DRUGS AT DETOX

Aman who recently checked himself into rehab said he was shocked to
find a fellow patient selling drugs inside the hospital walls.

Two or three days into a five-day inpatient program at the Nova Scotia
Hospital in Dartmouth, the man said, he was offered the
anti-depressant Ativan, a Valium-like pill, Dilaudid and crack cocaine.

"I didn't believe it ... This was happening right under their noses.
They didn't even know," the man said.

The man, in his 20s, didn't want to be identified.

After he got out, he said, he tipped off program staff, and was
threatened by one of the patients.

"(The patient) said, 'I don't care if it takes five years, I'll find
you.'"

The man, who was fighting a one-year addiction to Dilaudid, said he's
angry staff didn't do regular sweeps to catch people bringing drugs
into the unit.

'I have it'

At one point, a patient showed him a small amount of crack
cocaine.

"It was the first time I'd ever seen it in my life," said the
man.

"I didn't ask to see some of the things. I didn't want to. But they
said, 'I have it if you want it.'"

A friend who had convinced the man to get clean said when he was in
rehab, he didn't see any drugs.

But when he went to classes as an outpatient, his classmates were
selling them.

Tom Payette, head of addiction treatment for the Capital Health
District Authority, said such cases are rare, but not unheard-of.

"We've had strings out the window from the sixth floor, when people
try to bring the drugs in that way. When you're a drug addict, you get
pretty inventive," Payette said.

He added it's usually only one or two people on the unit with drugs,
if any, and the others usually turn them in.

"This doesn't happen a lot," he said.

When they check in, patients are patted down for drugs.

Rooms are checked only when someone is suspected of using drugs again.
If they're caught, they're kicked out for six months.

No cavity searches

Payette said because the program is voluntary, staff deliberately
don't do random room checks, body-cavity searches or random urine
tests. Instead, they keep an eye out for the signs of relapse.

"We're trying to make rehab more home-like than prison-like."

As for the threats, Payette said, the informant's identity may have
been a lucky guess. Staff usually tell the suspected patients that
there's been an anonymous tip to explain why they're under suspicion.

"That's the drug world. It was probably deductive reasoning on their
part."