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It's been four years since "Jeff" has seen the "shadowpeople."

Lingering only when he was wide-eyed and sleep deprived on crystal
meth, the figures drifted in and out of his peripheral vision,
blurring the line between fantasy and reality.

Jeff, not his real name, is a Barrie resident whose name has been
changed to protect his identity Click Here!

He recalls with a shudder the time he chased what he thought was a
friend through the streets of downtown Victoria, British Columbia only
to discover the figure was a figment of his imagination.

"Your eyesight and everything starts to go. It's very scary. I don't
know how I thought it was fun at the time," he tells The Mirror. "What
happens when you start doing meth is you don't sleep and, once you've
been up for a few days, sleep deprivation kicks in on top of the high
and you lose all rationality. Paranoid schizophrenia is a serious
side-effect of it. You get really edgy."

At first, it was a party drug, a different high and much cheaper than
crack cocaine.

But when he started taking in a more potent amount by smoking the
drug, his behaviour became even more erratic and his life started to
fall apart.

"You know, when I think about it now, I pretty much get sick to my
stomach," he says, noting that it wasn't until he lost his job,
friends and was literally homeless in British Columbia that he decided
to seek help. "I get goose bumps just thinking how close I came. I've
had friends who have died on it."

Although free from the clutches of meth for four years, the
30-year-old Simcoe County resident says he knows he could find some by
making a couple of calls.

"It's that available," he says.

Midland resident Cindy, who name has also been changed to protect her
identity, laughs uneasily when she admits she is not shocked that
crystal meth has crept its way into Midland.

"Is that bad?" asks the 20-year-old Georgian College student. "It's so
horrible that it's not surprising anymore, isn't it? Basically, for
the past few years, it's been here and lately, right in your face."

If it's not right in her face at a party or a local bar, she knows
where she could get it if she used it. She says she doesn't.

"It's easy to get it through the bar scenes; through party scenes and
stuff like that. You can just go up in the middle of the afternoon and
be like, 'Hey, can I get some?' Because (Midland) is such a small
town, right? It's not difficult to know (where to get it). Like, I
know who they (dealers) are just from being young and being around."

Cindy's experience with crystal meth has been vicariously through a
few friends, watching them snort, smoke, inject and ingest it, then
experience the intense adrenaline rush that can last hours and
eventually the cranky, sketchy, paranoid behaviour that ultimately
accompanies the lowest low imaginable.

"They'll borrow money from friends and then they won't be able to pay
it back and that leads to broken relationships," she says, adding that
she's not aware of her friends resorting to crime to get it.

"We're not a big town. Yeah, sure there's crime and whatnot, but
people don't go around shooting people for it. Not here - not yet. But
in Barrie, they'll pawn things. It's big in Barrie. It's big
everywhere right now."

While it has eluded police for the most part, the number of seizures
is increasing.

>From January to June 2005, 2,700 grams of crystal meth, valued at
$245,397, was seized in Ontario, almost twice the amount of the entire
previous year when 1,583 grams was seized.

Barrie is the only Simcoe County community that saw a seizure in
2004.

"It's very difficult to catch," admits Det. Sgt. Jamie Ciotka, unit
commander of the Huronia Combined Forces Drug Unit.

"Dealers - very similar to crack (cocaine) dealers - don't hold large
quantities at a time and they go through it very quickly. So it's
difficult for police to find those small quantities in house raids.
Most of the time, they're not even there. They're sold that quick."

Police have not seized any crystal meth in the Southern Georgian Bay
area, but they suspect it's here.

"It's almost inevitable," says Midland Police Chief Paul Hamelin. "If
it's available somewhere, it's usually available in most places.
Sometimes it just takes longer for it to get there. Hopefully, it
doesn't come in epidemic proportions, but if you have people who are
users and they find a new drug that is either cheaper or provides a
different effect, then they'll try it."

Staying ahead of the problem is the key, says Hamelin. But, he says,
police can't do it alone. They need the public's help.

"It's a community fight; it's never been a police fight. Our job is to
try to prevent crime and react to crime. But substance abuse has
always been a community issue. It's in our families; it's in our
schools; and it's something that society has to come to grips with,"
said Hamelin.

"It's similar to most issues we (as police) deal with. If you really
get to the root cause, it's based in our social values, our social
services, our support for other people that are dealing with real
challenges in their life."