DRUG USE NOW; WRECKS LIFE LATER

EXETER - Many students at South Huron District High School here were shocked
at times during a man's first-hand account of how use of drugs can ruin your
life, your family, and it can kill.

They gasped, and some female students raised their hands to cover their
mouths, as they looked at an horrific image on a big screen before them of a
girl - dead from drug overdose.

They listened intently as a former drug user, Julian Madigan, told them use
of the drug Ecstasy during their teenage years can cause impotence later
when they want to be intimate with a partner. It's the kind of thing that
has ruined relationships, he said.

The 27-year-old knows first-hand what it's like to fall into using drugs,
have his life ruined by them and then come clean. His 75-minute stop last
Thursday in Exeter was one of several at Huron County high schools sponsored
by the Huron County Health United and Safety First Huron-Perth during Drug
Awareness Week, Nov. 17-23.

The best selling author of The Agony of Ecstasy, Madigan is now a
triathlete, seminar leader, coach and a husband and father of a
two-and-a-half-month-old daughter. But more than 10 years ago, he was
admittedly a "liar, a drug user, a dealer and a thief."

Teenagers believe they are invincible, they can not die from using drugs, he
said, and that's exactly what he believed when he was 14 years old. He told
the entire student body at South Huron he didn't believe adults who warned
him that drugs kill, because he rationalized the adults never used drugs, so
how would they know. He saw his peers trying drugs and having fun. "But fun
is 10 per cent of doing drugs. I tried acid. One hour later I heard sounds
and saw sights. All of a sudden I had all these new friends, simply because
I did drugs. But relations with my family changed. I didn't care if my
grandmother was worried," he said. "Once you start drugs, you will eat,
sleep and dream drugs and all you live for is buying and doing drugs. Trust
me, believe me in this."

Madigan once dreamed of competing in the Olympics as a swimmer. He was a
good student. He had good friends. His parents separated when he was five
years old, so he was being raised by his grandmother.

"I was number one in swimming. I had trophies everywhere," he said.

But at 13 years old he became curious about drugs and began to smoke the odd
cigarette which he recalled is an awful experience.

"No one enjoys their first cigarette," said Madigan vehemently, and almost
challenging anyone in the room to say otherwise. He saw someone smoking
weed, he said, and rationalized that person didn't die, so he tried it.

"The next morning I woke up and I wasn't dead. I defeated that and now I was
invincible. It didn't kill me," he said, adding he began to do drugs more
frequently.

He went to his first Rave party with a friend and discovered everyone was
happy, kissing and hugging each other, and naively wondered why...until he
discovered they were high on hard drugs like acid and coke, to name only a
few.

Madigan began using drugs more and just 12 months later, had a costly
addiction. He was using $1,000 worth of various drugs weekly and never felt
high. He was stealing from his grandmother's purse, his father's wallet and
selling his own clothes to support his habit. His grades at school fell to
the point where he could barely pass an exam and he lost interest in sports.

"Ecstasy cost me $50 for my first pill, which is a rip off. I could dance
two to three hours. The first high is so amazing, you'll never forget the
experience. But you'll never get it again. Never," said Madigan. After three
months, tolerance to the drug increases and so does the cost, he said.

"I went into debt buying drugs. At 17 years old, I sold my own clothes,
robbed my grandmother's purse, robbed my father's wallet and took his ATM
card and I was dealing," he said, adding he became a regular coke user. "I
was naive to think drugs would never change me. By now my weekends were five
days long. I snorted ice cold water to ease the pain. I slept for 24 hours
after a weekend and on Tuesday, I was depressed."

He hated his family, hated his father's new wife and her three young
children and in a drug-induced stupor he plotted ways to harm them. He was
devastated when his grandmother died.

He was beat up and threatened with death by a drug dealer wanting his money
from Madigan.

One Sunday evening, his home was raided by police who searched for drugs but
never found any. Madigan told the students if the cops had come on a
Thursday they would have discovered enough stash to put him in jail for 10
years.

Instead, Madigan has spent some of the past 10 years in drug rehabilitation
therapy and coping with brain damage. He's been trying to rid himself of
guilt and regret, one of the biggest being unable to say "I'm sorry" to his
grandmother.

"Think about the life you want to live. I know people in their mid-twenties
who are alone. When you're lying on your deathbeds, all you can think about
are your relationships," he said.

As Madigan crashed to the lowest point of his young life, his father and
stepmother unexpectedly rallied around him. He expected his father to go
crazy with anger and disown him. His stepmother hugged him and told him she
loved him. He began to receive support from a counsellor, a police officer
and his running coach.

"They helped me through detox. If I didn't have this network of support, I
wouldn't be here today," he said. "I have three friends who killed
themselves. I lost my friends, my youth and my goals and ambition.
Physically, I have holes in my brain...and I never said sorry to my
grandmother."

Clicking through a computer PowerPoint presentation as he spoke, Madigan
came to a page listing his Five Steps to Freedom: communication, honesty,
decision (only you can decide to quit), breaking away and filling the void.

"I filled it with sport and writing a book," he said, adding he also turned
to Christianity. "Getting rid of the guilt is the hardest thing to do."

Madigan showed a quotation from a Robert Frost poem that provides a message
to young people to be themselves and live their own lives.

"Two roads diverged in the wood, and I, I took the one less traveled by,"
wrote Robert Frost. Madigan noted the poem's ending, "And it made all the
difference."

One wrong choice eliminates all the rest of the choices a person gets, said
Madigan, but making a right choice creates a host of new choices. A person
choosing to do drugs eliminates later chances of getting a good job or
having a positive relationship. He said an employer looks upon a person with
a history of drug use or criminal charges as untrustworthy and unproductive
and therefore, wouldn't hire that person.