ROADBLOCKS TO RECOVERY

Police are seeing more young people with drug problems, but there are
not enough programs to treat their addictions

Sam looks like any other university student strolling along Queen St.
Her eyes are bright. She smiles a lot, especially when she talks about
how much she likes studying theatre. "I love it! It's fun and crazy
and creative."

It's taken a long time for Sam to get to this place, where her smiles
are genuine and her eyes are clear.

At 22 years old, Sam knows what it's like to be reborn.

She was in her last year of high school when she first tried cocaine.
It was at a friend's place. From that moment, she was hooked. "It was
like the elixir of life." She wanted to be high every minute of every
day.

In school, she was always the one everyone else picked on. "It numbed
that pain."

Within four months, she dropped out of school and was stripping to pay
for drugs. Soon she was living on her dealer's couch. She pushed away
friends and her family. She lost 40 pounds in two months.

Soon she was so doped up she couldn't strip. She'd pass out high. "The
first thing I'd do when I woke up, before my feet even hit the floor,
would be finish up the lines that were on the table."

Her 57-year-old dealer pressured her to trade sexual favours for
drugs.

"I remember lying there with my legs clenched and my eyes shut and
just fighting back tears ..."

The stories of young drug users like Sam, whose name has been changed
for this story, are horrific, but all too common and a continuing
uphill battle for police and others mandated to curb the trend.

A Toronto Star analysis of crime data shows a growing number of teens
in the Greater Toronto Area -- most profoundly in the 905 -- are
coming into contact with police because of drugs. Still, there is a
shortage of services to help them break free from these addictions.

In 1991, youth were charged or received warnings in 3.7 per cent of
all drug incidents for a total of 453 incidents, including possession
and trafficking. By 2005, it was 21.5 per cent or 2,618 incidents.

In the surrounding regions outside Toronto, the climb has been
dramatic, even accounting for the 32 per cent rise in the teen population.

In 1991, suburban youth were involved in 6.6 per cent of drug cases.
By last year, it was 29 per cent -- and the number of youth involved
skyrocketed from 163 to 2,132. Meanwhile, the number of youth involved
in drug incidents in Toronto in 2005 was 481, representing about 10
per cent of all drug incidents.

"I'm 41 and I know when I was in high school, it seemed as though drug
use was kind of a weekend-type thing -- you know where you go to a
party and someone has a joint," says Const. Dave Hookway, a high
school liaison officer with Durham Region police.

"Now what I see, the ones that are using drugs are using them on a
daily basis.

"A lot of these kids are ending up having to go to rehab. It's not
just marijuana use. It's cocaine use."

Drugs can also lead to other types of crime. In 2005, Durham youth
were involved in 5.4 per cent of residential break-and-enters in the
region.

"I think a lot of them end up being drug-related," Hookway says. "The
majority of them occur during the day and the kid or the group is
either skipping school or it's lunchtime.

"We've had cases where they come back to school and they're caught in
the bathroom divvying up the property."

Teens found with drugs are often referred by police or youth
counsellors to addiction assessment and referral programs, which can
be found across the province.

But outpatient programs have limitations.

"They can come to us for individual counselling, but that's for an
hour a week. That's not going to take them out of the situation," says
Victoria Peace, manager of youth outreach and intervention for the
YMCA of Greater Toronto, which runs the Peel Youth Substance Abuse
Program.

"There are very limited resources for youth who are using drugs and
who may want to get out of the situation that they're in," Peace says.

Referral programs in the GTA may want to send teens to in-patient
residential treatment centres. But publicly funded centres are in
short supply -- especially in the GTA -- and private programs can cost
tens of thousands of dollars.

In fact, there are only two provincially funded mainstream residential
programs for teens in the province -- one near Ottawa and the other in
Thunder Bay -- and both have long waiting lists for their total of 24
beds. According to the Ministry of Health, there are four other
residential teen facilities, but they are aimed at specific groups,
including francophone males, aboriginals and young women.

One of the newest facilities for teens with addiction issues is Pine
River Institute, a private, not-for-profit boarding school. It's
located 100 kilometres northwest of Toronto and opened this past summer.

For the first six to eight weeks of treatment, teens camp out in the
wilderness. They regain their strength by canoeing, portaging and
eating healthy meals. Then the teens move into the 36-bed residence
where they receive intensive counselling and can enrol in high school
courses.

The turnaround is remarkable, says chief executive officer Karen
Minden. "We had one student who came in from having just been in
hospital emergency with an overdose and a week later she was portaging
a canoe and several weeks after that she was enrolled in Ontario
secondary school courses to make up some of the credits she lost over
the last few years."

The program charges $400 a day per student. With the average stay
expected to be about nine months, the bill can top $100,000.

There are some bursaries available and the board is fundraising
aggressively, Minden says. "Our goal is that we will not have to turn
away any child because of financial need."

The program was started without government funding, but Minden says
the board is open to receiving cash from the province as long as
independence is maintained. A spokesperson for the Ministry of Health
and Long-Term Care said it would consider subsidizing teens on a
case-by-case basis if Pine River applied for funding.

"We're losing some wonderful young people and their families go down
with them," says Minden. "Some of these kids are the best and the
brightest and they just run into trouble in adolescence and we need to
be doing everything we can to help them get back on track."

Experts view addiction centres as tools to prevent additional costs in
the future -- costs to the legal system, health care system and social
services. "If you're mired in addiction issues .. it's hard to move
forward with your education and with a vocation," says Gloria Chaim,
deputy clinical director of the child, youth and family program at the
Centre for Addiction and Mental Health.

Sam started drinking heavily when she was 16. "At parties, I was the
drunk girl who'd be making out with absolutely everybody.

"When I'd be at a party I wouldn't feel confident unless I was
absolutely hammered. Once I was absolutely hammered alcohol gave me
that feeling of self worth and then I'd feel comfortable chatting, but
unless I was emotionally numb I was overwhelmed with fear and pain,"
she says.

She had just turned 18 when she started using cocaine.

"A low point for me was when I took all the presents my parents and my
brother had gotten me for Christmas and my dealer and I went to the
mall and I returned them all to get cash to give to him to get more
drugs. I hate myself for doing that."

For more than a year, the addiction clouded Sam's life.

"I find with everybody who's an addict, they had some sort of
childhood trauma," she says, "and that emotional pain carries through
and stays with you until you learn how to heal."

The province's two mainstream addiction facilities for youth are both
plagued with long waiting lists.

Alwood Treatment Centre is a half hour drive from Ottawa. Recovering
addicts ages 16 to 22 stay here for four months, during which they
receive counselling, anger management, relapse prevention, do
exercises that promote self esteem, and learn independent living skills.

There are 14 beds -- eight for males, six for females. "There is
always a waiting list," executive director Pauline Sawyer says. For
women, it's two to three months; for men, three to four.

"Sometimes the clients themselves call. Sometimes they're in tears or
almost in tears and ... you can't respond in as timely a way as you
would like to," Sawyer says.

Family members who call Alwood are equally frustrated.

"When they finally get their child motivated to go to treatment -- and
that can take a while -- and they find out there is a long waiting
list, it's disheartening because they can't pick up on their child's
motivation right away," says Sawyer.

"They're scared that something is going to happen to their child while
they're waiting because their children are often involved in a lot of
high-risk behaviours."

The Thunder Bay facility run by St. Joseph's Care Group has just 10
beds. Two are reserved for locals.

About 80 per cent of referrals to the five-week program come from
outside the north region, says Nancy Black, St. Joseph's manager of
addiction services.

It's the only place in the province for youth under 16, but, like
Alwood, there is often a waiting list. "It can be anywhere from a
month to three months," Black says.

On the flip side, some private centres have beds, but not the funds to
fill them.

Portage Ontario runs a residential treatment centre in Elora, 100
kilometres west of Toronto, for teens ages 14 to 19. The agency only
receives government funding for youth from the criminal justice system
or children's aid. Regular teens with addiction issues aren't covered,
even though the centre may have room for them.

"One of the things we find kind of sad is on any given day we could
handle another one or two youth at the facilities ... but at times we
have to turn away clients because there is no funding to take them,"
says Jennifer Blunt, Portage Ontario's director of
development.

It irks Blunt that some of the 52 beds go empty. "Really no bed should
be available. There should be a constant flow of youth into the
program because there is so much demand."

Portage plans to apply to the Ministry of Health so that regular teens
with addiction issues can fill the empty beds. Until government
funding comes through, the agency will try to pay for some teens on
its own. A recent fundraiser raised $15,000, about 10 per cent of what
Portage needs to accept 15 more teens.

The cost per teen is $160 a day and the average stay is four to six
months. A five-month stay would cost about $23,000.

The Ministry of Health allocates about $114 million to substance abuse
treatment programs across the province. Money is divided between 150
agencies, 47 of which provide youth-specific services.

Ministry spokesperson John Letherby says there are no plans to open a
residential program for teens in the GTA.

Sending GTA teens to far-away centres has its disadvantages, says
Chaim of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health.

"Sometimes they come back to their environment and nothing has changed
in their environment and they're back to where they started," says
Chaim. "If you have access to treatment closer to your home, it's
easier to work with the families. It's easier to look at what else is
happening in their home environment."

As for Sam, the road to recovery has been marked by both successes and
failures.

"I honestly thought I'd be a stripper doing coke for the rest of my
life," she says. "I had no reality."

She eventually moved out of her dealer's apartment and back in with
her parents. Then back to her dealer's. She'd be clean for five days.
High on the sixth.

"He'd leave piles of coke on the computer desk," she says. "He knew
the second I did it, I'd be his again."

Her self-esteem was battered. "I hated myself," she says. "I couldn't
look in the mirror."

Finally, someone she knew introduced her to Narcotics Anonymous. "I
went every day, sometimes twice a day. ...It's given me my life back.
It's given me a life because I didn't have a life before."

Early in 2003, she moved out of her dealer's place for good. She
stayed clean for five months. By that time she was 19 -- just old
enough to qualify for an adult residential treatment program. She was
the youngest one there.

"It was 24 days of concentrating on me, on my pain and just healing
and learning the tools we need in life."

She switched to a different high school. This time she graduated. "It
was the proudest day of my life."

Now she's living on her own and studying at a Toronto
university.

She says she would probably be in jail if she hadn't moved away from
her dealer. "I got out of that circle," she says.

"Everyone who was in it got arrested. I'm very lucky I got out."