Pubdate: Tue, 21 Nov 2000
Source: Vancouver Sun (CN BC)
Copyright: The Vancouver Sun 2000
Contact:  200 Granville Street, Ste.#1, Vancouver BC V6C 3N3
Fax: (604) 605-2323
Website: http://www.vancouversun.com/
Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v97/n717/a04.html
Series: Searching for solutions - Fix on the Downtown Eastside
http://www.mapinc.org/thefix.htm

THREE WHO OD'D

Behind The Grave Statistics Are Ordinary People Who Took A Chance On A 
Risky High.

ROSS HAYNES, 1981-2000

As a boy, Ross Haynes and his friends spent four years building a huge
treehouse in the yard of his family home in West Vancouver's British
Properties neighbourhood. He hoped for a mention in the Guinness Book
of World Records. Last May, his younger sister found him in that
treehouse with a hypodermic needle in his arm. At age 19, he was dead
from a heroin overdose.

Haynes went to Sentinel secondary. At one point, for a science
project, he tried to invent a CFC-free refrigerator that wouldn't
wreck the Earth's fragile ozone layer. In 1997, he and his father,
Charles Haynes, went to small claims court with an unsuccessful $900
claim against the West Vancouver school board for failing to teach him
the industrialization section of a social studies course.

Ross Haynes told his mother that he first experienced heroin at age 16
when he bought a drug that was supposed to be ecstacy. At first, he
only smoked heroin, or chasing the dragon. In 1999, his mother learned
that Haynes was injecting heroin when, during a drug abuse counselling
session in a suburban office, she demanded that he roll up his shirt
sleeves and she saw the needle marks.

The desperate parents gave $5,000 to an addiction medicine doctor in
New Westminster for a treatment called a "rapid opiate detox." Haynes
was put to sleep for hours while his body went through withdrawal.
Then the doctor injected a drug pellet that temporarily blocks the
chemical reward that heroin gives an addict after a fix. A few days
before his 19th birthday, Haynes' parents managed to get him into a
residential treatment program, after weeks on a waiting list. Gaucher
believes her son had resumed using heroin for about a week when he
died, on May 9, 2000.

ERIC ROLAND GAUDRY, 1979-1999

A mother in Burnaby still doesn't know exactly where and how her
20-year-old son died, but toxicology tests confirmed that heroin was
the cause. Someone walking along a road in rural Langley found the
body of Eric Roland Gaudry on Dec. 15, 1999, but he may have been dead
for several days, dumped there by someone who didn't want to deal with
questions from police.

Now Gina Gaudry tries to focus on the first 17 years of her son's
life, before he began injecting heroin. As a teenager, Eric shared the
passions of many teens. He loved skateboarding and snowboarding. He
played guitar and keyboards in a garage band. He wanted to scuba dive
like his parents, but couldn't get certified because the heroin had
damaged his lungs.

Gina doesn't know when Eric first tried the drug, but he was 17 or 18.
One of his buddies had some and the gang used it. "To them, I don't
think it was any more important than jumping with a skateboard off a
loading dock," she said.  "[They thought] we'll all do it. If someone
breaks a leg, we'll worry about it later." Before Eric's death, one of
those friends had already died of an overdose.

That wasn't enough to make Eric stop using heroin. The file folder on
Gina's coffee table contains the names of several addiction medicine
doctors and the pamphlets of recovery homes and treatment programs
that Eric tried before his death. "When you get into this, you find
out how little there is available."

CURTIS GRINTALS, 1962-1997

Lisa McDonald still mourns the older brother she lost the week before
Christmas in 1997. Curtis Grintals was a psychiatric nurse.  At one
point, he had worked at a detox facility in Kamloops, and he told his
sister that the heroin users made him curious about the drug. "I
remember him saying that he wanted to know what his clients went
through," she says.

For two years, Grintals experimented with both heroin and cocaine
while caring for people with mental illnesses and AIDs. He told his
sister how depressed he felt after coming down from a cocaine binge
and vowed never to use the addictive drug again.

But on Dec. 19, 1997, Grintal died alone in his West End apartment
after using heroin and alcohol, which are especially dangerous when
used together.

Grintals was one of seven people who died within a 24-hour period
shortly after a Welfare Wednesday, when people on social assistance
get their government cheques. The Vancouver Sun headlined a front-page
story: "Drug victims weren't hard-core junkies." 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake