DRUGS POT, LSD, HEROIN, COCAINE - JEFF HAS TRIED THEM ALL, INCLUDING THE
LATEST TO PLAGUE CORNWALL, OXYCONTIN

A recovering drug addict sits in a sunbathed office at a
rehabilitation centre in Cornwall as a drug called Suboxone tricks his
brain's opiate receptors into thinking he's high. But he's not. He's
tranquil. And he's 39-year-old Jeff Thomas.

It has been a nine-month dose of reality for Jeff since checking into
the St. Denis Centre on Second Street, the site of his sixth attempt
at recovery in an Ontario rehab centre.

Jeff's drug of choice was OxyContin, a prescription pain medication
known as "hillbilly heroin."

"It gave me the illusion that it fixed everything that was wrong with
me," said Jeff. "If I felt nervous in a social situation I took
OxyContin. If I needed energy I took OxyContin. If I wanted to relax
on the couch, I took OxyContin."

It's a drug Cornwall's police chief says has become prolific on the
Seaway City's streets.

It's designed to have a time-release effect, gradually introducing the
oxycodone, a semi-synthetic opioid, into the patient's system. But for
addicts like Jeff, that's not enough. So they use their tongue to work
off the time-release coating, crush up the pill into a powder and snort it.

Some, like Jeff, even shoot it into their veins with
needles.

"I went from being a confident, proud people person . . ." Jeff
started. "I'm still a people person, but now there's a lot of shame.
I'm riddled with it.

"It's like a slow suicide."

Drugs started around age 16 for Jeff - drinking, smoking pot, high
school parties. Then after two DUIs, things got a little bit real.
They became even more real when he got an older girl pregnant. At
first Jeff was scared about the prospect of having a child, but the
idea quickly grew on him.

He knew the girl's parents were devout Catholics, so when one day he
was told they had forced their daughter to have an abortion, Jeff was
shocked.

"They said 'We're very pro-life, we're just pro-our-daughter's-life,'"
he recalls.

After the abortion, Jeff decided to do whatever he pleased with his
remaining teenage years, which weren't very productive.

"I could have got a scholarship in running. People would come to see
me run. It wasn't supposed to be like this," he says, his shaved head
tilted down toward his grey hoodie and green Converse shoes.

Jeff's new mindset would eventually lead him to cocaine and ecstasy
parties by age 25. For a while, he even dabbled with heroin during a
stint in Vancouver. But it wasn't until 31 that Jeff was introduced to
potent painkillers like Percocet, Dilaudid, and of course, OxyContin.
It was strictly downhill from there, he said, with one exception.

As fate would have it, Jeff struck up a romance with an ex-addiction
counsellor.

"She was a caretaker and I needed to be taken care of. I snowed her,"
Jeff said sadly.

She was aware of his marijuana use, but he said he waited until she
fell in love with him before he told her about his opiate addiction.

Jeff did well for a period, but one week before the wedding he
relapsed hard. So hard, in fact, that even his parents learned about
the addiction that he'd managed to keep private for so long.

The wedding went forward, but so did the relapses. One after the
other.

"Apparently I'd fallen down the stairs and the landlord called an
ambulance," he remembers. "When I woke up in the hospital the first
thing I said to the nurse is 'I want my pills back."

At the time, he was also heartbroken by the reality that he and his
new bride were unable to conceive a child.

As Jeff tells his story, a therapy dog named Zoey makes rounds in the
treatment centre. She's a big hit with the 16 patients currently
recovering. Most of them will stay an average of about six months,
explained Ann Zeran, residential supervisor at the St. Denis Centre.

"We have Masters degrees with illiterate people," Zeran says of the
all-male clientele, who are primarily 30 - 40 years of age.

These men are here voluntarily. They can leave anytime they want. In
fact, most mornings Jeff begins his day with a pensive walk along the
St. Lawrence River. When he's not doing that, he's on Facebook or
downloading music. More recently, he's felt ready to begin looking for
a job.

"We help them live sober in the community with the support of living
here," Zeran explains.

Walking was what Jeff got paid for when he was struggling with
OxyContin addiction.

He would get high and walk seven miles a day reading hydro meters on
contract. He never interacted with anybody, which was just how he liked it.

The people he did interact with were mostly drug dealers. Jeff also
got opiates from people who had legitimate prescriptions, but were
below the poverty line, so they sold their pills. Wherever he went, he
could easily find pills.

Jeff says he's shocked by the amount of OxyContin he's seen on the
streets in eastern Ontario. He's also been shocked by some of the
prescriptions he's seen, something the Eastern Ontario Health Unit
announced last week that it's looking into.

One of Jeff's friends with a severe back condition could readily get
320 pills of the 80mg strength each month from an area doctor.

"If you don't have tolerance and you took an Oxy 80, it would kill
you," Jeff said. "I can't understand why a doctor would do that."

Before Jeff could move into his most recent treatment centre, he had
to go through detox. Withdrawal from OxyContin was a nightmare, he
said. He described it as having a really bad flu for a week.

"Having a shower hurts," he recalls.

Since coming to the centre, Jeff is reading again. He's into Buddhism
and psychology. Some day, he even hopes to return to college after two
failed attempts.

He's still married, technically, but he doesn't believe there's any
chance for a reunion. He says too much damage has already been done.

One of the things Jeff is working on is reminding himself that
marijuana isn't an option when he finallywalksthroughthedoorsof the
treatment centre for the last time. Pot, he says, always pushes him
back to other drugs when he gets bored with it. Often, that happens
quite quickly.

Jeff's optimistic. He's looking back on his addiction now as an
exploration of his darker side. Although it's a place he says he's
done exploring. But the experience, he said, though tragic in many
ways, has made him a dynamic human being who has learned a lot about
the human condition.

"On paper my life looks tragic, but it wasn't, and I'm hopeful for the
future. And if I do the right things, good things will follow."