Pubdate: Sat, 15 May 2004 Source: Lethbridge Herald (CN AB) Copyright: 2004 The Lethbridge Herald Contact: http://www.mysouthernalberta.com/leth/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/239 Author: Gerald Gauthier $600,000 HABIT One Man's Journey To Hell And Back His name is Mark and he's spent nearly 40 of his 54 years chasing his next high. He started using drugs at the age of 15 and didn't stop until he was 49. "I've done every drug you can imagine," he says. Mark's favourite was crack -- the solid form of cocaine. The effects of cocaine, in its various forms, are being seen increasingly at the local level. Trafficking has increased substantially in the past couple of years, according to Lethbridge regional police. Among clients in drug and alcohol rehabilitation locally, the proportion of those in for cocaine addiction is second only to those seeking treatment for alcoholism. The turning point for Mark came one morning at a homeless shelter in Calgary. He awoke, his head thick from yet another night of drinking and getting high, to hear the man next to him vomiting in his bed. "I asked myself "What are you doing?'," he says. "I was killing myself. I was dying and I knew it." He asked for help and eventually came to Lethbridge to get clean and sober. He has stayed that way for the past four-and-a-half years. Mark grew up in a home where as a youth he often stepped in to defend his mother when his alcoholic father would beat her up. By age 15, he was in youth detention where he learned how to inject drugs using an eye dropper as a syringe and needles scavenged from infirmary garbage bins. While in detention, he trained as a journeyman welder and after his release got a high-paying job in northern B.C. He bought a nice house as well as boats and expensive vehicles -- all while financing a growing crack cocaine habit. "I would have a big bowl of crack before I went to work and nobody would notice," he says. As time went by, however, his problem became harder to hide. His two marriages to drug-addicted wives failed and he eventually lost all his possessions, sacrificing many of them for a fraction of their value in order to make another score. "We sold everything in the house, and as soon as we got the money, it was straight to the crack dealer," he says. He sold all the tools he used for his livelihood, and when everything was gone, he cashed in his RRSPs. When the bank foreclosed on his house, he moved into a motel. "In the end, it came to (the point) I was just working to pay my dealer," he says. "I would get paid Thursday and I was broke by Saturday. "I couldn't stop doing drugs. I loved drugs more than anything in the world, more than my wife and my daughter," he says. "It feels so good, but you're chasing a dragon all night trying to get the same feeling again." He estimates that over four decades he blew $500,000 on cocaine, crack, booze and an array of other drugs. Because his skills as a welder were always in demand, he managed to stay employed despite the fact he repeatedly lost jobs because of his extended absences during drug binges. "I would just pull the plug and go work somewhere else," he says. Eventually, however, he gave up trying to hold a steady job and wound up living as a homeless man in Edmonton and later Calgary. For Mark, every day he now lives drug-free is a victory. He enjoys simple pleasures such as listening to the singing of birds or smelling the fragrance of lilacs in the early morning. "Man, I've never felt so good in my life," he says. "Before, the only time I would be up that early was to go meet my dealer. "All it took was my desire to quit and ask for help. You have to want to quit and nine out of 10 people who come in for treatment don't want to quit." He now has a steady job locally as a tradesman. It pays him a lot less than he used to make as a welder, but that suits him fine. He worries making bigger money might bring with it the temptation to fall back into old habits. "I still miss cocaine, even now. I won't lie to you," he says. "But one's too many and a hundred's not enough. That's what cocaine does to me. "It's still scary. I've got to watch what I do every day. I have to be careful I don't hang around with the wrong people." His wish for all the younger addicts out there is that they would decide to seek help and straighten out "before it takes them 54 years, like me. It's no life to live. It's a shitty life to live." - --- MAP posted-by: Larry Seguin