DRUG ABUSE SNUFFS OUT YOUNG LIFE

WINDSOR, Ont. -- Courtney Kalyn fell to her death trying to climb down
from her sixth-floor balcony as Windsor police pounded at her door.
They were trying to arrest her for robbing a convenience store across
the street.

"She was robbing places for money for dope," says her still-grieving
mom Kim, recalling that morning in 2008 when, at the age of 21,
Courtney's enslavement to drugs - crack, crystal meth and whatever
else she could find - ended tragically.

By then, Courtney was known to police for robberies that were so
poorly planned she'd be caught on video and recognized from previous
attempts.

Her beauty had been ravaged by drugs. Her mom says she'd been in drug
rehab six times, each time graduating with bright hopes that lasted
only a month or two before she was back to her old life, stealing
anything not bolted down at the family home and disappearing for days.

Kim kicked her out for good in December 2007 and in April her daughter
was dead.

"It was only a few months. By that time she was way out of control.
She wasn't herself, she didn't want help anymore."

According to Windsor police, though crime in general is dropping
across Canada, drugs - in particular hard drugs - are maintaining a
dangerous foothold in the community.

In 2008, Windsor police seized $2.3 million in illegal drugs. In 2009,
$1.8 million. Last year, $4.1 million.

Behind the cold figures are real people like Courtney, whose drug use
led her to rob and steal and ultimately fall to her death.

"Such a beautiful young girl," said Deborah Gatenby, executive
director of the House of Sophrosyne, a Windsor addiction treatment
centre for women that Courtney attended. "So young and so tragically
killed."

Kim hauls out stacks of photos from earlier times: a grinning,
beautiful Courtney as a brownie, a loving sister, a high schooler with
a large circle of devoted friends.

How did an outgoing, warm-hearted girl with good grades end up a
desperate drug addict?

Kim has found essays left by her daughter, written in rehab, that tell
how she started at the age of 14 taking ecstasy and snorting cocaine.
Courtney was a smoker, her mom says, and so she would hang out in a
corner with the other smokers near high school. That's where the
dealers showed up, catering to a captive market of kids eager to experiment.

She started skipping school, stealing from her parents, and staying
away from home for days without a phone call. When she did come home,
she'd sleep for three days and later exhibit startling mood swings. By
the age of 17, she was taking two eight-balls of cocaine (a single
eight-ball is an eighth of an ounce, considered a significant amount
for one person) and 10 ecstasy pills a day. She became a skilled liar,
explaining her absences and the missing items, and asking for money.

"She was such a sweet person, you would give into her so easily
because she seemed so sincere," Kim says. "She'd be lying to your
face. It wasn't her. I keep saying it wasn't her. She wasn't like that."

By 19, she'd graduated to crack cocaine and crystal meth as well as
percosets, all in huge quantities. In her essay, Courtney said that
she would routinely lie to everyone, except her fellow
drug-takers.

She'd tell her parents she was going to watch a movie at a friend's
place and be gone for weeks on a drug binge, "not even calling them to
tell I was OK." She'd tell them she wasn't high, "when actually I was
completely stoned." She said she'd get sick of the "badgering" from
her folks and take off, "living on the street and stealing for what I
needed, DRUGS!

"I lived at a crackhouse or sometimes just walked the streets high all
night," Courtney wrote, recalling the danger she faced. She overdosed
at least five times, contemplated suicide, and severely beat a guy
when a group of men tried to rape her. Her family was also endangered,
she said, because menacing dealers she owed money to knew where her
parents lived.

"My family could have been seriously injured or even killed, but I was
numb from drugs. I didn't care."

Courtney was John Jiminez's first girlfriend, his high school
sweetheart in Grade 9 at St. Joseph's. He remembers a full-of-life,
outspoken girl who was quick to let him know her feelings. He
remembers hanging out at her home, where friends came over for pool
parties, and Courtney eagerly playing with the little kids in the
neighbourhood. She had a completely normal upbringing, said Jiminez,
who had no idea she was doing drugs during their 18 months together.

"That's why it totally took me out of left field (when he learned of
her death). I did not expect that."

Her mom heard from police that even when Courtney robbed a store, "she
was the most polite thief you ever saw."

When Courtney's mom reads the details of her daughter's drug use, she
just can't picture it. "I don't know, I couldn't have been that
blind," she said.

To prevent kids from getting involved in drugs, parents might
encourage teens to get involved in activities that are common among
kids who don't get involved in drugs. Athletics is a "huge mitigator,"
according to Gatenby. So are volunteerism and spiritual development,
whether at a church or a yoga studio.

Parents should also be having open dialogue with kids about drugs so
they're knowledgeable about the dangers before they encounter them.
"The fact of the matter is in grade school your child may be
approached by somebody and enticed or seduced into trying a subsance,"
said Gatenby, "so you better hope that your message has gotten through
first."

The Just Say No approach doesn't work, she said. What does is "counter
conditioning," such as the classic anti-smoking images of dying cancer
patients.

Movies that show drug abuse in a realistic light - like Requiem for a
Dream, Down to the Bone and Thirteen (a "tremendous film" for
pre-adolescent girls because it depicts 13-year-olds engaging in
destructive activities including drug abuse) are shown to women in
treatment at the House of Sophrosyne.

"If a mother and daughter watch Thirteen together, what a conversation
starter that is," said Gatenby. The mom might ask if the daughter
knows girls that do this. "You'd be surprised if you sit down and open
yourself to what your child has to say about what they've been exposed
to around school or what they already know about."

Kim said that once her daughter was on drugs, getting her through high
school was hell.

Courtney was kicked out of one high school and had to take her final
course from home to make up for the phys-ed course she'd failed
because she never showed up.

For a time after school she did well, selling mobile phone plans, her
mom said. But then the drug use would escalate. She couldn't work
because she couldn't focus. She'd end up in rehab and her employer
would take her back once she was out.

But she couldn't help herself, her mom said. "When you come out of
drug rehab, you're not supposed to see the same people anymore. And
that's what she did."

Kim said Courtney would start acting funny. "Things were missing,
things were stolen. That's why I had to put her out. She was stealing
everything we had if we let her. We couldn't leave the house."

She still doesn't know what she could have done to save her daughter.
"She needed to want the help. She didn't want it, but I don't know
why. I wish I did know."

Gatenb counsels parents against "enabling" their drug-addicted child.
It's not uncommon for a child to come home having abused drugs and
can't get up in the morning, and the parent will take responsibility,
getting her up or calling in sick for her, so she won't lose her job.
Or the child might get in legal trouble and the parents will pay off
the fine. "It's all this enabling, it's not allowing the individual to
truly face the consequences," said Gatenby. The consequences can lead
to jail, institutions and death. Often, she said, "it's just before
death, in jails or institutions, where someone hits the bottom where
they have that moment of clarity."

That moment, when they realize they'll die if they continue with
drugs, is what's required to start on the road to recovery, she said.
If parents enable their kids, it will take longer for them to hit
bottom, and when they do they'll be more ill, their issues are much
more complicated and they're more resistant to treatment.

"I always say to moms, you can tell your child you'll feed them, that
no matter what they can show up at your door and you'll give them a
meal," said Gatenby.

"But I won't give you money and I won't bail you out and you can't
stay here as long as you continue to abuse substances and bring along
some of the people and lifestyle that come with your choices."

Courtney wrote her essay in 2007 while in rehab, where she spoke about
her drug addiction as a thing of the past. But that recovery was as
short-lived as the rest. Within months she was using drugs again,
kicked out of her parents' home and robbing stores to get high.

She was asked while in rehab to describe what life would be like if
her drug use continued or worsened.

Her answer was prophetic:

"I would definitely be dead, either by killing myself or by killing
myself by any means necessary."

When Courtney was kicked out of the house, her mom heard one night
about Courtney jumping in front of a car to kill herself. When an
officer contacted Kim the day Courtney fell to her death, Kim's first
assumption was that something similar had happened.

Ontario's Special Investigations Unit investigated Courtney's death
and cleared the officers of any blame. Courtney was attempting to flee
from officers at her door and fell while trying to climb from her
balcony to the one below.

"In my mind, if it wasn't that day it was going to be the next day or
the day after that," her mom said. "I can't blame the cops for being
at her door. Them coming to the door just made it happen sooner."