Pulling back from the abyss
A private program in Calgary specializes in drug-addicted teens who reject the idea of treatment
Gerry Bellett
Vancouver Sun
Saturday, April 07, 2007
Though a psychiatric nurse, Valerie Goodale could not find help in B.C. for her drug-addicted son.
CREDIT: Ward Perrin, Vancouver Sun
Though a psychiatric nurse, Valerie Goodale could not find help in B.C. for her drug-addicted son.
CALGARY - When he talks about it today, Lawren Hyde just calls it a knife even though it was really a sharpened machete carried up his sleeve, a symbol of where he was at 17-- drug dealer, addict, violent, dangerous and on the brink of permanent insanity.
The machete was an accessory that came with the paranoia.
And the paranoia arrived when he was 16 and binging on cocaine, ecstacy, crystal meth and PCP -- horse tranquilizers -- in Downtown Eastside after hours clubs often for four days at a time without sleep.
"Shadows frightened me. My friends frightened me. I was convinced people were trying to kill me," said Hyde, now 23.
His widowed mother Valerie was at her wits end. He'd been uncontrollable since the age of 13 and on drugs since nine when his father died.
He'd been kicked out of four schools for dealing drugs, arrested for robbery, and was now raving around their North Vancouver neighbourhood with his machete, slashing at phantoms he believed were gathering to kill him.
Of all the torment his mother felt, the one that burned deepest was her inability to find him help.
If anyone should have been able to do this for him it was her -- after all, she was a psychiatric nurse working for North Shore Addictions and Mental Health Services with all the resources of the province open to her.
But despite the $1 billion a year the B.C. government spends on mental health and substance abuse programs, and all the youth addiction treatment beds throughout the province, none was of any use to Lawren who was going insane from an insatiable appetite for drugs.
"I tried everything to get help. I mean this is my profession and I should know where to get it, but in B.C. there was nothing for him. He needed to be forced into treatment but we don't do that here," she said.
"Treatment in B.C. is voluntary. Kids have to be compliant. There's no recognition that children like Lawren who aren't compliant need a secure environment where they can be treated. We give all the rights to kids and none to parents. So under the guise of human rights, parents can't get their children the help they need.
"Lawren only went for outpatient treatment because he was court ordered. But it never did any good. He needed more than that," she said.
Some therapists were so frightened by him they refused treatment.
SON COULD DIE, DOCTOR SAID
The last time she tried getting help in B.C. was from a Lower Mainland physician specializing in addiction. She told him she was afraid her son would die before he became an adult.
"He said to me 'yes that's quite possible.' That's all the help I could get -- him telling me my son might die. I can't tell you how I felt. I'd already lost my husband, if I lost my son I know I would have died too," she said.
In May 2001 she discovered the Alberta Adolescent Recovery Centre (AARC), a private program in Calgary which treats adolescents in the final stages of addiction when they are facing death or permanent insanity. Unlike programs in B.C., AARC won't reject youths like Lawren who fight treatment.
Most of the kids treated in AARC have been court ordered or placed in treatment by the Alberta Child Welfare Services, and virtually none of them choose to be treated, says AARC executive director Dr. Dean Vause.
"This is not the case with adults who will voluntarily enter treatment. Adolescents won't. None of them want to be here," he said.
Other kids are brought in by parents -- a few kicking and screaming. The Alberta government has secure care legislation that allows minors to be held for five days if deemed to be a danger to themselves or in danger of being exploited for prostitution.
B.C. considered enacting similar legislation in 2000 but the government was frightened off by the anticipated expense and the lack of facilities for holding them.
AARC requires every youth to sign a consent to treatment before being admitted in addition to a consent being granted by the government department or parent responsible.
Valerie was told that if she could get her son to AARC they would do an assessment to see if he qualified for treatment. She knew she would have to trick him into going as he was too violent and unstable to voluntarily enter the centre.
By now his paranoia was so bad that he'd gone into an RCMP detachment believing it the only safe place to make a phone call. His behaviour was so bizarre the officers sent him to hospital where a psychiatrist diagnosed drug-induced psychosis and found he was close to permanent insanity. When he was released from the psychiatric ward his mother convinced him to fly to Winnipeg and stay with an uncle.
Then she lied and said his return ticket would only take him as far as Calgary and offered to meet him there so they could spend the week shopping before returning home.
In Calgary she fashioned a heavy parcel using phone books and told him she had to deliver it.
When she pulled up outside AARC, a nondescript low building in an industrial area on the outskirts of the city, Lawren -- blissfully unaware of what AARC was -- volunteered to carry it in.
"I was trying to be nice," he said.
Inside he was told to go downstairs and in the basement he was surrounded by "eight guys all bigger than me who said I was getting a drug assessment."
Stunned, he was taken into a room where two young, fit, and large males stayed with him. At the time he was over six feet tall and a martial arts devotee and weighed about 160 pounds.
CONSENT FORM SIGNED
Vause remembers the admission.
"Lawren was a really sick kid and he didn't want to be here but we talked to him and he did sign the consent for assessment and treatment," said Vause.
"Sometimes you have to step in front of a kid that sick, although the risks for us as an organization are great because we don't want to leave ourselves open to accusations of unlawful confinement. That's why we require them to sign a consent."
Lawren remembers that if he had had a weapon that afternoon he would likely have used it.
"I didn't have my knife and I was dealing with guys a lot bigger than me.
"They took away my money, my jewelry, told me to take a shower to get deloused, took away all my fancy clothes and gave me the plain clothes my mother had brought in," he said.
He was escorted upstairs and placed with a group of other youths undergoing treatment. He spent the night at an AARC host home operated by the parents of a client nearing the end of treatment.
For company he was assigned the same husky youths that he believed he'd have to fight if he attempted to escape.
"I thought about it but I was in a strange city, the house was locked and secure I had no money, would have to fight my way out and even if I did I'd have to rob someone and then try to get back home," he said.
He decided to sit tight and see what happened. It took two weeks before he realized he was being helped.
"I guess I began listening to Dr. Vause I liked the way he held himself."
Meanwhile, his mother had flown back to North Vancouver, arranged a leave of absence, closed up the family home and moved to Calgary with his sister as the program requires parents to live near the centre.
Ten months later Lawren emerged from treatment and has been clean and sober since.
"AARC saved him as it saved me and his sister," says his mother. "We'd lived our lives around his addiction. My love didn't stand a chance next to the hold drugs had on him. He loved me, I know that, but he loved his addiction more -- much, much more -- they all do."
DRUG BLITZ PLANNED
Last November Valerie was back in Calgary, part of a handpicked group contemplating an ambitious addiction intervention campaign for British Columbia. Addiction and medical experts -- with observers from the B.C. government and a number of aboriginal bands -- were gathered here to plan a community-wide blitz on drug abuse that will be directed at oil-and-gas-rich Fort St. John and the aboriginal communities surrounding it.
At first sight it appeared unusual that 75 people -- among them business and community leaders of this wealthy Alberta city -- would give up four days of their valuable time planning to save children in northeast B.C. from drug and alcohol addiction.
But the initiative is being driven by Allan Markin, the chairman of Canadian Natural Resources.
Markin -- one of the owners of the Calgary Flames and an unabashed philanthropist -- has offered to put $3 million into the project.
Markin's company is the second largest gas and oil producer in Canada. The Fort St. John area accounts for a large part of his company's holdings and hundreds of local people are directly employed by Canadian Natural Resources or work under contract. Therefore it's no surprise that when Markin looked at the map of British Columbia for an area to help he stuck a pin in the north east.
Markin wants to help communities deal with addiction "so that in 10 years from now they will be better places" and asked AARC to become involved because of the centre's effectiveness.
He has held talks with the B.C. government and believes he has a promise from Victoria that his money would be matched.
"They've promised that and I believe they'll do as they've said," Markin said.
That might be a bit hopeful as the B.C. government has yet to commit a penny. Whether the government's involved or not, the participants in the meeting set themselves the ambitious goal of blanketing the Fort St. John region -- schools, churches, industry, police, the courts, service clubs, aboriginal governments, municipal governments -- with the message that addiction is a disease of the brain and communities need to do more than just rely on the old 'just say no' campaign as this has never worked anywhere with adolescents.
"Addiction's a complex illness and there are no quick fixes. But we believe community intervention can be effective in keeping kids healthy," said Vause.
"Prevention is a million times better than treatment and we'll be glad to be involved in an intervention program in B.C. because no one wants to see kids come here for treatment," he said.
Vause said AARC would likely open an office in Fort St. John either with permanent staff or with personnel rotated in on two-week stints to organize the community prevention part of the campaign.
But there won't be any treatment in Fort St. John although some of the most severely addicted children could be offered treatment in Calgary.
This will cost about $100,000 per family, the money being split between treatment fees and living expenses as at least one parent will have to move to Calgary and set up home in order the meet the demands of the program.
Markin is prepared to finance five B.C. families a year for five years. If the B.C. government matches his contribution, 10 B.C. families a year could be helped.
In recent years the B.C. government has sent deputy ministers and politicians to this non-profit centre to gather intelligence. The government appears fascinated by the centre's results, which are impressive, but skittish of its methods which are abstinence based, hard-nosed and nothing like the voluntary programs available in B.C.
The interest in AARC began with the former B.C. New Democrat Party government which promised $1 million to start an AARC program in the Lower Mainland, but nothing came of it.
Now the B.C. Liberals are sizing up AARC to see if the program could be brought into the province as part of the Aboriginal Health Plan which calls for an increase in addiction treatment.
Treatment is based on the 12-step program of Alcoholics Anonymous. ARRC was founded by Vause in 1992.
A 2005 survey by U.S.-based evaluator Dr. Michael Quinn Patton tracked the condition of 100 consecutive AARC graduates who had been treated between January 1998 and January 2002 and found 85 per cent of them sober and drug-free at the time of interview.
Some reported a relapse after treatment but had regained sobriety after returning to the centre for further counselling. However, 48 per cent had never used alcohol or drugs after leaving AARC.
During this four-year period, 15 youths had quit the program or were terminated by AARC staff or referred to another institution, a drop-out rate of about four a year.
Since 1992 the centre has graduated 332 youths, a significant number from B.C.
GOVERNMENT INTERESTED
Health Minister George Abbott admitted the government was interested in the AARC program.
"We have not formed conclusions on that program yet. I think it has enough positive results that it's important we look at it and see whether on a pilot project basis we ought to look at something like it," Abbott said.
"We spend over a billion dollars now on mental health and addictions programs. We frequently hear we should be doing more, and different and better. But while everyone agrees there should be progress not everyone agrees there should be change," he said.
"We will look carefully at that program and look carefully at other programs out of Alberta as well. There are also programs in Quebec and Ontario," said the minister.
He admitted there was no treatment centre in B.C. that would admit adolescents [such as Lawren] who were violently opposed to being treated.
The issue of whether severely addicted youth in the final stages of illness should be forced into treatment was something that still needed to be confronted, he says.
"That's an important issue and that's something that as a society and government we will have to grapple with -- whether one can treat those who are resistant to treatment?"
Asked if the government was planning to bring in any type of secure care legislation that might allow it to happen, he says it might be something for the future.
"I recall the debate when the NDP was looking at it. The Secure Care Act was controversial at the time particularly among those in the human rights area. It remains an important issue but it's not one that's going to be a part of legislative agenda in an immediate sense," he said.
Demands for treatment at AARC from parents in other parts of Canada and Alberta has been so intense that a new $6-million addition to the facility, allowing it to treat up to 60 children.
gbellett@png.canwest.com© The Vancouver Sun 2007
