METHADONE CLINIC OFFERS SAFE FIX

Narcotic Helps Addicts Struggling To Withdraw From Heroin And Other
Powerful Opiates

For the past 20 years, Hector Deagle has been hustling to feed a drug habit
that saw him pumping up to $150 a day worth of dilaudid and morphine into
his veins. Three weeks ago, the 36-year-old Halifax man started taking
methadone - a narcotic used to treat withdrawal from heroin and other
powerful opiates - and his life started switching gears.

"It makes me level," Deagle said recently during one of his daily visits to
Halifax's new methadone clinic.

"I don't have to go out and get into crime to come up with the money to
support my habit. It's keeping me out of trouble and keeping me out of prison."

Over the past two decades, Deagle estimates he's spent more than 15 years
behind bars for crimes he committed to feed his drug habit.

But that hasn't kept him off intravenous drugs.

"You can get better stuff in jail," he said.

"It's easier because you don't have to run anywhere. It's right there. The
guy lives next door to you or the guy lives in the next unit."

The Mainline Needle Exchange on Cornwallis Street has been running for nine
years. But the methadone clinic in the basement, named Direction 180, only
opened in February.

The federal government gave Mainline $175,000 this year to renovate its
existing facilities and start the methadone program.

There are about 500 intravenous drug addicts in metro who visit Mainline
regularly, said Direction 180 co-ordinator Essie Hickey.

"A lot of the girls prostitute, and shoplifting is a big way of making
money," Hickey said. Other addicts rely on dealing drugs themselves to feed
their habits, she said.

People who want to start taking methadone must first see the clinic's
doctor. After that, it usually takes about a week to get on the program.
"Not everybody's going to make major changes, but I think it gives them a
better quality of life," said Hickey, a former dilaudid addict who still
takes methadone every day.

"If I don't have it, I don't feel normal," she said. "I'd have diarrhea,
and sweats and cramps and everything if somebody just took it away from me."

Deagle and about 35 other regulars visit the clinic daily around 9:15 a.m
to down a mug of Tang orange juice laced with free methadone.

"There's no buzz from it," he said. "Once it gets into you, it keeps you
from getting sick. When the junkie or the user gets sick from morphines or
the dilaudids, they'll go out and do almost anything to get that money and
get that drug."

For Deagle, the best part about methadone is his wife no longer has to
watch him using needles every day.

"She doesn't have to see me going on the nod all the time," he said.

The "nod" occurs when junkies inject dilaudid, he said.

"You go to sleep, but you still understand what's going on around you,"
Deagle said, hanging his head down to his chest like a zombie to demonstrate.

Deagle said his wife of seven years has already noticed a change.

"I spend a lot more time with my children," said the father of four.

"For the last three weeks, I've been living a normal life."