THE FACES OF METH: 5 WHO CHEATED DEATH

Winnipeg Girl Descended From 'A' Student To Addict

How do you tell an 18-year-old girl who's using meth that maybe, just
maybe, she doesn't know everything?

And have her listen?

You don't, according to "G," her father.

"It was a choice between the streets and her getting cleaned up," he
says. "The streets won.

"We were a well-to-do family that got all busted up. Here we were,
just paying our taxes, and then this snuck up on us and bit us. If
this can happen to us, I'm sorry, it can happen to anybody." That was
last February. Soon she was stealing cash and other items from the
family's south Winnipeg home, like the car. She stopped going to
school, where she was an A student. There were holes punched in walls.

Police were called. Often. The family pressed charges against her in
an attempt to get her to admit she had a problem. Police and those in
the court system did what they could to help, but as a young offender,
she had more rights than them.

There were signs before she left home she was into something bigger
than her parents and younger sister.

She lost weight. She was staying up all night. She lost interest in
everything except the methamphetamine.

Then she left home to be with her new family, fellow users.

"All these kids are pretty smart," says "G." "They know how to make it
on the street. They'll lie to a level you'll never believe."

For the spring and summer, she kicked around the West End and Osborne
Village.

"G" says only when his daughter was faced with being charged as an
adult -- and ending up in the Winnipeg Remand Centre -- did she stop.

He got her into Kirkos House, an addiction treatment centre run
through the Behavioural Health Foundation Inc. He paid $200 a day for
the two months she was there. She's now living with him -- he and his
wife separated during their daughter's troubles -- and she has
finished high school.

He doesn't know a lot about his daughter's days on the street. He's
thankful she didn't end up in Vancouver, though.

"She told me she was tempted, but she turned it down," he says. "She
says, 'Dad, do you think I'm stupid?'"

Paranoia ruled Transcona man's life

"J" first tried methamphetamine about two years ago when a friend
offered him a sample.

"I didn't feel much," the 24-year-old says. "I didn't think it was
that dangerous."

Estranged from his family in Transcona, alone and with new friends, he
continued to smoke the drug. There never seemed to be a shortage. "We
called it 'Bitch' because that's what it turned us all into," he says.

Soon he was staying up for days at a time -- a party would last three
to four days with no sleep, little eating and not much, if any,
bathing or personal hygiene. Most of the parties were in the Osborne
Village area.

He knew he had become a full-blown user when a girl at a party knocked
over his Mexican vase.

"J" pulled a knife to stab her, but was held back by the others.

"I knew I was in the wrong, but I couldn't stop."

In time, his paranoia began to rule his life, that and the
meth.

He says he carried two knifes in his pants and a pair of sharpened
chopsticks in his inner jacket pocket.

"The world was just so fear-based. I don't remember a lot of what
happened, I was just so whacked out. I couldn't stop using. I thought
my life would end. For me, it wasn't a crutch -- it was a way of life."

For money, he got by on social assistance and petty property crime. "I
did everything short of selling my body," he says. "I probably
would've sold my body if I had a chance."

He says he finally stopped using after he landed at the Health
Sciences Centre in detox. The drug was making him behave like a
schizophrenic, the hospital told him, with paranoid and violent behaviour.

Upon his release, his mother and a friend took him to the Addiction
Foundation Manitoba on Portage Avenue. It's the last place he wanted
to be. He says he remembers running out on Portage and stopping traffic.

One driver got out of his car and was about to confront him when he
got pulled back to safety.

"I'm never going to go back there again," he says, referring to his
two-year binge. He's been off the stuff for seven months, now.

He adds meth is now cheaper than crack cocaine and widely available.
Forty bucks buys a rock of crack (one quarter gram) and $10 buys a
tiny gram bag containing one "point" of meth (one-tenth of a gram).

"That meth will keep me going a lot longer than one rock," he says. "I
can be high for days."

And it's easy to get. Some are making it here, but a lot comes into
the city from labs in Western Canada, often smuggled in ordinary water
bottles. The meth has already been cooked at a secret lab and then
dissolved in water. Once in the city, the water is evaporated off.

From invincible to rock bottom

"I" says he's been clean since July 7, 2001.

He's now 40, and got into meth while working in Illinois, first in the
night club scene on weekends and then slowly more often, until it
became almost a daily habit. If he wasn't using, he was thinking about
it.

"I always felt terrible inside," he says. "There was just something
missing and so I was on this search to fill that void. When I first
found crystal meth, I felt like I had arrived."

He says he became addicted right away. "You feel you are invincible.
You feel you could just take on the world. I thought I could do anything."

And living away from home -- he grew up in Tuxedo -- gave him a
freedom he'd never had.

"On meth, it calmed me down. I was able to accomplish tasks. I could
work. I might have looked horrible and had been up for days, but
inside, I could do anything."

"I" also called meth "Bitch." Another name was "Tina."

"We also called it "Sabrina" because we thought the cops might know
what or who Tina was." To come down off a high and get sleep, he took
GBH (one of the so-called date-rape drugs) to knock himself out.

His business suffered. His circle shrank to include only other meth
users. He lost weight. His sinuses became permanently damaged by
snorting meth crystals, and he suffered short-term memory loss. At the
same time, he also learned how to make meth.

"I crossed every possible line I could when I was on the drug," he
says. "I hit bottom many times."

The final bottom came in Colorado with police and a possible jail
sentence.

"I didn't care about dying. I just didn't want to go to jail and
become someone's hole."

That's when his family stepped in. Soon, back in Winnipeg, he found
his sobriety in a 12-step program.

He fears now that with methamphetamine prevalent in Winnipeg, its
victims will become younger and younger. In much the same way their
parents tried marijuana in the '70s and '80s, many of today's teens
start with cocaine and methamphetamine.

"With cocaine, you become paranoid about the outside world. With meth,
you're paranoid at the people next to you."

He says parents can easily tell if their kids are using meth by the
lies. "It's a clear-thinking drug," he says. "You're aware -- you're
out there maneuvering.

"And we're not the easiest people to treat. That's because of the
lies."

'It ripped my body apart'

Picking.

That's how "N" says you can tell a heavy, chronic meth
user.

"I have a lot of scars," she says. "I was so obsessed, I picked at my
face and skin. I had a lot of boils.

"That's how you can tell, by the picking. A lot of people pick because
of the paranoia and because they're upset." The 21-year-old says she
been clean for a year and wants to stay that way. She wants to get a
job as a hairstylist, go to university and perhaps become a lawyer.

She started using meth at 16 with her friends in North
Kildonan.

She admits she'd been a drug user for years, starting as a kid,
crushing up Rockets candy and snorting the powder. As a 12-year-old,
she moved onto crushing up caffeine pills.

Then it was Ritalin and everything else; cocaine, marijuana, Ecstasy,
alcohol.

Meth was the best. With crack, she was only high when her lips were on
the pipe. With meth, she was high for days.

"When I tried, it was like I had arrived," she says. "It's that whole
thing of being accepted.

"When I was on meth, I could think and react better. I was on top of
the world. My creativity just soared through the roof."

With meth, she did -- what she thought anyway -- were the best
presentations in class and she was able to graduate from high school.

"It really gave me focus." But when she used, she didn't sleep and she
didn't eat, sometimes for 10 days at a time.

She smoked it, in modified light bulbs. She and her friends also
crushed it and stuck it in capsules so they could ingest it and get a
"body high."

They got clean meth, the clear, slightly cloudy kind, and dirty meth,
the brownish or yellowish kind.

"Really good crystal, you can smell it without opening the bag. It's
got a fishy, acetone-like smell."

In the beginning, meth was scarce and cost $20 a point. Now it costs
$10 and is easy to get.

She stopped using when she blacked out, a chunk of her life taken away
from her. That, and because her body was falling apart.

"I had had my fourth nervous breakdown," she says, coming to tears. "I
couldn't do it anymore. It was either me or the drug.

"Emotionally and physically, it ripped my body apart."

She ended up in Christie House through the Addictions Foundation of
Manitoba. Who uses? "It can be the girl next door," she says. "It can
be made in a toilet in a nice neighbourhood.

. . ."Once you do it, your mentality changes. You'll do anything to
get it."

Heal the family first, father says

Ted Merriman knows firsthand what meth addicts' families go
through.

Merriman is an MLA in Saskatchewan, a member of the Saskatchewan
Party. His daughter Kelly, now 34, is a recovering meth addict.

Merriman says parents can easily recognize the signs of drug
methamphetamine use in their children; rapid weight loss, severe mood
changes, changing their friends and staying up for long periods of
time and then sleeping for a long time.

"The best thing for parents to do is get on the Internet and type in
"meth," the 60-year-old Merriman says. Once parents notice these
changes, then the hard part begins. It involves both parents admitting
there is a problem and agreeing on a course of action.

"Men and women, we're built differently," he says. "With men, they
like to fix things and if they can't fix them, they throw them away.
Mothers are more compassionate, but at the same time they're more in
denial. They don't want to throw their kid out onto the street.

"It's like how can a mother sleep when she knows her daughter is
living under a bridge prostituting herself?"

It's that stress that breaks up families as both parents try to do
what they think is right.

"But the fact is you've got to heal the family to heal the child,"
Merriman says.

Both Merriman and his daughter now travel Saskatchewan, educating
young people and parents so they have the tools to recognize the addiction.

Kelly Merriman has been sober for 20 months.

She's pretty sure she first tried meth about three years ago when she
took some Ecstasy laced with the drug. She was formally introduced to
methamphetamine by her former boyfriend not soon after. Her experience
with it included auditory hallucinations, severe weight loss -- 45
pounds in two months -- hair loss and liver damage.

She says she also had recurring paranoid delusions; the Hells Angels
and police were watching her every move, and her phone had been tapped.

Her skin turned a pale yellow and she constantly ground her
teeth.

At the height of her addiction, she had nine people living in her
Saskatoon apartment, sort of a meth den in which the drug was used all
the time.

The end for her came in fits and starts; she tried to quit, but went
back to the drug time and time again. It was only when she realized
she was dying that she went to her parents for help.

"It was killing me and I didn't want to die," she says. "People say I
was a drug abuser, but I say the drugs abused me."

She went to a nine-bed treatment centre called Hopeview Recovery
Residence in North Battleford where she "kicked" her habit.

She's now in a 12-step program. It's in these meetings she finds the
strength to talk to groups around Saskatchewan about the drug.

"I want to tell my story to kids so they don't go down the same path
as me. Even if I just reach one or two kids, I've accomplished my
goal." What she finds is that most kids know about methamphetamine and
other street drugs. They see it on TV and hear it in the music they
listen to.

"Kids are pretty smart these days. They understand it.

"I tell them drugs can only do three things to you -- they can put you
in jail, an institution or kill you. I don't know what it is about
meth, but it just lands you in these places faster."