley when Julian appeared and begged to have a puff of the pipe.

At first Nicolas refused, but then bowed to his brother's pleading -
a move he regrets to this day.

"It was heavenly," Julian recalled. "Once you smoke it, you do
anything to get it.

"I'd come home from school at 3, call the dealer, then wait by the
door for him to show up, then I'd smoke alone. I'd call Nico at work
to see when he was coming home."

Today, the boys say the explanation for their drug use wasn't
complicated: peer pressure. And besides, it was fun to be high.

"It's not where I came from, it's more where I went," said Nicolas,
drawing deeply on a du Maurier and sipping a coffee. "I started just
because it's cool. I was afraid of being judged by friends. I wasn't
in control of anything in my life and that was the one thing I could
control - almost.

"Sure, I was afraid of disappointing my parents," he said, shrugging.
"But I thought they'd never figure it out."

Ironically, the thing they'd done to be accepted soon turned them
into outcasts.

The two quickly gained a reputation as crackheads and lost most of
their friends, even those who used marijuana.

They remember sitting silently together in the house, blinds drawn,
biting their nails, both thinking about how and where they could get
their next high.

Soon, they stopped even trusting one another, afraid they wouldn't
get their fair share of the little white rock that had come to
control their every move and thought.

"I'd put a towel along the base of my bedroom door, open my window
and smoke when my parents were home," Nicolas recalled. "Then I'd be
lying in bed, my heart pounding so hard I thought it'd come through
my chest, I was so stressed and scared."

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.

Yesterday: Chapter 1 - A drug problem uncovered.

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

Tomorrow: Chapter 3 - Julian makes it to Portage.

Tuesday: 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.