THE AGONY OF ECSTASY

COLD LAKE - Julian Madigan did drugs. Weed, coke, speed, crystal meth,
acid, angel dust, Ecstasy, you name it.

He admitted to trying pretty much every narcotic, save for heroin. He's not
proud of this facet of his past, but by sharing his past with others he
hopes to sway them from making the same mistakes.

Madigan, 27, said that his life before drugs was excellent, a life of
family, friends, school and competitive swimming.

"Every (swimming) competition I won. I had boxes and boxes of trophies and
gold medals," said Madigan, who as a teen dreamt of making it as a swimmer
in the Olympics.

Drugs steered him off the path to success. The starting point came at age
14, as he developed a curiosity for girls, smoking cigarettes, drinking
alcohol - and cannabis. Otherwise known as marijuana or "weed", cannabis
affects the user's powers of concentration and makes him lethargic. For
Madigan, cannabis was also his first step into surrealism.

"Weed, as far as I'm concerned, is the gateway drug," he said.

More specifically, weed was the gateway into hallucinogens, such as magic
mushrooms and LSD. Madigan started hanging out with a different circle of
friends and his enthusiasm for swimming was greatly diminished. He was
entering an unreal world.

"LSD warps your mind where you will not be able to tell fantasy from
reality," he told Assumption school students during his first of three drug
awareness seminars Oct. 10.

Eventually Madigan got into harder drugs, including Ecstasy, which was
introduced to the club scene in the 1980s as the so-called "love drug" and
reached its peak of popularity in the rave scene around 1996.

Madigan tried Ecstasy because it gave him a sense of euphoria, and energy
to dance nonstop at the clubs for three hours. "The high that you get from
that first (Ecstasy) pill you will never get again," said Madigan.

However, this fact didn't keep him from wanting more drugs. He was hooked.
To buy drugs, he sold his clothes, robbed his own house, dealt drugs to
other youths, and even stole cash from his grandmother's purse.

"Do you really think I cared about my grandmother? Get real. It was just a
purse full of money and I needed the money for the weekend."

Madigan shared a slide presentation showing photographs of Ecstasy's
victims: 15-year-old Anna Wood of Sydney, 18-year-old Leah Betts who died
after taking an E tablet that she received as a birthday present, an
architect student who died after taking half an E pill, and Loran Spinks,
shown bleeding from every orifice of her body.

While Madigan is still alive, don't think for a moment that he got off
scot-free. For the small reward of getting high, he gave up everything else.

"For a weekend I would sacrifice everything that was important to me just
to get high," he said.

Any regrets?

"I would give my life if I could have 10 minutes with my grandmother to
tell her why I did what I did. But I will never get the chance," said Madigan.