Pubdate: Sat, 29 Jan 2011
Source: Windsor Star (CN ON)
Copyright: 2011 The Windsor Star
Contact:  http://www.canada.com/windsorstar/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/501
Author: Craig Pearson
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)

CRACK COCAINE SEDUCTIVE, DEADLY

Three days into a crack binge, her eyes red and wet and sad, "Lisa" 
cares little about her rotting thumb.

Blackened by an embedded glass shard from a chipped pipe and worsened 
by embers from the frequent lighting process, Lisa doesn't want 
medical attention for a lousy finger.

"I'm an addict," she deadpans, firing up her next fix. "Hey, I'm 
honest." Lisa's partner in crack, "Cathy," electrified by a blast of 
the rock moments ago, explains in manic speed about crack cocaine -- 
the free-based form of powdered coke, or cocaine hydrochloride -- 
which she swears might be mentally but not physically addicting. She 
should know, she says. She has consumed coke almost daily for much of 
the last quarter century -- when she's not in jail.

"I don't know what the f---it is," she muses, unable to sit still, 
unable to clearly explain herself. "It's a serotonin thing. It's how 
happy your body feels.

"It's a sick love."

Use of some illegal drugs like marijuana has dropped in recent years. 
Yet abuse of harder narcotics remains a stubborn problem, say police 
and street workers.

According to Health Canada's Canadian Alcohol and Drug Use Survey 
from 2009, among Canadians aged 15 and older, the past-year use of 
alcohol decreased from 79.3 per cent in 2004 to 76.5 per cent in 
2009. The past-year use of cannabis decreased from 14.1 per cent to 
10.6 per cent. But the use of cocaine or crack has remained steady at 
1.2 per cent of the population.

Also remaining stable was ecstasy (0.9 per cent), speed (0.4 per 
cent) and hallucinogens (0.7 per cent).

The record $4.1-million drug haul by Windsor police in 2010 shows the 
grip narcotics still have in Windsor.

"Crack's a huge problem for us," said Staff Sgt. Jim Farrand, of the 
Windsor police drugs and guns unit. "It's very steady. We're seeing 
crack as much as we ever have."

Roy Campbell -- sometimes called Reverend Roy, for his willingness to 
preach the benefits of 12-step programs -- has toiled on the front 
lines of the AIDS Committee of Windsor's needle-exchange program 
since it began in 1993. Campbell has witnessed drug culture up close. 
He has arrived at a home moments after a window was shot out. He has 
found a junkie in mid-overdose. He has helped a client whose 
needlework went so awry, his vein splattered blood around the 
interior of a car.

The 56-year-old outreach co-ordinator has seen the destitute, extreme 
poverty, and at least one home so acrid with the stench of cat urine 
that it literally took your breath away.

The AIDS Committee started exchanging needles with a few addicts 17 years ago.

Last year, with more than 250 clients, it distributed 224,000 needles 
and collected almost as many.

Campbell thinks drug use has remained relatively constant in recent 
years, but that more dangerous drugs are making inroads: crack, and 
more recently, opiates and crystal meth.

He says narcotics take their toll on the users, of course, but also 
on the community, affecting family, friends and neighbours.

With the oddly sweet smell of crack smoke hovering mid-air, two 
outreach workers with the AIDS Committee of Windsor's needle-exchange 
program gently urge Lisa to have her thumb checked out.

Just a few weeks previously, they note, after trying unsuccessfully 
to get another client to seek medical attention for his infected 
thumb, they came in one night to find the battle was lost.

"One of our clients had a thumb abscess," said Campbell. "We told him 
to get it checked. Two weeks later, we came in and it was sitting in 
the ashtray."

Drug addicts often aren't eager to visit hospitals. They don't want 
to sit too long without doing drugs, for one. Worse, they fear being 
identified as a drug abuser, which can bring a host of complications, 
including having prescriptions -- the lifeline of opiate addicts -- 
cancelled. Many fear that police will be alerted or, in the case of 
parents, the Children's Aid Society.

Outreach workers often recommend a program called Street Health, 
where society's down-and-out, the addicts and the homeless and the 
streetwalkers, seek medical treatment without an OHIP card -- and 
without questions.

Lisa's thumb eventually healed, though health care didn't seem 
important to her the night a reporter visited.

This night, they sit around a coffee table littered with the 
accoutrements of a hazy drug blowout -- glass jars with scorched lids 
that serve as makeshift bongs, a tin container holding bits of crack, 
Brillo pads to scrape the drug, scraps of aluminum foil and lighters 
and ashes and a glass vial for smoking.

"I've been on a f---ing 25-year bender," Cathy says, putting this 
three-day binge into context. "This is nothing, man. A couple of 
eight-balls, like, three, four grams, that's like f---all."

Everything out of her mouth this night is misery: the death of a 
loved one, missing her child, having boyfriend problems, fighting 
depression, wanting to quit.

"I went to rehab and sh--," Cathy says, breaking into tears during 
her high-octane conversation, what front-line workers call a 
crack-and crystal-meth induced Crack Rap. "But I'm not there, really, 
to say I'll never do it again. Honestly, I know I can't quit. I'd be 
lying to myself."

Cathy has sold drugs and done "whatever" to make money for her 
expensive addiction, including theft -- spending up to $1,000 in a 
single day on crack cocaine.

She has lost her child, freedom, jobs, friends and self-respect. But 
never her taste for sick love.

"One day I want to go to jails and talk to people," she says. "I want 
to go to high schools and talk to kids about drugs. I started using 
because it was trendy, man.

"But crack kills. It kills the quality of life."

DRUG IS CHEAP, INTENSE AND HIGHLY ADDICTIVE

Dr. Peter Selby, the Torontobased director of addiction programs at 
the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, says drugs can be so 
seductive because they tap into the brain's pleasure centres.

"Our desire for food, water and sex can be hijacked by drugs," says 
Selby. "The drug provides a high or euphoria by releasing dopamines, 
or the pleasure chemicals of the brain. These lead to complex changes 
in the body that cause the person to continue using the drug.

"Even if you get over the first hump of withdrawal, it creates other 
changes in the memory parts of the brain that keep drawing the person 
to the drug.

"So people continue using the drug despite the harm it's causing them 
physically, socially, psychologically, legally."

The brain's nerve cells communicate via the release of chemicals 
through synapses. The mini-electrical current releases dopamines and 
other chemicals associated with pleasure, such as endorphins, 
adrenalin and serotonin.

One wrinkle for addicts is that the body soon develops a tolerance.

"Over time, the body develops a new level of normal in the brain, so 
the person keeps wanting to chase that high," Selby said.

"After a point, you can't get any more pleasure."

Crack is particularly dangerous.

Small "rocks" of crack, about a tenth of a gram, sell for between $10 
and $25. A larger rock, about a quarter of a gram, sells for perhaps 
$40 -- making it popular with low-income users.

The intense high, however, lasts only five to 10 minutes, so frequent 
users often expend time and energy thinking about doing more.

A gram provides only five or six hits.

"Crack makes cocaine more smokeable, and smoking a drug is the most 
addictive form," Selby said. "Crack goes into the system very rapidly.

"Crack can also cause problems with the heart. Bigger harm comes from 
what it makes people do, such as unprotected sex and crime."

Police say the drug most associated with crime is cocaine, or its 
freebased form crack, where impurities have been cooked out.

Selby believes society must take a double-pronged approach to tackling drugs.

But there's no quick fix, he says.

"First, we must reduce the demand for drugs," Selby said. "The 
healthier and more educated and richer society is, the less people 
use drugs. We have to educate people about the effects of drugs and 
we have to make sure people get treatment.

"The key is to get help and stick with it, even if you're relapsing," 
Selby said.

"You need to be persistent."

- - - -

MONDAY

In this four-part series, The Star examines the toll drug abuse takes 
on addicts, their families and the community. On Monday, read about 
the short life and tragic death of Courtney Kalyn.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom