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The last criminal act "Josh" did before he was forced into a drug and
alcohol treatment program in Calgary five years ago was to break into a
designer clothing store with his younger brother and steal several hundred
thousand dollars worth of suits.

"They were worth four, five, six thousand dollars each. It didn't take
long," says Josh, now 21. "That was pretty wild."

Addicted to drugs and alcohol, Josh and his brother had been regularly
breaking into stores and homes, stealing whatever they could sell for cash
or trade for drugs. Both teens were known to Calgary police-in fact, they
were registered with the Serious Habitual Offenders Program so officers
could keep constant track of their comings and goings.

"We were going to jail," says Josh. "I had no doubt about it."

Neither did their mother. So when she heard about a successful treatment
program based on the Alcoholics Anonymous model, she signed up Josh's more
easily convinced younger brother. (For anonymity, purposes, some names in
this story have been changed.)

With an average 80 per cent success rate-success is defined as participants
remaining clean and sober long enough to return to school or work-the
Alberta Adolescent Recovery Centre's (AARC) reputation is growing,
especially since the success rate at most recovery centres in North America
is closer to 25 per cent.

Launched with a $1-million donation from the Rotary Club, and funded by
fees and private donations, it's the only program of its kind in Canada.

As a result, it's attracted desperate parents from across the country,
including Vancouver, willing to sell their homes and relocate to Calgary in
a last-ditch attempt to save their children's lives. Ten per cent of the
clients who enroll in the program are B.C. teens.

Some local parents, however, are looking for a solution closer to home.

A group made up of local business executives, social workers and social
activists is investigating opening a similar centre to AARC in Vancouver,
tentatively called the Vancouver Adolescent Recovery Centre.

But despite several serious attempts at fundraising, the group has only
raised a fraction of the $2 million it needs to cover staff wages, rent and
other expenses for the first year, until the fee-based facility can become
self-sufficient.

Even approaching several local services clubs has turned up no offers of
support.

Another major hurdle holding the project back is the lack of a Secure Care
Act, a piece of legislation that allows parents to confine children
considered at risk and force them into treatment.

The B.C. Ministry for Children and Families began studying the idea of a
Secure Care Act two years ago when the NDP was still in power, but
Assistant Deputy Minister Alan Markwart said the initial plan was flawed.

"They needed a cabinet order to bring it into force and that didn't
happen," he said. "It was later pointed out the act was problematic."

Markwart named several key issues of concern, including the fact the act
involved forming an administrative tribunal to adjudicate cases, rather
than having decisions made by the courts, which meant setting up an
entirely new, province-wide bureaucracy.

The second problem was the broad scope of youths the program
encompassed-all of whom could be housed together.

"Say you have a youth with a mild handicap like fetal alcohol syndrome,
who's not streetwise and is easily led," he said. "If you place him with a
cocaine-addicted youth, that could be really counterproductive."

Markwart said the Liberals are in the process of replacing the NDP's act
with one that focuses more on sexually-exploited youth, with a 30-day limit
on detention-rather than up to three increments of 30 days, as proposed
under the NDP.

A consultative paper is set to be released next fall on the proposed act,
expected to be completed by spring of 2004.

Diane Sowden, who sat on the NDP's working group for the act, said 30 days
is not enough for most kids.

She notes that, right now, the longest a youth at risk can be held is 72 hours.

Though her daughter, a drug-addicted sex-trade worker, was forced into
detox several times, after 72 hours she was allowed to sign herself out,
with no notice to her parents.

"If I could have held her somewhere for treatment, that might have all
changed. I don't understand why [the Liberals] would change that," she
said. "It's a safeguard in place to help these youth."

In Alberta, Sowden said, there was never a need to introduce a Secure Care
Act, because under the longstanding Child Welfare Act, parents have always
been allowed to detain children up to the age of 16 for treatment.

For Josh, it may have saved his life-or at least saved him from a life of
crime.

After he was dragged unwillingly along as part of his brother's recovery,
it didn't take long for everyone concerned to realize Josh had a problem too.

"I was showing up for therapy stoned," he said. "Almost immediately they
took me in. I had no choice. My parents signed me over and I was stuck there."

Josh's brother dropped out of the program, with his mother's consent,
before the year was over, and was soon arrested for several armed
robberies. He was sentenced to four years in jail and was just recently
released.

Josh's father, who hadn't lived with the family for years, also started the
program, but dropped out as well.

"He couldn't take the commitment," Josh said. "He was dealing with alcohol
problems of his own."

Josh's mom quit her night job in order to participate in the program,
despite the fact recovery at AARC doesn't come cheap.

It costs $125 per day, and the average youth sticks with the program for a
year or longer.

"She doesn't make a lot of money," Josh said. "I don't know how she did it."

Josh graduated from the program in 15 months and moved to B.C. two years ago.

Clean and sober ever since, the 21-year-old works full time as a roofer,
has a girlfriend and knows enough to avoid bars and parties.

"It's tough, so I just choose not to put myself in those situations," he
said. "My girlfriend pretty much takes up all of my spare time anyway."

Josh credits the program for his new lease on life, and applauds local
organizers' efforts to open up a similar program here.

"They absolutely need one here. It's a necessity to save other kid's lives."

Diane Sowden is sure a Vancouver Adolescent Recovery Centre could have
saved her daughter, who left her Coquitlam home nine years ago for a life
on the streets.

At just 13, Sowden's daughter was introduced to crack cocaine by an older
boyfriend who, when her drug bill reached more than $4,000, sold her to a
pimp in Surrey, who took her to work on the Downtown Eastside.

Sowden said she tried over and over to force her daughter into treatment,
but her hands were tied.

She also blames a court system so lenient that despite the fact her
daughter was in custody 13 times and charged with several offenses, she was
never jailed.

"She was only in custody when she'd breach her probation. Never for what
she was charged with."

Sowden wishes her daughter had been confined long enough to be forced into
treatment at some point in the last decade, but that never happened, even
while her daughter continued to use drugs and turn tricks during two
pregnancies.

Both babies were born drug addicted and are in Sowden's custody.

"My daughter was 14, pregnant, standing on the streets, turning tricks and
doing heroin and there was nothing I could do."

Her daughter did manage to get clean for a couple of years when she turned
18, but in July she walked away from her husband and third child, a
two-and-a-half-year-old boy, after the family fell on hard financial times.

The 22-year-old is now back on the streets of the Downtown Eastside,
turning tricks and using drugs.

Sowden, who now volunteers her time speaking to schools and youth groups
about the harsh realities of life on the streets, said she didn't know
anything about AARC when her daughter left home, but is now a huge
supporter of the program, and efforts to have a similar facility built here.

"When my daughter managed to get into detox, she wasn't allowed to let me
know where she was and if they released her, they wouldn't even let me
know," she said.

"At AARC, the whole family is involved and when the process is complete,
the child goes home to a healthy atmosphere. That's important because if
your family wasn't unhealthy before going through all this, they're
unhealthy after. That child lies, steals and says horrible, hurtful things.
That takes its toll on everyone."

The main difference between AARC and other programs, says founder Dr. Dean
Vause, is that it's based on abstinence, not harm reduction, which aims to
minimize harmful effects of addiction by offering clean needles, condoms
and counselling.

As far as Vause is concerned, abstinence is vital to the future success of
clients, even if that means keeping them against their will.

"It's pretty clear these kids have failed in other treatment programs. Harm
reduction hasn't worked and abstinence is vital to their future success."

The program also based on the 12-step program used by Alcoholics Anonymous,
which includes a spiritual component: clients look to God for help in their
recovery.

New clients are initially billeted with the families of their peers, or
host families, who have been involved with the program longer. The idea is
that clients need to live outside their family homes until they're
considered emotionally and physically healed enough.

"There is no point sending a kid home if that home isn't healthy," said
Vause. "Usually families are in denial about their own problems."

Depending on the availability of host families, some parents end up taking
as many as a half-dozen high-risk teens at a time. Girls are only sent home
with girls, and boys with boys.

Because AARC recognizes addiction is a family disease, the family has to
commit to being healed along with the child.

Vause said the commitment from parents and families is huge, but well worth
it when you consider a child's life is at stake. The average client spends
a year in treatment, and siblings and parents spend time in group and
individual therapies.

Parents attend separate weekly therapy sessions with a counselor, and
couples' counselling with a family therapist.

If parents want to take a night off, or be away from the home for business
or other reasons, they must ask in writing, and those requests are seldom
granted.

"There's a number of parents who just want to drop off their kids and carry
on with their other commitments, but I tell them, their number-one
commitment is getting their kid better," Vause said. "I ask them, 'If your
kid was dying of cancer, what would you do?' Because there are way more
kids dying from drugs than from cancer."

Vause admits the $125 per day-or about $50,000 per year-treatment cost can
be prohibitive for lower-income families, especially the small percentage
of clients on social assistance, but says each case is assessed on the
family's ability to pay, and the centre has never turned a teen away.

Rarely is a family able to pay the full fee and any shortfall is made up
from private donations.

"The kids here come from every walk of life," Vause said. "I compare it to
the Titanic. It doesn't matter if a passenger was in first class or
steerage; they all felt the same pain."

When youths first arrive at AARC, they're stripped of everything personal,
including make-up, designer clothing and anything associated with rap or
hip-hop music and drug culture.

Clients are also not allowed anything addictive, such as cigarettes or even
coffee. Eventually, they can win back privileges with good behaviour.

"What you need is to get down to the basics and take away the dress and
make-up they hide behind," said Vause. "Once they're clean and sober, they
can wear whatever they want."

The most seriously sick kids are watched 24 hours a day because suicide
attempts are common among the desperately addicted.

After about three months of treatment, most kids are allowed to live at
home again, but must still attend the centre daily.

The next step is school and work, and finally graduation.

Graduation doesn't necessarily signify the kids have completed recovery,
which is an ongoing process, said Vause.

Yet it's a milestone that makes up for other celebrations, like proms and
high school graduations, that most clients have missed as a result of their
addictions.

After completing the program, the majority of clients lead productive
lives, Vause says.

Graduates and families often speak to groups, including schools and service
clubs, on the seriousness of adolescent addictions and how to get help.

The program is overbooked at 34 kids, and has a wait list of about six months.

"But if there is nowhere else for that kid to go, we'll work it out," said
Vause, noting for most clients, AARC is an option of last resort.

"These are kids with no place else to go. They come from the courts, psych
ward, the streets and other treatment centres where they've failed."

AARC was where "Steve" went when he had nowhere else to go. In 1997, his
17-year-old son Todd had quit school, dropped a promising career in hockey
and was addicted to booze and cocaine.

When several other treatment programs didn't work, a counsellor gave him a
pamphlet on AARC. Worried he'd lose his son forever, the Calgary
businessman and his wife, who now reside in Vancouver, immediately
contacted the centre.

"We took him to AARC for an assessment and they just kept him. Basically,
he never left until he graduated."

Todd, who dealt with his addiction for two years alone before finally
confiding to his mom that he needed help, was assessed at a three and a
half out of five levels, four being suicidal.

As is typical of many of the kids who come through the centre, Todd started
out experimenting with pot and a little booze, but soon escalated to
full-blown cocaine and alcohol addictions.

"The first year was bad, the second was really bad," he said. "I was
stealing money off of anybody I could."

Steve admits the commitment was tremendous, but says the couple was
determined not to lose their son.

Because there was a shortage of host parents at the time, Steve and his
wife opened their homes to six or seven teenaged boys at a time, all in
various stages of recovery.

"Todd was bringing kids home right out of jail. That's the way it works.
The girls typically work in the sex trade, and the boys have been in jail."

After Todd graduated from the program, he was scouted to play hockey again,
but decided against it.

"The opportunity was still there, but I chose not to take it," he says.
"Those guys go on the road all the time and party, and I decided my
sobriety was more important than that."

Two years ago, the family moved to Vancouver from Calgary, and Todd, who
has remained clean and sober, holds a full-time job. His dad couldn't be
prouder.

"It was hard," says Steve. "But not as hard as watching your son die."

Steve is a huge supporter of the proposed VARC, and aware of how
cash-strapped the organization is, has a suggestion for the powers that be.

"I think they should commit a piece of land from the [Pickton] pig farm in
Port Coquitlam to building a recovery centre," he said. "A lot of the women
who were murdered there were young and drug addicted. It could be a way to
make some good out of something so sick."

For more information about VARC, call board member Hedy Davidson at
604-464-3736.