THE DARK CRYSTAL

Thought Heroin Was Bad? Well, There's A New Demon In Vancouver, And It's
Caught Everyone By Surprise

Jake remembers the first time he saw the army people. High on crystal meth,
he was well into his third day without sleep. Along with the boundless
energy and heightened sense of alertness came the mind-bending hallucinations.

"One day I was so delusional... There were these trees on top of this
overpass, and they looked like army people, dressed up with guns, marching
down," the 19-year-old says between faint smiles and sips of strong coffee.
"It was in the middle of the day, and I asked this truck driver, 'What's
with all those army people?' He just looked at me. He was, like, 'What?' It
was actually fun for me. I enjoyed the hallucinations."

But Jake started to notice that those visions kept happening even when he
wasn't using meth, aka speed, glass, jib, crank, shards, and peanut butter.
That's when he started getting scared.

"When the symptoms don't go away after you do it, it's no fun. That's when
you know you're kinda hooped."

Jake is sitting in a hotel coffee shop in Tsawwassen on a deadly hot summer
morning. He's just called local psychiatrist Bill MacEwan, asking for a
refill of his antipsychotic and antidepressant medication. He'll take
anything to counter the paranoia and delusions that continue to poison his
thinking. Jake wasn't always so anxious. But that was years ago, before he
started using crystal meth.

The soft-spoken youth started using cocaine when he was 13. He switched to
meth at 16, looking for something more powerful, a high that would enable
him to stay up for parties that lasted days. That's one of meth's draws:
you don't sleep. Then there's the hallucinatory effect. Jake would think a
group of people was standing in front of him. He'd walk up to them, only to
see the figures dissolve before his eyes into the bushes they really were.

Wearing a baseball cap, baggy pants, and loose shirt, Jake shifts his tired
chestnut eyes away when he talks about his methamphetamine addiction. He
doesn't want his name printed, although his parents and friends are well
aware of the dark place he's in.

"The paranoia kicked in," Jake says. "I'd be so lonely and paranoid. It was
a horrible feeling....I'd be looking out my window every five minutes to
see if someone was out there. The trees I had always seen looked like
people. I was so freaked out one night; I swear to God there were people
out there. I hopped out my window in my boxer shorts looking for these
people. I couldn't find them, so I got dressed and walked around the block
looking for people in bushes. Thank God my parents caught on."

Meth is an extremely dangerous drug. It's cheap, highly addictive, easily
accessible, and can be made at home, providing you have toxic chemicals
like Drano and battery acid on hand. It can cause structural changes to the
brain and induce psychotic symptoms that resemble those of schizophrenia:
paranoia, disorganized thinking, delusions, and impaired memory. In some
people, those effects will never go away, even long after they stop using.

It's also Vancouver's new demon.

The city's problem is so extreme that last November, on their own
initiative, about 120 people from a vast range of professions and interests
formed a group called the Methamphetamine Response Committee. It consists
of psychiatrists, doctors, nurses, social workers, cops, and bureaucrats.
There are representatives from high schools, custody centres, and safe
homes, and users themselves. They all say meth use in town has risen
dramatically over the last two years. And they're worried.

If the very existence of MARC doesn't speak to the urgency of Vancouver's
problem, perhaps Steven Smith does. He's program coordinator of Dusk to
Dawn, the street-youth resource centre run by Family Services of Greater
Vancouver. It's located in a rundown building at the back of St. Paul's
Hospital and offers food, showers, and lockers for kids under 22. Teens
can't use drugs in the centre, but they're not turned away if they're high.

"Every single social-services agency has had to sit down in the last year
and say, 'Meth has affected us. We have to talk about this,'" Smith
explains in his office. "Everyone's on a fast-track learning curve. There's
not a whole lot of information out there. There's no denying there's a meth
epidemic, and we don't have the resources to address it. I think it caught
everyone by surprise."

Meth came to prominence during the Second World War, when Japan, Germany,
and the United States gave the drug to military personnel to increase
endurance. Later, doctors prescribed it to treat depression, obesity, and
heroin addiction. Illicit laboratories emerged in San Francisco in the
1960s, and from there it spread up and down the Pacific Coast. In the '80s
came a new method of the drug's production, which led to crystal meth, a
crystallized, smokable, and even more potent form of MA. Now, no city or
town seems free of meth's tentacles. News stories are emerging about the
drug's prevalence in places like Smoky Lake, Alberta; New York City; and
the state of Hawaii.

According to the World Health Organization, methamphetamine is the most
widely used illicit drug in the world after cannabis.

On local turf, there are countless youths who hang out downtown, like Jake
used to, and spend as little as $5 for a high whose effects can last days.
The Granville-Davie corridor is notorious for meth. It's the drug of choice
for street kids: because it keeps users awake, they can guard their stuff
at night; the drug also saps their desire to eat, which is convenient for
those with no cash for food.

Although it may have gained popularity at raves, meth has moved well beyond
that culture. This doesn't mean ravers aren't still using it--they might
just not know it. Analysis by the RCMP's Vancouver-based drug-awareness
program shows that almost 60 percent of ecstasylike pills seized locally
contain meth. The tablets, a random and dizzying concoction of chemicals,
often contain such additional ingredients as cocaine, ephedrine,
pseudoephedrine, and ketamine, an anaesthetic used on animals.

According to the Pacific Community Resources Society's 2002 "Lower Mainland
Drug Use Survey", which interviewed about 2,000 youth aged 12 to 24, 19
percent had tried meth and nearly eight percent had used it within the past
30 days. The average age of first use was 14.5, and 45 percent of
respondents said they could obtain the drug within 24 hours. Family
Services of Greater Vancouver reported that in a six-month period in 2001,
14 to 34 youths sought detox for crystal meth. A year later, that figure
jumped to 32 to 59 for the same period.

MARC members note that some adolescent girls are taking meth to lose
weight, ending up not just skinny but skeletal. It's increasingly popular
among the gay/bisexual/lesbian/transgendered community, and even with
so-called soccer moms, some of whom take it to keep up with the demands of
working and parenting. There are also stories of everyone from lawyers to
software developers to longshoremen using meth.

A SYNTHETIC CENTRAL-nervous-system stimulant, meth increases stimulation of
the dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine receptors in the brain. It can
be swallowed, smoked, injected, or snorted. It provides a sense of focus
and euphoria. Meth can cause hallucinations like the ones Jake described;
users may also hear voices telling them to harm themselves or others, or
think people are following them. Coming down, users often experience an
intense craving for the drug, anxiety, confusion, fatigue, headaches, and
profound depression. They may be irritable, unpredictable, and suddenly
violent.

"Given the housing options, if I didn't have a place to sleep I don't know
if I could be off speed," Rosenfeld says. "It feels as if life is worth
living....You're not going to give that up if you've never felt that way
before."

Rosenfeld says he was surprised at MARC's efficiency during that first
November meeting.

"It was the most intelligent, collaborative response to a drug issue I've
ever worked in, in any city I've ever been," he remarks. "Usually these
meetings are full of catcalling, booing, and hissing. People are genuinely
concerned."

One of the most pressing concerns is treatment. A combination of
antidepressant and antipsychotic medication seems to have promising
results, but other possibilities need investigation. Then there's the lack
of funding, resources, and staff, thanks largely to government cutbacks.

"If you cut off your hand, you go to the hospital and they'll fix it. I'd
like to see [drug] treatment work like that," Dusk to Dawn's Steven Smith
says. "Youth should be able to say, 'I need help and I need it now.'...It's
a really hard drug to quit. They need a lot of support and care, and it's
just not there."

There are 10 beds allocated to youth detox services in Vancouver.

SINCE NOVEMBER, MARC members have formed subcommittees that meet every two
months. Jennifer Vornbrock, who's heading the group's
treatment-and-prevention arm, says the next step is to see what can be done
with existing resources. Because those involved recognize the seriousness
of Vancouver's problem, there's no room for politics or self-interest.

"This isn't the speed your parents took," says Vornbrock, the Vancouver
Coastal Health Authority's manager of youth, women's, and population
health. "It's 10 percent ephedrine and 90 percent ammonia. It's not a drug
you want to play around with."

Back in Tsawwassen, Jake has no shortage of tales about the damage crystal
meth has done to his own life. He sold a new truck for a pitiful sum to get
drug money, dropped out of school in Grade 10, and has essentially lost his
youth.

"When we were kids, we used to have fun," Jake says. "Now I've lost all my
friends to drugs. You can't keep friends because you're antisocial and
paranoid."

Perhaps the lingering delusions are the saddest part of Jake's story. Not
even 20, he can't make it through a day without antipsychotics.

"They calm me down," he says. "I thought I could detox on my own. Now it's
about staying clean one day at a time. It's about staying alive."