DARK SIDE OF ADDICTION

A Canadian Village Steps In To Save Its Youth

SHESHATSHIU, Labrador - The dark end of the graveyard still calls him.

That is where Phillip believes his dead brother, Charles, told him to go
when he was sniffing the gasoline. That was before social workers
apprehended Phillip from the woods, put him on a bus and sent him to a
locked-door treatment facility for children who were addicted to
high-octane gas in plastic bags. There they were watched 24 hours a day
while they slept off the fumes.

Two years later, Phillip, 13, who was seen nationwide with a green bag
sealed to his lips, is back in his community in his father's house. He says
he doesn't sniff gas anymore although sometimes he can still hear his dead
brother, Charles, calling him, and he can remember the night when his
brother burst into flames after a bag of gasoline he was sniffing spilled
near a candle. Charles ran toward him, ablaze. But the fumes on Phillip
were strong, and he ran away from his brother because he didn't want to
catch fire, too. Now, he is haunted.

Phillip was one of the youngest sniffers then, stumbling in and out of the
woods outside this hillside settlement of Innu, an aboriginal people in
Canada's north. He huddled with other sniffers and inhaled fumes to forget
problems. When the children began sniffing on the streets in broad daylight
and not running when tribal leaders glared at them, the community knew it
had a crisis. Chief Paul Rich made a public appeal to the government to do
whatever it took to help 39 children in the village known to be sniffing gas.

The government did, and today the treatment program stands out as one of
the few success stories in the battle of Canada's aboriginal peoples
against some of the highest rates of substance abuse in the world.
Sheshatshiu is now known as the village that got its children off the
gasoline - most of them, at least.

Two years later, many of the children look better. Their lips have stopped
bleeding. They no longer have gasoline blisters cracking their faces.

Still, many of the adults here wonder how long the success will last. In so
many other ways, this settlement overlooking the wilds of 85-mile-long Lake
Melville remains a center of despair, where people forced to end nomadic
wanderings a generation ago lead a stationary existence they cannot
understand. "We are the lost people," said Rich. "Thirty years ago, we
lived in tents without running water. When change came, we had to live
another culture."

Today, spouses still beat spouses in Sheshatshiu and guzzle smuggled
liquor. Children stand outside bingo halls, crying for their mommies.
Adults recall abuse by Catholic priests sent to "civilize" them. It's all
but impossible to find a job here. So, many people wonder, what will the
children who sniffed gas do now to cope with this life?

In Phillip's house, beige sheets are nailed to windows to create privacy.
Hanging from nails on wood-paneled walls are photos of children. One is a
blowup of Charles, bigger than life. There is no food in Phillip's house -
not an egg, not a bottle of milk, not a microwaveable hamburger in a
plastic bag, which is all Phillip wants for dinner tonight.

When Phillip was sniffing the gas, he was able to talk about his brother.
Now the words choke him. He slips out of the room when his father begins to
talk about Charles.

"When we talk about his brother, he gets flashbacks," says Lionel Riche,
46. "Phillip is doing all right now. Gradually, he understands what
happened to him two years ago when he was on gas."

Riche is sitting at a table. He admits that he still drinks, and this may
be a reason why Phillip sniffed. He says he and his wife plan to get
treatment, perhaps in a few days.

Charles's death was not the catalyst for the community's cry for help. What
brought action was local adults suddenly realizing that they were no longer
shocked at seeing children sniffing gas on the streets.

Council people started making calls: Where can the children go? Using gas
this way was not illegal, so there were no judicial means to deal with the
issue. And "nobody wanted to make criminals of the kids," Andrew said.

They called the social services office, run by the province of Newfoundland
and Labrador, and voiced a radical demand.

"We expect you to apprehend these children," Andrew said. "We made a list
of kids. Take them into care. The band knew there would be some angry
parents who felt we were going over their heads."

The provincial government answered that it did not have the resources to
take on so many troubled children. So the Band Council began calling
agencies of the federal government.

A few days later, a team of social workers drove to Sheshatshiu. They
enticed 23 children one by one into a bus with promises of pizza in
Goosebay, 20 miles away. Waving goodbye as if they were going to an
amusement park, the children were driven to Goosebay and put into a
makeshift treatment facility hurriedly created in a military barracks.

The children did get their pizza. "After that, they say we spend one
night," said Phillip. "But I spent over a year there."

Staff members were quickly hired. Some were Innu living in Goosebay. They
had a huge job on their hands - to feed and house the children, watch over
them day and night, and somehow break their craving for gasoline fumes. "We
felt like we were inventing the wheel," Andrew said. The children were
given new jackets, boots and pants. They played cards and other games in
the barracks. Social workers tried to create a nurturing atmosphere to
combat the common problems they found in the children's backgrounds:
exposure to chronic alcoholism and domestic violence; sexual, physical and
emotional abuse; trauma caused by exposure to suicides; simple neglect.

As the gasoline started to wear off, the children became more active. A man
sat by the door, so some children tried to escape out the windows. "It
required a lot of manpower to make sure they stayed inside," Andrew said.

But as the children stayed away longer from the gasoline, their normal,
healthy spirits started to emerge, and workers realized they could not keep
23 children inside forever. Special houses were established in Goosebay,
each taking four or five children. Most of the houses were equipped with
computers for schoolwork. The children were still watched around the clock,
even when they went to play hockey or swim.

Social workers were realizing that, to keep the children gas-free, their
parents had to change their ways, too. "Initially, you want to be mad at
the parents," said Andrew. "Yet, we know (they) suffered, too. It's not
because they don't love their kids. They are dealing with their own trauma
of sexual abuse by priests and as children seeing their parents humiliated.
That was the harder part."

The Band Council pushed the government for more money and started taking
the children's families to an old fishing lodge for retreats.

When the children were ready to leave Goosebay, after staying as long as a
year, they sometimes returned to parents who, for the first time in a long
time, were sober. Other children went to foster parents who were paid not
to work outside the home but to take care of the children and keep them
away from gas.

Phillip won't say much about his year of rehab. But he does say that, when
he returned to Sheshatshiu, he was different: "I didn't feel like going
back to gas sniffing."

There is a clear difference in the community now. Two years ago, the
children walked the streets like ghosts with plastic bags sealed around
their mouths. They smiled for the cameras that put their images all over
Canada and much of the world.

In the settlement's school, Ann Hurley, the Innu vice principal, sits
behind her desk and talks of the trouble the sniffers created. "Some used
to run around the school and run outside in the trees," Hurley said. "They
used to hang around, throwing rocks at the windows."

But when the children were sent off, the school cracked down, too. "When we
could smell gas on the child's clothing, we contacted the parents and sent
them home. ... When parents are drinking, you know how it is, the kids
don't sleep. There is no food at home. That is why some were having problems."

Hurley says she hasn't had to send anyone home in quite a while. But she
can see the effects of the gas on the children now, even after the smell
has gone. "They are really slow at learning."

Irene Penunsi is one of the failed ones. She still roams the streets,
moving in and out of the woods, in and out of jail. People point at her and
say she is influencing the younger people. She is the mother of a
9-month-old girl, who has been taken away from her.

For Penunsi, who started sniffing when she was 14, it's a hard habit to
break. When she is not sniffing, the demons are bigger. "I see things like
killing myself," she said.

Two years ago, people found her in the woods in such a state that she was
rushed to the hospital. "My feet were frozen," she recalled. "I couldn't
walk on my feet."

She was in the hospital two or three days, then was taken to the barracks.
"I stayed two weeks," she said. "I didn't like to sleep there. It was boring."

She didn't want to stay. And, because she was an adult, she didn't have to.
She returned to Sheshatshiu and went to a women's shelter. "I was
gas-sniffing, and two girls were watching me, looking after me. I stayed in
the shelter one month, and they released me. I started sniffing the gas."

She promises she is going to treatment soon. "A family program," she said.
Now that she's a mother, "I want to give (sniffing) up." She wants her
daughter back.