THE SLOW ROAD BACK FROM HELL

Young alcoholics and drug addicts who ask for treatment may not get it
because of space and budget shortages

Tyrone, Star and Jenn have spent a total of more than 20 years either
drunk, high, angry or a combination of all three.

Each day, they must decide anew if they want to return to the hell of
abusing drugs and alcohol.

For today, however, they've chosen not to - on their own terms.

Tyrone, 24, took his first drink at age 5. He has been clean for more than
two years and was recently hired as a youth corrections officer at an
Oakville treatment and corrections centre for young boys.

Star, 22, spent almost a decade on the street. She got a television
production job after quitting heroin and beginning methadone treatments
last November.

Jenn, 18, was a drug addict by age 15. Jenn has been on the same methadone
program as Star for almost a year, during which she graduated from high
school and was accepted into university.

They are among the fortunate ones who got professional help when they
needed it.

Because of space and budget shortages, half of the young people who need
help won't make it to treatment, says Dennis Long, executive director of
Breakaway, the organization that runs the methadone program attended by
Star and Jenn.

Instead, frustrated, vulnerable and despairing, they return to drinking or
drug-taking.

Tyrone realized how big his drug and alcohol problem was when he became the
first person in Simcoe, Ont., arrested by the K-9 unit.

Just shy of his 21st birthday, he robbed the owner of the restaurant where
he was working.

"He was trying to pay me off with booze and food," Tyrone recalls. "But
that wasn't paying my bills."

It was January and he had a plan to get enough money to buy himself some
freedom. But booze - a 40-ouncer of gin and then some - slowed down his
getaway.

Soon, the police and their dogs were all over him. The K-9 unit had been in
Simcoe, south of Brantford, for one week.

"That woke me up." he says. "I lost my job, my apartment, my fiancee. My
parents wanted nothing to do with me."

Tyrone attributes his slow road back from alcohol addiction to a
residential treatment program and, before that, to a counsellor named Joan.

He first met Joan when he was a troubled 14-year-old in Simcoe, the town to
which his family had moved from Burlington the year before. Emotionally and
socially unable to handle the move, Tyrone accelerated into a downward
slide that had begun at age 11.

At 14, he was kicked out of his home and was living on student welfare. He
was also drinking and taking hallucinogenic drugs.

"I was going to school on acid. I couldn't concentrate. I was loaded and my
teachers knew it," he explains over breakfast at a Bloor St. cafe.

Clad in a tight black tank top and jeans, Tyrone exudes cool attitude. His
muscular arms are covered in tattoos of dragons and other bold designs. It
doesn't come as a surprise when he mentions coming from a family of bikers.

Joan was an addictions awareness counsellor at his high school.

"She was really cool," Tyrone says. "I know she planted the seed to get help."

There used to be 31 counsellors like Joan, working from satellite offices
around the province. But budget cuts in 1996 led to the closing of 19
satellites, including Simcoe's.

After Tyrone was arrested and charged for breaking into the restaurant, he
went into treatment for the first time. It was a 28-day, in-patient program
for adults at the Simcoe hospital.

However, he relapsed after six months, and the worst time of his life began
when he moved to London and began dealing drugs for two organized crime rings.

In those nine months, he assaulted and robbed two men, he became an
injection cocaine user and his gang bosses threatened to either kill him or
break both his legs because he owed them more than $3,000.

"I was the person you love to hate," Tyrone says. "You'd look at me and
ask: `Why isn't he locked up?' "

With the help of his Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor, Tyrone made it back to
Simcoe and entered detox again.

"This time I paid attention," he says.

Once he was clean, Tyrone moved to Oakville and started working, but was
soon charged for the assault and robbery in London.

He was sentenced to three months in jail - to be served over weekends. This
allowed him to continue working during the week.

He says: "I realized I'd been given something most people don't get:
another shot."

The high-school dropout decided to go back to college last August, entering
the social services worker program at Humber College.

Tyrone also began volunteering at Syl Apps Youth Centre in Oakville, a
corrections and treatment facility for boys, some mentally ill. The maximum
security institution houses sexual offenders and those who have committed
serious crimes, including first- and second-degree murder.

His volunteer work helped him get a paid position there.

"A lot of the kids at Syl Apps don't have families or they come from the
street or the gangs," Tyrone says.

"A lot of them come from families that don't give a damn and don't want
them back. A lot of them are adopted or have been through the foster care
system or in and out their whole lives.

"It's the end of the road for kids in Ontario, that facility."

He says these kids have built up a big store of anger by that point.

"Kids today aren't tough, they're angry. There's a big difference . . . I
thought I was a tough kid, growing up hard and (with) the hard-core music.
I wasn't tough, I was angry.

"Tough is making it through and realizing your mistakes and making amends
where you can.

"I'm not angry any more."

Star and Jenn are from the streets of Toronto.

They're recovering heroin addicts who chose harm reduction - like
substituting methadone in a doctor-supervised program - over the total
abstinence of Alcoholics Anonymous-style 12-step programs.

The two women are a study in contrasts and similarities. Jenn is tall,
slender and laconic. Star is short, fiery and brash.

It's a sunny weekday afternoon in Parkdale. The two women sit in the office
of Breakaway, a Toronto agency funded by the Ministry of Health. It runs a
methadone maintenance program for adults, an outpatient treatment program
for youth ages 12 to 24 and the Van Program for street outreach.

Jenn and Star wear street kid clothes: baggy, shin-length pants, scruffy
T-shirts and black running shoes. A large tattoo frames Star's left eye and
her limbs are adorned with small homemade designs.

"Nobody wants to become a heroin addict," Jenn says.

Like many addicted street kids, Jenn got hooked on crack first, then
switched to heroin because, as she says, "Crack is such a draining drug."

But Jenn wasn't expecting the agony of heroin withdrawal. "You can't (kick)
it on the street because it's two weeks of vomiting, delirium, tremors,
hallucinations and complete pain."

That's why she and Star both chose methadone treatment, which eliminates
the painful withdrawal and helps reduce the craving for heroin. They say it
saves lives.

Star used to be one of the strung-out street kids panhandling outside the
ChumCity building on Queen St. W. Now she works inside as a unit assistant
for the Ed The Sock! show.

Last October, Star was curled up outside on the sidewalk, fighting
pneumonia. She refused to enter a hospital full-time because it wouldn't
take her dog San.

One day, Star couldn't move. The left side of her body was seizing up from
lying on the cold, hard pavement. But all she could think about was San,
who lay beside her shivering and whimpering.

"I'd gone to a couple of the stores offering to work in exchange for a
sweater or blanket, but nobody would help," she recalls.

"I kept telling my dog I was sorry."

Then a passerby handed her $200, telling her to use the money to do
something good for herself. He also promised he'd get her a temporary job,
so she could get enough money to rent an apartment and get back on her feet.

The man was Steve Kerzner, executive director of Ed The Sock!

"I don't really want to talk about it because I didn't do it for
attention," says Kerzner.

"She appeared to have a certain degree of dignity and I had a hunch that
she just needed a hand up, not a hand out."

Star used the money to rent a pet-friendly hotel room for a couple of weeks
and began the methadone treatment.

Jenn says she left home in Peterborough when she was 15 because she
couldn't get along with her parents. So the Toronto streets became her home
- - and fellow street kids became the family she felt she never really had.

For the three years, Jenn supported herself and her growing drug habit by
panhandling and squeegeeing - a job she says taught her a lot.

"Most days, I'd make anywhere from $10 to $100 a day. Squeegeeing taught me
not to be afraid of people and not get hurt by rejection in the workplace,
which are two work skills a lot of people don't have."

Last August, Jenn became the first teen accepted by Breakaway's methadone
program. At the time, her heroin addiction was costing her $140 a day.

Less than a year later, Jenn finished high school with a 73 per cent
average. She plans to study kinesiology at York University this fall.

Neither Tyrone's, Star's or Jenn's story is a fairy tale. All three say
it's difficult learning to live again.

And they say they often feel like aliens - whether at work, in school or at
leisure.

For Tyrone, dealing with people and handling stressful situations are two
skills he has never been taught.

In sobriety, he says, he at least has a chance to acquire those skills and
learn from others with similar backgrounds.

As for Star and Jenn, they agree that living on the street and doing drugs
can be fatal, but occasionally yearn for their old comforts.

"Living on the street is addictive," says Jenn.

"Today, I have rent to pay and I go to school instead of doing what I want
whenever I want. Now that it's summer, I look at my apartment and I look
outside, knowing I could get by with a sleeping bag and a backpack."

Star laughs in agreement. "Sometimes, when I want to get on the streetcar,
I forget I have money in my pocket and start asking strangers if they can
give me a token or some spare change."

Jenn chimes in: "Or going to the bank machine! Sometimes I still cover the
security camera when I'm withdrawing money from my account because I forget
the money is mine."