'WHEN YOU WANT THE DRUG, NOTHING ELSE MATTERS'

Barry Robitaille Had All The Advantages, Yet Crack Caught Him In Its
Lure

OTTAWA - Barry Robitaille spent his formative years in the exotic
capitals of the world.

The son of a Canadian diplomat, he attended private and international
schools in Bangkok, Accra, Washington and Manila.

Opportunity knocked long and loud but Robitaille wasn't
listening.

After clashing with his mother and stepfather, the teenager traded the
diplomatic comforts of Costa Rica for the uncertainties of Ottawa
where he hoped to find his alcoholic biological father.

"My mom warned me against it because of the alcohol, but I wanted to
meet him," he explains. "On the first night we were together, he got
drunk, gave me $50 and told me to go play video games. He was always
drunk."

While living with his father, Robitaille spent two months at Rideau
High School before getting expelled.

Not long after, he moved in with his father's former girlfriend and
her daughter -- "she kicked him out and let me stay." (He learned
through the grapevine that his father had died after drinking cleaning
fluid, but after years of assuming it was true, discovered he was
alive, albeit institutionalized with brain damage.)

Barry enrolled in Colonel By Secondary School where he first tasted
beer and experimented with hash. "I never got drunk, and only did
drugs once in a blue moon."

Six months in, he was expelled for dragging another student down a
hallway. "He'd been teasing me -- I can't remember what about.

I had a bad temper."

He returned briefly to Costa Rica where he was kicked out of another
school.

Back in Ottawa, the diplomat's kid devolved into a chronically ill
crack addict, thief, occasional convict, couch surfer and street dweller.

"I started hanging around with the wrong people. I played softball
with the team from Shepherds of Good Hope. After the games, we would
drink and do pot and acid."

He was 20 when he started to shoot up -- cocaine mixed with water.
Deathly afraid of needles, he begged his buddy to inject him.

"I loved it," says Robitaille, who is now 37. "I can't really explain
the high. A good hit gives you a 40-minute high."

Although he was working and earning good money, he spent $2,500 to
$3,000 a month on cocaine. Soon he'd replaced work with full-time
theft and hustling.

"Where did I get the money?" he says. "My God. Sometimes I sold hash,
or shoplifted. I panhandled, but rarely -- I don't approve of begging."

He'd swindle people who sent him to buy drugs. "I would only rip a guy
off if I didn't know him. When you want the drug, nothing else matters."

At 23, he had hepatitis C, a liver disease that most addicts contract
from dirty needles. After spending a month in jail for breaking and
entering, he emerged ravenous for drugs. To feed his appetite, he
frequented Ottawa's sleaziest and most dangerous drug houses.

He was stabbed once by a dealer trying to collect a debt. "He put a
rope around my neck and started stabbing me. It wasn't even me who
owed him!"

When police asked Robitaille about his wounds, he said he'd jumped out
a window. "There's a code on the street: No matter what happens, you
don't rat anybody out."

The near-death experience persuaded him to get out of town. "I had
to," he says. "I went to Montreal and stayed off drugs ..."

Three months later, he was arrested for dealing. Facing more jail
time, he opted to enter a treatment program for 10 months.

He left the centre and two months later was using again.

Eight years later, Robitaille was back in Ottawa with a new problem --
he was HIV-positive.

"I contracted it in Montreal," he says. "The guy I was living with had
HIV. We kept our needles in separate containers. ... I guess he
mistakenly put one of his needles in my container."

There seemed no end to the downward spiral.

Robitaille started to drink and get high. "When you're living at
Shepherds, everything is magnified. You get more depressed because of
where you are.

"Because I had contracted HIV, I started getting about $1,000 a month
in disability. I got my own place above the Elmdale Tavern, which
wasn't the best place to be."

During those rock-bottom days, Robitaille would start his mornings
with HIV medication, a beer chaser and a side order of pot.

"We'd go to the bars where we knew people had smoked the night before
and pick the roaches off the sidewalk or gutter and roll them into a
joint. I was never a guy who needed crack first thing in the morning."

Of course, the rest of the day was a different matter.

"Once you get that first one into you, you don't want to stop," he
says. "It controls you."

Depending on the day, he'd do five hits -- more on pay
days.

"I got my cheque, paid my rent and bills, and spent the rest getting
high. I didn't care about anything except my addiction. A crack addict
always wants more."

He started to shoplift. He'd hit a supermarket with a grocery list
from his dealer, who would reward him with cash and crack.

Robitaille was facing more jail time when he decided to apply to drug
court. In exchange for a guilty plea on trafficking charges, he was
accepted into the program.

He began his treatment on the first day of the OC Transpo bus strike
in December 2008. Throughout the dispute, he walked from his downtown
apartment to the Rideauwood Addiction and Family Services Centre on
Parkdale Avenue.

"I got tired of living the way I was living," he says. "No hot water,
no heating, bed bugs and junkies, crack heads and dealers. You never
knew when the cops would come."

He weighed 128 pounds. "I looked and felt like crap. I was puking
every morning because of the HIV medication and crack. I was sick all
the time."

The first two weeks of treatment were rough. It didn't help that he
was still surrounded by addicts.

"I owed my dealer $40. I had $1,200 in my pocket. When I went to pay
him, he was holding a bag of crack. I had to go to court that day,
otherwise I wouldn't have been able to walk away. I ran there and gave
the treatment centre people the rest of the money to look after."

Robitaille "graduated" from drug court last September.

Now he's clean, and in the final stages of Pegetron treatment for his
hep C -- a self-administered dose of Pegetron and a daily five-pill
cocktail.

The treatment has been physically brutal and debilitating. He lost his
appetite and 20 pounds and now has a licence to smoke prescribed
marijuana to help re-generate his desire to eat. "I've got no worries
about that," he says. "I'm way past that.

"I've got more important things to do. I've got a two-month-old
nephew. I'm starting to enjoy my life. I'm happy."

When his treatment ends, he intends to finish high school and train to
become a social worker.

"There's a real need," he says, "and I've got some credibility on the
street."

He knows first-hand that addicts won't listen until they're ready.
"Too many people are dead before they get the wakeup call."