Pubdate: Tue, 15 Oct 2002
Source: Cold Lake Sun, The (CN AB)
Copyright: 2002 The Cold Lake Sun
Contact:  http://www.coldlakesun.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1421
Author: Chris Miller

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.
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