LIFE AFTER REHAB, VERONICA'S STORY

On a lazy Sunday evening, Veronica was snuggled up on a couch watching
TV on a big screen. But then the nightly news started and her world
turned upside down.

A photo of her ex-fiance, with whom she was still close, flashed
onscreen. He had crashed his car into an oncoming pickup truck, and
died instantly in the fiery mangled wreckage.

"Right then and there, that was it, I decided to start using,"
recalled Veronica, a 28-year-old cocaine and alcohol addict from Port
Colborne, Ont.

"There was a lot of pain, there was no closure ... The last thing I
wanted to do was feel."

And so began the downward spiral that consumed her for five years. She
was fired, became pregnant, lost custody of her daughter, sold her
body and shut out her family.

"It didn't matter that I was hurting myself, all I knew was I'd feel
good after (getting high)," says Veronica.

"Nobody understands why people would want to hurt themselves like
that, but they don't realize it's because of a lot of hurt and you
don't know what to do with it. Nobody gives you a book on how to live
life."

She still doesn't have a book, but she is better equipped to deal with
urges and stress after spending January at Hope Place Women's
Treatment Centre in Milton, Ont.

Five weeks later, Veronica, not her real name, is still managing - and
most of the time she is doing it sober.

The first thing she did was move out of her mother's place in Port
Colborne, citing "big-time triggers." She couldn't go to the gas
station, the bank or the grocery store without running into drug users
or pushers.

"Drug dealers got to do their groceries, too," she says. "You're going
to run into them no matter where you go. You go to (a pharmacy) to
pick up toilet paper or shampoo and they're in there getting their
methadone."

She didn't have to go far before the cravings set in. She still refers
to her old bedroom, which is in the basement of her mother's house, as
the "dungeon" because it conjures up "too many bad memories."

That's where she would go, with lights off and door locked, to shoot
up cocaine.

It took her about a week before she had the courage to go down and
clean out the old crack pipes, syringes and other drug paraphernalia
she had stashed away in there.

The urge to use was strong but she didn't cave - not that
night.

She moved with her boyfriend, Dave, to the outskirts of town, near the
shores of Lake Erie, into an old two-storey house at the end of a long
dirt road.

Her boyfriend still smokes pot. He doesn't light up around Veronica
but has come home stoned and shrugs off suggestions that he could have
triggered her to use

Dave, also not his real name, says he is trying to give up the pot so
it doesn't hurt Veronica's chances of regaining custody of her baby
girl, who is living with a relative. But he's in a band and says booze
and pot are par for the course.

They say their pad is completely dry - free of drugs and alcohol.
Veronica feels safe here. Long walks along the beach help clear her
head. Few people know where she lives and few know her new cell number.

"Just sitting here day by day I don't crave to do the coke, whereas
when I lived in Port Colborne I knew five places I could go to (for
drugs)," she said one afternoon in March, seated in her sparsely
furnished living room.

"If I didn't live out here, I'd be back in rehab."

It's a bit isolating to be so far from town, where her family lives,
and it can be costly to pay for gas to get to Alcoholics and Narcotics
Anonymous meetings. But she doesn't care. Going downtown is always a
gamble.

About two weeks out of rehab, she went to see Dave's band play in a
bar.

She knew it was a dumb idea, but figured she was in control. She had
even gone to an AA meeting beforehand.

But Veronica knows lots of people and can walk into almost any bar in
town without a penny in her pocket and wobble out drunk. And this
night would be no exception.

Minutes after arriving, an old friend bought her a beer. Without
hesitation, Veronica accepted.

"It was just a natural thing for me to do," she later
remarked.

"I shouldn't have started drinking, but I was like, `I'm here and I've
already screwed up and you can't screw up any further tonight as long
as you stay here.'"

She sat on her bar stool, sipping away, thinking it was all right as
long as Dave didn't know. "That stupid old stinking thinking came back."

After downing three cold ones, there was a break in the set and she
and Dave went for a cigarette. But her slurred speech and glassy eyes
gave it away. Dave gave her hell.

The next night she was back at an AA meeting. She needs to be
constantly reminded that she is an addict.

Physically, she is reminded of that when she experiences post-acute
withdrawal symptoms, which occur as her brain chemistry returns to
normal. The mood swings, memory loss, irritability, tiredness and
sleepless nights could last up to two years.

After her first relapse, Veronica made it out nearly every day for two
weeks to an AA meeting, which itself can be a trigger if someone shows
up drunk.

She even avoided temptation while at a friend's house and left after
people showed up strung out on coke, wanting to party some more.

"When I saw them stoned and the effects of the drugs on them, for some
reason my brain was telling me `I want that feeling.' It's hard to
just tell yourself `No.'"

At that point she had missed three meetings in a row, and she figured
she had better get to one that night. On her way there, she stopped in
town, at a Tim Hortons, and ran into an old friend. Veronica spotted a
joint, tucked behind the woman's ear, and was greeted with, "C'mon,
you want some?" There was barely a pause before they sparked up the
spliff.

"I didn't even think, I just did it. It's almost like something that's
instilled in you. You've done it so many times it's an automatic
reaction to just take the joint or take a beer."

Looking back on that day, she chalks it up to "having a case of the
f--- it."

"Like, f--- it, I don't feel like worrying about not using today. I
just want to use because I feel like I should be able to be a normal
person. But normal people don't use everyday.

"I've finally realized that this is normal," she says, looking around
her kitchen, at a pile of dishes stacked next to a bag of groceries.
"Normal is to have a place of your own and be able to pay your bills
and whether you're still struggling to get by on your (Ontario Works)
cheque to the end of the month, you make do with what you have."