DRUGS PART II: EXITING THE ABYSS

Two Addicts Share Their Stories

Josh's big moment came when he woke up in jail, again, and just assumed he
was in the drunk tank for public intoxication. Turned out it was for
assault, times two, and the police now had his picture and finger prints.

For Chris, the realization that there had to be something better to life
than sitting around a basement apartment getting stoned while his wife and
infant child were out of the house was what turned his life around. It
happened too late, however, to save his marriage.

Both are still addicts and probably always will be. Although they're
learning that bad habits are hard to drop, they're happier addicts, now
that they're receiving treatment.

"It's a sad, desperate, depressing lifestyle," said Chris. "When I'm not
using, I'm in the 200 pound range, my appetite is good and my social life
is good. As soon as I started using, I get malnourished and a little sketchy."

It happened the usual way for both recovering addicts - cigarettes and
booze and then drugs as high school students. From there, it just blossomed.

"I've been clean for the last four months," Josh said Nov. 9. "I took a
daily toke since high school. I got in trouble for drinking. I got into a
few coke scenes, but I thought it was nothing I couldn't handle."

Chris, on the other hand, just hit the buffet table running. At age 16, he
was dropping acid and mescaline. A year later, he got involved with the
rave scene and fell in love with ecstasy and cocaine.

Tastes change, however. Six years after starting down the road he hit rock
bottom. It arrived in the form of rocks of crack cocaine. Five days out of
seven he said he smoked crack, a drug that's made more inroads with Ottawa
users in recent years.

He said the very bottom of the barrel was the day his wife found out he was
cheating while she was at work and their child was off at the baby sitter.

It never got to the point where he was stealing the rent money to feed his
habit, Chris said. He worked odd jobs getting enough money together just to
buy more crack.

Drugs finally caught up with Josh, too. By the time he got arrested for an
incident he said he still can't remember, he was getting straight F's on
his grades as a kineseology student at the University of Western Ontario. A
course he took, by the way, because the ratio of girls to guys was
seven-to-one.

"I wasn't just a mean drunk," Josh said. "I was barbaric. I lost complete
control of myself."

He went to university after high school, concentrated more on his drinking
than his studies and then got arrested before exams. After getting
released, he got into a car accident drinking and driving and broke his back.

"So, I went to college," said Josh. "My grades were terrible. For the first
time in my life, I was getting straight F's. I deserved every one of them."

Josh came to Harvest House after a month in jail to try and clean himself
up. Harvest House runs its service as a one-year program, said drug
counselor Mike Powell. A second year is optional if an addict thinks they
still aren't quite ready for the real world.

An old school house on Ramsayville Road became the new home for the
institution four years ago after it moved out of its previous building on
River Road, just north of Manotick.

The facility receives funding for 24 beds, but fits nine more into their
sanctuary. The program replaces the drugs with Christianity, but everyone
going into rehab is aware of what the treatment involves, said Powell.

Addicts like to think their problems are something they can kick the first
time, Powell said. It usually takes more than one try to send the demons
packing.

"The toughest thing about this job has to be the number of people who come
through here who wind up dead," said Powell. "Guys come to this program and
you get attached to them. They start to see talents in themselves, things
that even they didn't know existed. It's tough when you find out one of
them has overdosed."

Addicts never truly recover. When the centre moved to Ramsayville Road,
there was a list of graduates' names put up where the crown molding would
normally go, as an incentive to the rest of the group. Slowly, names that
had reached a new high point in their lives started getting crossed off as
they hit new lows and tripped one final time into the obituary pages.

What was supposed to be an upper became a downer. The list of names lining
the top of the room was discontinued after it started to look more like a
cenotaph.

As a part of his treatment and as a way of keeping kids with solid futures
ahead of them off drugs, some addicts have taken on the role of the cursed
sailor from The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, telling teens about the
dangers of drugs as a way of getting rid of the albatrosses slung around
their own necks. Chris, whose first stay at Harvest House was a short one
in January, said he doesn't plan to leave this time until he knows he can
handle life away from the program.

As one of the ambassadors for the treatment program's VIP initiative, Chris
said there are two main questions high school students seem to ask. They
want to know what made him go to Harvest House and whether or not he thinks
he'd ever be able to go back to using something normally.

Without hesitation, the answer to the second question is a definite "No."

Doing drugs is all about finding acceptance, said Chris. The crowd doing
ecstasy turned into a sort of second family. It was that comfort that
sucked him right in.

"It's almost like I took pride in it," said Josh, who is considering a
stint with the VIP program. "I was proud of (doing drugs) for the wrong
reasons. I was trying to impress the wrong people."

Both last names have been dropped from this story about two recovering
addicts at Harvest House to protect their identities. Next week: educating
the next generation about the dangers of recreational drugs.