PARENTS SEEK HELP TO TAME MONSTERS

Health Unit Offers Drug Info Session

"He has become a monster."

These were words of a parent exhausted from dealing with a son on
drugs.

On Monday evening, parents converged on the Sudbury and District
Health Unit for an S.O.S. -Save Our Sanity - information session
discussing current trends in drugs.

The health unit, the Greater Sudbury Police Service, MADD Canada and
the FOCUS Community Project teamed up to put on the event, which was
attended by nearly a dozen parents.

The parents in attendance learned the effects of drugs and some of the
signs to look for, as well as how to approach their kids if they are
using drugs.

One mother, who wished to remain unidentified, came looking for
help.

Her son, in his 20s, has been battling addiction since high school.
Currently, he uses cocaine.

Despite being unable to hold a job - he has been fired four times in
the last 10 months, and losing many of his friends - he refuses to go
to rehab and even denies that he uses drugs.

According to Sgt. Peter Orsino, head of the joint forces drug unit for
Greater Sudbury Police, he won't be willing to accept help until he
hits his own rock bottom.

His mother, however, holds onto a hope that it won't have to go that
far.

"I want to bring all the people who are very important in his life,
all the people who matter to him, and I want to bring them all to my
house and I want us to talk to him and tell him that he needs to go to
rehab," she said.

Orsino used a Powerpoint presentation to get across the effects of
drugs found on the streets of Sudbury - drugs like marijuana, ecstasy,
cocaine and the one causing the most trouble in Sudbury, crack.

Crack, which is a crystallized version of cocaine that delivers a
shorter, but more addictive, high, has moved from the streets and into
the hallways at local high schools, Orsino said. In order to continue
the expensive habit, students sell to their peers.

Brenda Stankiewicz, a public health nurse with the health unit, works
with the Sudbury Focus Community Project, which works through
partnerships to prevent drug and alcohol abuse.

What she hopes to get across to parents, she said, is that the false
perception that drug use during the teenage years is something
everyone goes through.

"There's this perception that its a rite of passage and that all kids
experiment," she said. "But the reality is that most kids don't. If
only 3.3 per cent of kids have ever tried using OxyContin, that means
97 per cent have not."

The health unit and Focus will continue to promote prevention of drug
and alcohol abuse around Greater Sudbury, but for the parents with
children already in the lower percentile, it's too late for
prevention. Their lives have already changed.

And what is it like living with a son so deep in his habit he is
beyond reach?

"It's a nightmare."