BUTANE-SNIFFING DEATHS TIP OF ICEBERG

Parents Must Be Alert, ER Director Says. Addicts Recovering From
Solvent Abuse Say They're Lucky to Still Be Alive

He sniffed spray paint and airplane glue but it was "huffing" gasoline
that brought Zack to his knees, vomiting violently until his throat
was bleeding.

"It was really very frightening. It was one of the last times I used
it," Zack, 17, said in recalling his gas-sniffing three years ago. "I
did use again, but it sends out a message just how heavy it is."

Zack only heeded the message a year later by going to a residential
program at Portage to kick his addiction to marijuana and PCP, a
hallucinogenic known on the streets as angel dust.

If it's not the first time Zack regretted his substance abuse, then
two deaths from butane sniffing this week made him realize how lucky
he was, he said.

"I'm very thankful," he said. "It's frightening that one inhalation
could be your last."

On Monday, Martin Regimbald, 17, of Brossard was found dead by his
sister with two bottles of butane at his side. A day earlier, Steve
Fournier died under similar circumstances in the basement of his
family's Mont St. Gregoire home.

Autopsies and toxicology tests will be done on both bodies, said Diane
Bernier of the coroner's office in Quebec City.

Zack, who got stoned as young as 11 to forget a painful home
environment, now wants to send out a message: "No substance and no
pain is worth your life."

He initially heard about solvents from friends at school.

"The word was out that it could catch you a buzz," he said. "When
you're that deep into using, that's pretty much all that you need to
hear."

Dominique Chalut, director of the emergency department at the Montreal
Children's Hospital, said the prevalence of solvent abuse is probably
higher than suspected because teens rarely report the cause of their
malaise for fear of parental punishment.

"They're not coming in with the complain, 'I just sniffed glue and I
have a headache,' " he said.

This week's deaths are probably the "tip of the iceberg," Chalut said.
"Parents have to be very alert and attentive to their kids."

Zack recalled "huffing" gas and spraypaint squirted onto a
handkerchief in his bedroom because it was easy to fool his parents.
"There's not much evidence. You just throw out the rag."

But for Luc, 32, the road to addiction - alcohol, cocaine, opium,
crack - started with one hit of gasoline at a bodyshop class in
school. He was 16.

"I'm lucky to be alive," said Luc, who couldn't refuse his friends'
cheap high. He had numerous blackouts, living on solvents, cigarettes
and alcohol. "I could have been one of those kids," he said of the two
dead boys.

Two weeks into treatment at Portage and Luc speaks with tears in his
eyes: "One 10-second huff destroyed 16 years of my life."

He'd like to say this about solvent: "Don't touch it. Learn to say
'No.'"