ADDICTS' TREATMENT IN LIMBO

Methadone Clinic's Funding Runs Out March 31

GREG REMEMBERS the moment of rapture.

He'd just tied off the upper part of his arm and stuck the needle into a vein.

Dilaudid, from a crushed, melted-down tablet, coursed through his body.

"It was like the best feeling I had, and I just fell in love, I fell in
love," he says more than 20 years later.

"It's just a nice warm feeling that you get in your body. You get a little
nod off it and you're wherever you want to be. You can close your eyes and
. . . you could be under the palm trees in Mexico."

On an ice-cold winter's day this month, he and other addicts are instead at
a downtown Halifax methadone clinic.

They're waiting for another drug, a synthetic one that will stop the
cravings for the potent opiate that's scarred their bodies and nearly
ruined their lives.

There's Greg, the 42-year-old former cab driver who's injected so much
Dilaudid over the past two decades that many of his veins have collapsed.

And Donnie, a 42-year-old former auto mechanic and cabbie, who, toward the
end of his habit, was injecting the drug into his penis.

And 45-year-old Larry - his body an orchestra of tics and shakes -
struggling with his Dilaudid addiction and schizophrenia.

He started injecting the powerful narcotic painkiller in his late 30s, he
says, because "I was looking for something that made me happy."

In all, 63 people come here every day, most addicted to Dilaudid, or
"drugstore heroin" as it's sometimes called.

Another 20 to 30 are on a waiting list to kick the habit that program
director Cindy MacIsaac says helps them get, or forget, a feeling.

A doctor or nurse at the clinic - called Direction 180 - mixes the
methadone (a synthetic narcotic) with orange juice, and the addicts are, as
Donnie says, good to go.

They've come to depend on this place for a kind of medicine - the methadone
which, for 24 hours, stops their Dilaudid cravings - and a kind word.

But lately they've feared that in a few months, it will all disappear.

The clinic has been operating for the past two years thanks to about
$400,000 in funding from Human Resources Development Canada and roughly
$150,000 in other federal grants.

But the money runs out March 31. And unless the program can find alternate
funding, the clinic will have to close.

The provincial Health Department says it's considering financial aid as
part of ongoing budget deliberations.

That's promising, says MacIsaac, but she's still waiting for word.

She says the federal government provided the initial money with the
understanding that the clinic would seek permanent support elsewhere.

But, she says, despite two years of trying, "we haven't been able to get it."

MacIsaac stresses new funding would be money well spent, saving the
health-care system costs for everything from treating abscesses to HIV
infection.

Methadone treatment is available from Nova Scotia Drug Dependency Services
in Dartmouth, but MacIsaac says that's not for everyone.

"It's a great program," she says but "the majority of our folks weren't
even stable enough to make it over there."

Many are homeless or on social assistance. Some are also suffering from
multiple addictions, have committed crimes and lack education and
employment skills.

"They have to be there at 8:30 in the morning," MacIsaac says of the
Dartmouth program, "and if you're homeless and you're transient, the
chances are you don't have an alarm clock and not only that, the bus fare
to get there."

Greg went to the Dartmouth service before the downtown Halifax clinic opened.

But he prefers Direction 180. Here, he says, he doesn't feel judged and
that helps stop him from sticking another needle into his body.

Before he tried methadone, Greg was using 100 pills a day, melting down 20
at a time and injecting himself five times.

Like Donnie, when he ran out of the usual veins, he started injecting the
drug into his genitals.

"I had a big habit," he says.

"I was a pig. There's just never enough anyway. When you're a drug addict,
one's too many, and a thousand is never enough."

Methadone has stopped those cravings, although Greg still struggles not to
use crack cocaine.

Even when he has slipped, he hasn't been kicked out of the program -
something both those who run it and those who use it say keeps people
coming back.

Counselling sessions with a mental health nurse, offered once a week, also
help. Donnie - his arms, like the rest of his battered body, covered with
needle marks - figures he'll have to stay on methadone for the rest of his
life.

Right now, it takes away his cravings and the dread of facing the
gut-wrenching vomiting and pain that comes with withdrawal.

But every time Donnie's tried to wean himself off methadone, he has gone
back to injecting Dilaudid .

It's a drug that for years has helped him deal with depression as a result
of being sexually abused by a relative when he was a child.

If the clinic closes, he figures he'll do the drug again - and commit all
kinds of crimes to pay for it.

"I'd do any kind of crime to get it," in the past, including armed robbery,
he says.

"And if we lose this place here, and I lose my methadone, I will do
anything to get it.

"You're so caught up in the drug, you're just emotionally tied to it. . . .
It takes over your life, your entire life."

Greg, who's spent more than half his life in jail for crimes like armed
robbery and assaults - mostly because he became violent when drinking -
figures the city won't be safe.

"I'd like this place to stay open because it's a positive spot. You can
come here, you can go to meetings, you can get counselling, you're treated
like a human," he says.

"You can't just throw 60 people on the streets and say, 'See ya later. Go
commit crimes and do your drugs.' That's what's going to happen . . . boom.
It's going to be a crime spree, more shoplifting going on and more
robberies 'cause you need your drug."

METHADONE FACTS

- - Use of methadone for treatment of heroin addiction was pioneered by
Vincent Dole and Marie Nyswander in the 1960s. - Methadone, a synthetic
narcotic analgesic, was intended as a maintenance medication, much as
insulin is used to treat diabetes.

- - Only needs to be taken once a day.

- - Compared to other drug addiction treatments, methadone is the most
rigorously studied and has yielded the most results.

- - Is effective in HIV / AIDS prevention because it reduces the frequency of
injecting and needle sharing.

- - Reduces criminal activity.

- - Reduces and often eliminates heroin use among addicts.

- - Cost of treatment is $6,000 per patient per year, while the untreated
opiate user can cost society an average of $49,000 per year.

Source: Corrections Canada and Centre for Addiction and Mental Health