DAUGHTER'S BATTLE AGAINST METH ENDS IN SUICIDE

Cheap, Powerful Drug Often Leaves Users Depressed

RED DEER - Teri-Lynn was laid to rest wearing her trademark white hat and a
butterfly sticker on her left temple.

Before she died at 24 she was finally winning her battle against crystal
methamphetamine -- a powerfully addictive, cheap and easy-to-get drug that
can keep users high for days but ends in a crash that often leaves them
depressed, even suicidal.

Teri-Lynn was in recovery and hadn't used the drug in months. She had come
home from Edmonton and settled in at her family's acreage, started seeing
old friends and had even fallen in love with a boy she met in her hometown.
Her parents thought the worst was over.

"She had her whole life ahead of her," her mother Carol said.

"We were just so happy to have her home again and to see her more her old
self, with her old personality returning."

Teri-Lynn was a lyrical poet with bright blue eyes and long blond hair. At
18 she moved to Edmonton to live with a younger man her mother says was
controlling and manipulative. For five years Teri-Lynn was out of touch.

In February 2003 she told her mother she was using meth and a few months
later she started trying to quit. By October, she was in touch with
counsellors. Her homecoming in January seemed to signal a full recovery.

"On the 23rd of March, 2004, my husband and I returned home from work
around eight in the evening," Carol says, choking back sobs.

"We discovered our daughter -- our daughter's body -- in the car in the
garage. She had allowed the car to run."

Teri-Lynn was meth-free when she died of carbon monoxide poisoning.

"We believe it was the long-term after-effects of depression related to
crystal meth addiction that pushed her over the edge," Carol says, tears
streaming down her face.

"We didn't realize how devastatingly depressed she must have been."

University of Alberta Prof. David Cook says some recovered meth addicts
suffer severe depression even years after quitting. It is a stark contrast
to the profoundly pleasant meth high.

"Individuals (on meth) feel joyful, powerful, successful, high self-esteem
and sexy," Cook says.

"The things we enjoy become far more pleasurable when we are on meth."

One hit can last a day, but users on a "run" will take a hit every four
hours and can be high for up to a week, Cook says.

Shawn's first hit of meth became two months on the drug. He was 15 when a
couple of cute girls offered him the drug at a hotel party.

"They said 'try it', they said 'oh, you can't taste it or smell it,' "
Shawn says. "They made it sound so great. So I did it."

After two months he got off it for a while, but eventually he got addicted
for a year. Now, at 18, he has been clean for eight months -- if you don't
count three or four slip-ups.

Recovery from meth addiction is a cyclical process. Addicts often quit
several times before they succeed.

"When I smoke it, my heart will start pounding. I'll get an awesome rush.
Then you get sketchy after that -- sketchy as in tweaky, can't stop moving
around," Shawn says.

"My average is about three or four days before I sleep," he says.

"Then I crash for half a day, and I try and force-feed myself -- you can't
eat on it -- and then you're back at it once you're cleaned up."

Eventually, Shawn says he would need to sleep for three days straight.
"Then I'd get up and go back hard on it," he says.

Meth works on the brain's pleasure centre, causing the release of natural
feel-good chemical dopamine and then preventing it from being reabsorbed.

"Ultimately the meth becomes ineffective, regardless of how much is taken,"
Cook says. Three-day crashes like those Shawn experienced happen when the
body simply can't produce any more dopamine.

"When you're high, time flies," Shawn says. He kept a spotless apartment,
and would draw amazing pictures when he was on meth.

"I loved the rushes but it wasn't worth it," he says. "If it hadn't
destroyed my life ... I would probably still use it."

He regrets his time on drugs.

"My family doesn't like where my life is headed," he says. His relationship
with them is strained.

"They're like the perfect family without me; I get the picture that I'm not
good enough for them.

"But I know I can do better if I push myself," he says. "I just want them
to know that I love them with all my heart. I want them to know I'm not
just a bum, not just an addict. There's more to me than what they know."

Parents struggle too when their kids are battling an addiction to crystal
methamphetamine. Gord and Karin have a 16-year-old daughter who is fighting
to get clean.

For three years she has been violent, abusive or paranoid. Sometimes she is
famished, other times she doesn't eat for days. They have watched her hair
get brittle, her scalp dry out, seen lesions grow on her mouth, and bumps
grow on her skin. Often she is sleepless.

She runs away for weeks at a time, then comes back. She has repeatedly
stolen their vehicle, broken into their Edmonton home, stolen cheques and
committed fraud. Her little brother has had his video-game system stolen
from their home three times. It pays the drug debt.

"We have a crisis every day in our lives," Karin says.

"Most families, people that you work with, they don't understand it but
that is the reality of our lives."

Their daughter started using soft drugs at 12, going to raves at 13. Then
came crystal meth.

"She has been on and off the streets, when she is not in jail or in
treatment programs," Gord says.

"The cost has been enormous."

But now their daughter has been home for a week. They know the dangers,
they know a recovering addict can fall back into the life in a split
second. But they hope this might be the time she recovers for good.

"The biggest message I have for parents is don't give up on your kids,"
Karin says. "We will never ever give up on our child."