Drug addiction:

FORMER A STUDENT ESCAPES CRYSTAL METH HELL

After nearly dying of yet another overdose, Carolyn Beaudoin, who went
from being president of her school's student body to living on the
streets, quit using drugs. The decision turned her life around.

Carolyne Beaudoin doesn't fit the image of a stereotypical drug
addict. She was a bright, popular teenager who came from a happy home
where she was an only child.

But the 24-year-old woman who spoke to a Kwantlen College class in
Langley last week spent two years using crystal meth every day.

Beaudoin was an A student and had just been elected as the president
of her school's student body when she first tried meth at a dance the
summer after Grade 11.

She had smoked pot and taken ecstasy previously, and nothing bad had
happened to her.

"I just had this goal that I was going to try every drug out there,"
she said.

But meth hooked her instantly.

She first did it on the weekends.

"By the second month of Grade 12, my weekends were about six days
long," Beaudoin said.

In less than two months she was using it every day, she seldom slept,
and she had lost interest in school, her old friends, and her hobbies.

She had been a ballet dancer, taking lessons since the age of three,
but she dropped that, too.

"This was my passion, the thing I loved most in the world, and I just
stopped," Beaudoin said.

She would disappear from home for up to two weeks to hang out with her
new friends, who were all heavy meth users as well. She didn't even
know their last names, and sometimes only knew them by nicknames.

That December, her family flew back to Quebec to visit relatives. It
was the first time she couldn't use any meth. Within a day of getting
off the plane, she felt like she had a bad case of the flu. She spent
the entire vacation in bed.

It would have been a good chance to kick the habit, but as soon as she
was back in the Lower Mainland, she found her dealer and didn't come
home for the next two months.

She dropped out of school three months before graduation, but managed
to come back to sit through the ceremony where the Dogwoods were handed out.

It hurt when the roll call skipped past her name like she had never
attended school, Beaudoin said.

She was thrown out of her class's graduation dance for being
high.

She spent most of the next year living on the streets or wherever she
could, surfing from couch to couch with friends. For a time, she lived
with her now boyfriend, also a meth addict, and his family.

She overdosed for the first time when she took some PCP, a year and a
half after she started her addiction.

When she sought help at an emergency room, the doctor gave her a tough
speech about how she would wind up a prostitute, then dead. It didn't
work, and she stormed out, blaming him instead of the habit.

She overdosed again, this time on meth, and nearly died. This time she
decided to get clean, going cold turkey on her own, even while her
boyfriend and friends continued to use meth every day.

When she finally left them behind, she found it difficult to reconnect
with the family she had abandoned in the pursuit of drugs.

"My mom paid for a lot of my drugs without knowing it," Beaudoin said.
When she was living at home, she had asked for money for movies or
food and spent it on meth. When her mother finally realized how much
her daughter had used her, it harmed her trust.

"It took a really long time to get her trust back," Beaudoin
said.

She has been putting her life back together, finishing secondary
school and working. The dreams she had as a teenager of going to
medical school now seem far off.

Beaudoin emphasized to the Kwantlen students that she did not give the
standard "say no to drugs" speeches. She just tells people what has
happened to her, so they can make more informed choices than she did.

Local educators and politicians are taking note of Beaudoin's
experience and her willingness to share it.

The speech was hosted by Langley Township Coun. Kim Richter for her
business students, and was attended by Langley School Trustees Joan
Bech and Sonya Patterson.