DAUGHTER 'WOULD DO ANYTHING' FOR DRUGS

"Betty" shudders every time the phone rings, fearing the call she feels
certain she'll get some day, telling her that her cocaine-addicted daughter
is dead.

And in her line of work, sales, the phone rings a lot.

"I live with the fact that one day the police will call," said Betty (not
her real name). "I know this story is not going to have a happy ending
unless something drastically changes."

Her 30-year-old daughter lives on the streets of Halifax, begging, stealing
and sometimes prostituting herself to earn money for her next fix. She's
one of hundreds, maybe thousands of people caught in up metro's drug wars.

"As a parent, I love my daughter," Betty said. "But it's a frustrating
relationship we have.

"I'm uptight when I'm with her because I never know what kind of state she
will be in."

Betty said it's a relationship based on her daughter's need to survive in
her subculture's lifestyle.

"My daughter was always a difficult child growing up," she said. "She
always had to have things go her way.

"She had to be the centre of attention."

But Betty said the real problems started after her daughter reached Grade 9
at a private school.

"She wouldn't obey curfews, started hanging around with the wrong crowd and
became disrespectful," Betty said.

At 15, she ran away from home.

"We found out where she was and she did eventually come back."

But then everything became a blur because her daughter was in and out of
the house so much.

"She stayed with a friend and wouldn't talk to us," Betty said.

The girl became alienated from the family. Children's Aid got involved and
her daughter was allowed back into the family home under a contract
stipulating that she follow the rules.

"But she began stealing from us," Betty said. "I still carry around with me
the cheques she forged."

Next, her daughter was placed in group homes. But she soon fled and went
underground.

"I found myself going out into some of the seedy sections of the city
looking for her," Betty said. "I put the word out on the streets . . . and
she came back.

"We tried everything - doctors, psychiatrists and therapists" to try to
straighten the girl out.

"I was a basket case. I couldn't do anything. I thought I was a failure.

"I thought I had let my daughter and my family down."

Betty said she got a wake-up call when another daughter told her: "You're a
great mom. It's not you. We need you. We need you to function."

"She was right," Betty said. "I realized I had to get up and get at it and
deal with each day as it comes."

The days are hard, like the one she got a call from her wayward daughter,
who had been missing for weeks.

"She was in a very bad way. We tracked her down in Vancouver and dragged
her out of the hellhole she was staying at and got her on a plane."

She's been jailed for panhandling in Montreal and bummed around the
continent - Toronto, the United States and Mexico.

"There was a time when I would have done anything and I was so grateful
just to have her back in the house," Betty said. "I would go into her
bedroom at night when she was sleeping and just sit there and look at her."

But she said that changed when the girl brought dopers and skinheads home
with her.

"She would do anything," Betty said. "There was no remorse. It seemed to be
all about getting drugs."

Now, every time her daughter calls, it's always an emergency and she just
wants one thing - money.

"I rant and I rave and then I give in to her, whatever she wants," Betty
said. "I probably shouldn't be doing it because I have no way of knowing
where that money goes. I'm sure nine times out of 10 the money goes for
drugs. So I guess in a sense I am an enabler."

One time her daughter told her she needed methadone (a drug used to wean
addicts off crack cocaine) "but I know I took her to a crack house.

"She was in withdrawal at the time and it's not pretty.She was desperate
when she got out of the car, but when she got back in, she was a different
person."

During the 10 years her daughter has lived on the streets, Betty has picked
her up at pubs and taken her to get methadone. "I've even given her money
to pay off her drug debts. It's terrible, and I shouldn't do this. But if I
don't, what is going to happen to her?"

Answering her own question, Betty said she feared drug dealers would "pound
her to a pulp" or she would prostitute herself to get the money.

It's so bad, Betty herself needs therapy, just to cope.

"I just couldn't handle it anymore and it's just like that now," she said.

"I'll honestly tell you I felt that I was not dealing with it (the
situation) well. I was just tired. I felt that every time I saw her, I had
so much pain and anger that it wasn't doing either one of us any good."

Betty said she needed to know if she had done everything she could. Her
therapist bluntly told her not to give in to her daughter.

Betty said her ex-husband investigated treatment facilities but her
daughter made excuses, saying she couldn't go because she was on methadone.

Then last year, she almost lost a leg from complications from drug
injections. "Her leg was badly swollen and she could hardly walk," Betty said.

She said her daughter has been treated in hospital a number of times and
was getting methadone and three meals a day in a safe environment.

But she would tell staff she was going out to get a package of cigarettes
and disappear for hours or even days.

"What kind of thought process is that?" Betty said.

"That's my frustration. Why won't she try and help herself when she knows
she has an addiction? But she's not prepared to take that step and do
something about it."

So Betty watches, worries and waits, hoping for the best but dreading the
day when the terrible call might finally come.