LOVE AT FIRST HIT - THEN YEARS OF HELL

But Addicts Try to Change Lives

For a woman named Mary, memories find their way back from years lost in a
drug-induced fog to a time when she was ducking out between classes to
shoot up in a washroom stall at Central Tech.

She was 13, and already a heroin junkie.

For her man, Mario, his addiction to the same narcotic began when he saw
the kind of cash the drug dealers were flashing in his Little Italy
neighbourhood, so he went into business for himself and dipped into the
cache for a taste of his own medicine.

It was love at first hit, and hell ever since.

They met back in 1984, finding each other in the barroom of a no-star
Parkdale hotel -- two addicts connecting for reasons that began with their
mutual dependency on the same narcotic.

Mario is now 45; Mary, 48. Bonded since their first encounter, first as
junkies and then as spouses, they are now equally bonded in a fight to turn
the page on their past and pay their own way in life.

The brakes were put on their addiction some 10 years ago now. Sentenced to
18 months in Maplehurst for forging cheques and stealing merchandise to
feed their collective habit, Mario got out of jail in 1992 and, with Mary
at his side, they walked into a doctor's office to attempt to forever shake
the monkey off their backs.

"It makes me sick to think of all the wrongs we've committed in order to
feed our habit," she said. "The frauds, the thefts. It's a place neither
one of us ever want to revisit."

And, so far, they have not. In fact, they haven't had a hit, or a brush
with the law, since the day they sought that doctor's help, which is not to
say the monkey is gone. But it is at bay.

As Mario sits at the kitchen table of their tidy and well-maintained
second-floor walkup in the Bloor-Lansdowne area, Mary opens the
refrigerator to show a shelf filled with methadone bottles -- the liquid
narcotic analgesic they take daily to quell heroin's relentless urgings and
to dull the body pain that goes hand-in-hand with their longtime addiction.

It's the taxpayer, of course, who pays that freight, as well as the $1,560
a month the two of them get from ODSP, the provincially funded Ontario
Disabilities Support Program.

It's a free ride, however, that neither want to take anymore. They want to
get off, and go it on their own -- learn a trade and get a job.

The hook, however, is that ODSP is more than willing to pay them money for
basically doing nothing for the rest of their lives, and that includes
paying $1,000 a month for the methadone and assorted other medications, but
is unwilling to commit to paying them the tuition fees which could possibly
get them out of the public trough and actually paying income taxes.

As Mary says, "It doesn't make any sense."

A few weeks back, Mary applied to the Avola College of Hairstyling and
Esthetics, and was accepted into its six-month esthetics program. The
problem, of course, is coming up with the $7,575 tuition.

Ditto with Mario who, if he passes the 100-hour tractor-trailer A-Z licence
program at Lambton College, has a job virtually guaranteed.

Once again, however, it's the tuition. In his case, it amounts to $3,686,
GST included.

Gillian Burman, an employment and support specialist with ODSP and a person
familiar with this case, stated that privacy laws prevented her from
speaking on the matter.

And rightly so. Nonetheless, it does make dollars, and sense, that getting
clients off disability and into the workforce would be a better investment
of public money than simply shelling out ad infinitum -- especially if
individuals are motivated by an internal desire to get their lives on track.

Having been technically clean now for almost a decade, both Mary and Mario
are attempting to move on to the next phase. And that's to rekindle the
sense of self-worth they lost as addicts.

"The only pride we have is the fact we survived," Mary said.

"A great many of the addicts we knew are dead now, or are infected with HIV
or AIDS from sharing dirty hypes.

"We've managed to somehow dodge those bullets, and now we want to move on,"
she said.

"Now it's self-respect we're seeking.

"A change in our lives."