Pubdate: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 Source: Maple Ridge Times (CN BC) Copyright: 2005 Lower Mainland Publishing Group Inc Contact: http://www.mrtimes.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1372 LIFE OR METH The TIMES Talks To One Man Who Is Choosing Life Russell Meredith likes to move when he talks. He paces back and forth, laughs and often gestures to get across his points. Especially when he talks about what crystal meth did to his life. "It's like someone getting possessed by the devil," Meredith said. The Maple Ridge man has been living in a rehab facility in Abbotsford for the last month, and has spent more than 30 days clean and free of the drug that was slowly killing him. Before he came to the centre, he had spent two years living in tents in the bush and ravines around downtown Maple Ridge, one of the dozens of homeless people who most people see only as a nuisance or a threat. Until a few months ago, Meredith was reluctant to try rehab again. He had already left one program after a dispute with another recovering addict. He credits his new life to a woman who worked at the Salvation Army's Caring Place. The drug was killing him. The changes to his body - weight loss and broken teeth were the most obvious symptoms - but they were happening so gradually that he hadn't even noticed. When he came in to the Caring Place one day, the woman pulled him aside and told him exactly what was happening. "'Russ, look at you, you're dying, you're going to die,'" she told him, Meredith said. She shocked him out of his downward spiral and helped him get into the rehab program. Meredith began his descent into addiction seven years ago when he moved to Maple Ridge. He had been living on the streets in Vancouver for some time, but he found it was a dangerous place. "You do or you die if you're out there," he said. When a friend of his inherited five acres in Maple Ridge on 256 Street, it seemed like a golden opportunity. Meredith moved out to the rural property, trying to start a new life by acting as a caretaker of the small house for his friend. "I ended up getting into trouble," he said. He started taking meth seriously for the first time. He had tried amphetamines in the past, but crystal meth was different. "This new stuff, it's no good. It's very, very bad for you." He was quickly addicted. "It's like putting your hand in a trap and having it clamp down on you," Meredith said. Most meth users smoke the drug out of glass pipes, but that never worked for Meredith. He was an injection user, calling his hits "fuel injection." A single dose of meth, called a point, sells for around $10. At the height of his addiction, he would do two or three points a day, and up to three at once if he was partying. The drug stayed in his system for so long that he could sometimes go two or three days without a hit and still feel the effects. Usually, he didn't let himself come down between injections. He also started shoplifting, simply walking out of stores with merchandise. He says he did it not for the rush or because he was high, but because he just needed something to happen in his life. "I didn't want to hurt nobody," Meredith said. After he was kicked out of his friend's home because of his troubles, Meredith found a cheap apartment in the district's downtown, near 224 Street and Lougheed Highway. When the building was sold two years ago, he was evicted and found himself with nowhere to go. His parents had died while he was in jail, and his brother recently died as well. He had no family to fall back on, and all his friends were in the same lifestyle, many of them "unsavoury" people, Meredith said. "That's when I started to live in the bush," he said. Living in the bush was good at first, and he wanted nothing more than to be left alone, he said. Regular people and bylaw officers who kept him moving around were a constant problem, Meredith said. And he kept getting in trouble for shoplifting, once getting caught stealing shoes from Value Village. He went to jail over and over again for petty crimes. Some stores didn't even bother to call the police, simply throwing him out after he was caught. Under the influence of the drug, he could get frustrated and lash out, waking up suddenly and throwing his bicycle around his campsite, yelling and screaming, waking up his friends. Over the six years he was on meth, he had gradually lost most of his teeth. Meth use makes them brittle, and pieces would break off when he bit into something cold. Even when biting a peach, the cracking sound could tell him he had lost another piece of what was once a big, white smile. By the time he was told he was dying, he was sick of his lifestyle. He had memorized every corner, ever driveway and every hubcap within the orbit of his life. At 42 years old, he knew he couldn't keep up living in the bush much longer. He wanted something else. "I made a choice now, to not die. Only because maybe there's something better I haven't seen yet." Right now he is taking his recovery slowly. He doesn't go near stores, where he might slip back into shoplifting, something associated with his old life. "I just think now in my mind - danger! Anything to do with the drug - danger." Meredith knows if he goes back to the drug even once, he might not be able to get back off it again. "You've fucked yourself, automatically, once you do that," he said. "One more time, I'll be dead." He is about to start working through some of the 12 steps in his recovery program, and hopes to find a job as a sheet metal worker or a mechanic soon. Something to keep him busy will help him from "wandering sideways," he said. His best friend from his meth days, a Maple Ridge man named Rick, entered rehab a week before Meredith, and the two of them are supporting one another. Both are proud of the changes they can already see in the last month. They are gaining weight, and Meredith says he can see changes in his face as the dope leaves his body. "Now that I'm off it, I don't want it," Meredith says. "Today the word is no, tomorrow the word will be no, and so on and so on." - --- MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman