FORMER ADDICT WARNS KIDS OF DRUG DANGERS

Last week, for the final time, Julian Madigan stepped in front of an
audience and told the story of overcoming his drug addiction. It
wasn't pretty. "I want to dispel the myth that it's the bad pills that
kill," Madigan told Grade 9 to 12 students at Balmoral Hall School.

The author of The Agony of Ecstasy flashed pictures of tube-clogged
high schoolers with puffed up faces, dead from a single ecstasy pill.
He told of friends found with smashed skulls, victims of short-changed
dealers. He called drug use a game of Russian roulette.

"I wouldn't have been doing this for the last seven years if I didn't
think it was working," said Madigan, who has spent seven years touring
the world and speaking about the drug. "But I want to close this
chapter of my life. I want to move on."

His infant daughter is the reason he's giving up speaking, said
Madigan, who lives in Calgary.

"I'd rather my daughter grow up without knowing what her father did,"
he said.

He will give her a copy of his book when she is old enough to
understand.

Madigan spoke at Balmoral Hall last Monday about his descent into a
drug culture that threatened his life. It was his second time at the
school. He has visited schools in Manitoba numerous times speaking
about addiction.

"Oh my gosh. The pictures of the kids who died from ecstasy made me
weak. It was scary," said Grade 12 student Kristina Wilson. "When
someone says it like that, it hits close to home because it's much
more personal."

Madigan said he doesn't hold back the ugly details of his story for
audiences, often the same people making decisions about taking drugs.

"There's drugs everywhere," he said. "It's time to take our heads out
of the sand. Wherever there's youth, wherever there's a culture,
there's drugs."

Two Deaths

Winnipeg has lost two people to ecstasy since 2000.

Becky Ducharme was found dead Sept. 23 2000, in a Wellington Avenue
apartment.

Melissa Panganiban died the morning of Feb. 9 at her 20th-birthday
party in Boissevain. She reportedly took two ecstasy pills.

Malou Panganiban, Melissa's mother, said her daughter's death has
devastated her family.

Panganiban said Melissa knew the dangers of drug use but made a
dangerous choice in spite of it.

"I always told her not to do something like that but what can I do? I
trusted them," she said.

"The kids were doing it out of their own choice. They didn't know it
could ruin their lives."