EX ADDICT SUES DRUG SUPPLIER

SANDY Bergen wants her life full of children. None, ever, will be her
own. Doctors say her weak heart won't support her in pregnancy or
childbirth. She is only 21.

Such is the effect of crystal methamphetamine.

The Biggar, Sask. former waitress overdosed on meth May 5, 2004. She
went into a coma hours after coughing up blood and watching her arms
and legs turn blue.

Fourteen days later, nine in intensive care, she was discharged from
Royal University Hospital in Saskatoon. Doctors told her she had
suffered a heart attack and that her heart would never again be the
same.

"My health is OK," she says from her new home in Saskatoon, where
she's training to become an educational assistant. "I have reduced
heart function and I don't know about my lungs, liver or kidneys."
Bergen, who is also now in a recovery program, says she had smoked
methamphetamine, supplied by someone she thought was a friend, moments
before she felt her body rebelling against the drug.

"I had used it about 20 to 30 times before," she says. "I was not a
chronic user."

But this time was different. Likely, there was something else in the
meth that poisoned and almost killed her. Methamphetamine is made from
a variety of toxic household or agriculture chemicals, like iodine and
lithium metal taken from batteries.

The effects of methamphetamine use -- smoking it is most common,
followed by snorting and injection -- can last anywhere from 12 hours
to several days. Besides cardiac arrhythmia, side effects include
convulsions, dangerously high body temperature, stroke, stomach
cramps, and shaking.

Bergen says you can tell someone's on meth because they don't sleep
and appear to be, "going a million miles an hour.

"It's not that hard to tell if someone's on crystal meth," she says.
"They'll do their best to avoid you."

Her favourite way to get high was smoking it in a glass pipe or a
modified light bulb. The meth would be heated up with a lighter and
melt almost into a liquid.

"We called it smoking puddles."

Using a straw or pen with the ink cartridge removed, she'd suck in the
vapours. "When I was on it I always grinded my jaw," she says,
admitting she had tried an assortment of other street drugs before she
tried meth.

She said all of these drugs were available in Biggar, a town of 2,600
between Saskatoon and North Battleford.

Law enforcement officials have said methamphetamine is slowly
spreading west, from British Columbia through Alberta and Saskatchewan
to Manitoba. In Winnipeg, police have made sporadic seizures of the
drug, the largest single one being half a kilo -- six ounces worth
$17,600 on the street in the city's West End.

"We called it 'jib' or 'gak'," she says. "I went to work when I was on
it. I was a waitress. People knew I was high. I wasn't very good at
hiding it."

She also dropped about 40 pounds, hovering around 100 pounds, until
her heart attack.

It was in the weeks after she left hospital that she became more than
just a recovering 'meth head" or "tweaker."

She says she, her family and police knew who sold her the meth, but
because of the law he couldn't be charged with a criminal offence.

So in a rare legal move, Bergen, along with her mother Georgina and
father Stan, are suing him.

In a statement of claim filed Oct. 4 in Court of Queen's Bench in
Saskatoon, the family alleges the conduct of the defendant, Clinton
Davey, "was criminal and offence to the ordinary standards of decent
conduct in the community and is conduct which ought to be deterred and
is deserving of full condemnation and punishment." The family is suing
for $50,000 in general damages, special damages incurred for Sandy's
medical treatments and unspecified punitive damages.

In a statement of defence filed Oct. 26, Davey does not deny he
supplied the methamphetamine to Bergen, but says Bergen voluntarily
consumed "illegal drugs thus contributing to her own condition."

Also named in Bergen's claim is "John Doe," the person who allegedly
supplied the drugs to Davey. The Bergens say when Doe's identity is
known, that person will also be added to the lawsuit.

Bergen says the case will take a while to wind through the court
system.

In that time, she says she plans to continue her studies. Her ideal
job would be working with children and perhaps, after she's clean for
a year or so, becoming a drug counsellor.

"I'd like to do this," she says. "I love being surrounded by children.
I can never have my own, so I want to do this so I'm not depressed all
the time."