MEMOIR PUTS FACE ON WOMEN ADDICTS

Ex-Junkie Turned Wife, Mom and Gardener Tells of Years Spent on Streets of
Calgary, Vancouver

EDMONTON - Beth Hudson gives a quick and furtive glance around The
Journal's cafeteria to see if anyone is watching, and then pulls up the
right sleeve of her black, designer-label jacket, exposing a lumpy,
telltale scar in the crook of her elbow.

It is the legacy of being a junkie and a hooker, a violent, hardscrabble
existence she led three decades ago. The scar and the hepatitis C that
continues to eat away at her liver mean that she can never, ever forget her
grim and gritty past on the down-and-dirty streets of Calgary and Vancouver.

The scar comes from innumerable hypodermics shooting heroin into her veins
when she was a lost and lonely 21-year-old in the early '70s. The hepatitis
C comes from those same needles, most of which were used dozens of times by
dozens of different addicts. Not surprisingly, Beth is grateful now that it
was in the era before HIV and its deadly counterpart, AIDS.

Her life today is different. She's found contentment in Calgary's "deep,
deep suburbs," she says, where she can putter around her garden and play
with her three dogs, the favourite of which is a much-loved Yorkie.

She is likely the kind of neighbour who is free with advice on pesky
crabgrass and dandelions. She knows the right time to plant pansies and the
wrong time to bring out the nasturtiums.

And her rich and easy laugh finds joy in her kids, two sons who have both
graduated from university and are doing quite well, thank you very much.

Chances are, however, that she still gardens in long sleeves. In the
suburbs, it's best to keep the junkie tracks under wraps.

Beth Hudson's haunting story is told in Snow Bodies: One Woman's Life on
the Streets (NeWest Press, 267 pp., $24.95). It's a riveting, utterly
honest memoir that might be the most courageous you read this year.

"This was my therapy," she says of her book. "I would write a chapter and
get away from it. Every time I wrote a chapter I would have to go back
there to those streets, to that awful life."

On and off, she says, it took her 30 years to write the book, first in the
third person and then, finally, in the more honest and confessional first
person.

"And even when it was done, I wasn't sure I wanted to put it out there
because there is so much stigma attached. When you see 'ex' in front of
'prostitute' and 'addict,' the 'ex' looks awfully small."

But there aren't enough stories, she says, about women addicts.

"Women who are working the streets aren't going to come forward and write
their stories, and those who are making the transition don't want to be outed."

Much of her own life was lived in fear that people would discover her dark
past.

"Every day, I thought about it. Every day, I lived in fear that I would be
recognized."

Her past life, she says, was born of an addict's overwhelming obsession for
the next fix.

"When all the options run out, all you can do is stand on the street corner
to feed your habit."

Her relationship with her parents -- her late father was a Calgary doctor
- -- was not healthy, and it remains testy and tentative with her mother.
"All I heard was door-slamming behind me," she says of her family life.

She came from an upper-middle-class life, but "my father being a doctor
didn't save me from one beating or one sexual assault. Being on the street
doesn't discriminate. Once you're hard-core, you're hard-core."

Her father, however, was more supportive than her mother.

"He visited me in jail and when I was in the hospital," she says.

"Tough love has its place, but I don't think doors should be slammed in
your face. If I had a kid who was an addict, even if he came home once a
week, I'd welcome him. Slamming a door is a one-way ticket to the graveyard."

Nevertheless, her time on the street taught lessons.

"It was long enough for me to know that I was probably going to die out
there. After all, youth sells, and every hooker knows that time is running
out and that it's a closing window."

She was 22 when she managed to find her way back, and was considered to be
an old-timer even at that age.

A friend saved her when she was sitting in a Calgary mall, wondering what
to do next, when he offered her a place to stay.

"When I moved in with him and his friends, it was all pot and alcohol
which, I think, gave me a chance to withdraw. At least nobody there was
shoving needles into their arms."

Women coming off the street are very fierce, she says, a fact that was
understood completely by the man she ultimately married.

"He always said that he thought I was lost," she says of the husband with
whom she has shared the last 25 years and whose identity she protects.
"Hudson" is her maiden name, and the Calgary neighbourhood in which she
lives is also kept secret.

"He's never used my past against me," she says of her husband, "and he's
never brought it up. But I don't want anybody snickering, and saying 'he
married a whore.' "

As for her two sons, both of whom are between 25 and 30, neither will read
the book, she says.

"They're aware of my street past, but they won't read the book because I'm
'mom' to them, and they don't want to read about the horror I've survived.
They simply don't want to read the book, and they won't."

She is, of course, concerned about how her suburban neighbours might react.

"What I'm hoping is that people will read the book, and recognize that it's
me and still have some kind of recognition of what happens to women when
they're on the street.

"Maybe I'll put a face to it."

Mostly, though, she's content.

"I wake up in the morning and I'm grateful," she says.

"I'm grateful that I have my husband and my sons. I'm happy that I have a
garden that I can putter in.

"After all, I probably should be dead."