CRANKED EXPLORES METH MADNESS

When Stan found himself picking the scabs from his skin and smoking
them, hoping there was enough crystal meth seeping from his pores
into them that he could get high, he hit rock bottom.

Stan was living on the streets, a tweaker willing to do anything for
more meth. He would scrape at a piece of gum on the pavement thinking
it was a quarter, or even better, a rock of meth. He watched
everything and everyone around him, eyeing easy targets and
eventually robbing a man of his wallet and car until crashing into reality.

The story of Stan, a 17-year-old crystal meth addict who finds hope,
is not real and Stan is a fictitious character in a play called Cranked.

But everything that the play portrays about what crystal meth can do
to a person is true.

Green Thumb Theatre brought the play to Vernon Tuesday and Wednesday
with a free public and two free high school performances as part of
the province-wide Cranked tour.

The play offers a dramatic exploration of addiction and strives to
educate the public on the dangers of crystal meth.

"I think it definitely opened up everyone's eyes," said Kalamalka
Secondary student Ryan Hargreaves.

The production grabbed the interest of Hargreaves and the gymnasium
full of students with its hip hop musical theme, flashy lights and
digital imagery.

"It got more attention than someone just coming up and talking to
you," said 14-year-old Hargreaves.

Kyle Cameron, the actor who plays Stan, said that although his
character is just that, a fictional person, and the story is not
real, it might as well be.

Through his character, Cameron sheds light on what life on crystal
meth is like.

For Stan that life was like being a zombie.

With his use he lost his friends, family, his fame as a rising
freestyle DJ, his freestyling contract and the money that came with
it, and he lost himself.

"I'm living with the dead," said Stan in one of his freestyle songs.

"All that you crave is that beautiful flesh. With every single breath
I'd be smoking crystal meth...the flesh is crystal meth and crystal
meth is like a god to you."

It all started with the first high, the first moment of euphoria that
the drug creates.

"Your body tingles, every cell, every nerve ending is alive. The
problem is you never go there again."

Stan continued to smoke, snort, inject or eat meth, trying to get to
the place his first use brought him to. But it wasn't long before his
addiction took everything he had and left him on the streets.

"No friends, no fun, no sex, just meth. Oh what a life I've chosen,"
said Stan, experiencing outbursts of anger, constant twitching,
paranoia and picking at his meth scars.

"I am guiltless, I am soulless, I am dead."

But the other side to the play, which is portrayed in Stan's
rehabilitation, is that there is hope.

Although you can never heal some of the permanent brain damage and
other effects of use, through support groups, rehabilitation centres,
family and friends, meth addicts like Stan can find the strength to
abandon the destructive drug.

There is life after meth.