TURNAROUND TEEN WARNS HER PEERS

Heather Storie Transformed Her Life After Years of Struggling With
Drugs, Alcohol and Parties

Heather Storie's teenage years went by as a blur, a hidden life of
drug abuse, drinking and partying. Now, the 19-year-old is trying to
warn young people facing the same temptations about the
destructiveness she struggled so long to leave behind.

Storie started getting drunk when she was 12. Then, at 13, she started
smoking marijuana, and shortly after starting high school she was the
go-to dealer for most of her friends.

The pot escalated to hashish, magic mushrooms, ecstasy, ketamine and
cocaine. She lost her job at Tim Hortons for going to work high. She
ended up in hospital after being slipped a date-rape drug and was
taken advantage of by men.

This weekend, Storie is sharing her past and her dramatic turnaround
with about a dozen youths, ages 13 to 15, at the Salvation Army's
first Change Youth Venue. It's a five-day workshop she organized --
similar to a well-established conference in Vancouver called Ready and
Willing -- and she plans to make it an annual event.

Storie sporadically cut out partying throughout her teen years,
particularly after a friend died of an overdose in 2005, but she would
repeatedly fall back into the same group of friends and start again.
She would skip class but still got passing grades and graduated from
Spectrum Community high school.

"I didn't have time to look at myself and say, 'That's not what I want
to be doing,' " she said, adding that she was afraid if she gave up
the drugs she'd also be forfeiting her social circle. "Any input from
other people wasn't enough to counteract my relationship with my friends."

Finally, in January, Storie vowed to stop getting drunk and high and
committed herself to God, after meeting friends at the Salvation
Army's High Point Community Church.

She thinks youth will relate closely to her story, perhaps more so
than horror stories told in schools about the dangers of crystal meth
or heroin, which seems so far from what they're experiencing.

"They're going to hear it from someone who's been through it," she
said. "It's the grey area that no one covers."

She said a lot of high school students who smoke marijuana don't see
its potential as a gateway to more serious substance abuse.

During the workshop, the 15 youths slept in tents in Beacon Hill Park,
handed out granola bars and socks to homeless people and served food
and ate at the Salvation Army's Addiction Recovery Centre, all part of
their goal to appreciate their own lives and connect with those who
are less fortunate.

Storie eventually wants to go to medical school to work as a
missionary pediatrician and also hopes to become an officer of the
Salvation Army.

"I feel more fulfilled now. I feel more here and more myself."