Drugs, dealing and overdoses
One students story of addiction
Travis Lowry
Issue date: 3/30/05 Section: Features
Big cities are often vilified - many times rightfully so - for their violent crime and rampant drug abuse.
Many people try to escape the unpleasantness of the major metropolises like Toronto by retiring to smaller communities to raise their families. However, this often does very little to prevent young adults from experimenting with narcotics.
But small rural towns are often seething with substance abuse, as high school students attempt to relieve their boredom and compensate for what they consider to be their cutting off from the attractions of the larger cities.
One such student who can attest to this is Kyle. Kyle is 21-years-old and is just about to finish a year-long acting program that he has been taking in Vancouver. Kyle is also now suffering severe repercussions from roughly five years of out-of-control substance abuse. His story is one that shows that anyone can become susceptible to the seductive and deadly lure of drug addiction.
Kyle was born in Calgary, AB., but his family ended up in Woodstock, ON. by the time he was 10-years-old. Woodstock has a population of 34,000 and is known as "The Dairy Capital of Canada" according to the city's Web site. Kyle spent his formative years here, a small town that also refers to itself as "The Friendly City," with a happy family life and a strong dislike of his peers' hard partying.
But Kyle remembers Woodstock, which has a population of more than 100,000 less people than St. Catharines, as substantially less than ideal.
He describes the town as a place where everyone knows everyone else, populated by residents with a "small town attitude," with kids having to drive to Toronto - an hour and a half away - or London - about 45 minutes away - for any sort of excitement.
"There's nothing for anyone to do there," he said. "A lot of times people get stuck in that frame of mind and they just sit around ... There's nothing for the kids."
Even still, Kyle made it to the first term of grade 11 relatively content because of his close family ties, somewhat an anomaly in itself in this age of broken homes and dysfunction. He even enjoyed spending Saturday nights with his family during a time in his life when most kids do everything they can to get away from their folks at home.
Many people try to escape the unpleasantness of the major metropolises like Toronto by retiring to smaller communities to raise their families. However, this often does very little to prevent young adults from experimenting with narcotics.
But small rural towns are often seething with substance abuse, as high school students attempt to relieve their boredom and compensate for what they consider to be their cutting off from the attractions of the larger cities.
One such student who can attest to this is Kyle. Kyle is 21-years-old and is just about to finish a year-long acting program that he has been taking in Vancouver. Kyle is also now suffering severe repercussions from roughly five years of out-of-control substance abuse. His story is one that shows that anyone can become susceptible to the seductive and deadly lure of drug addiction.
Kyle was born in Calgary, AB., but his family ended up in Woodstock, ON. by the time he was 10-years-old. Woodstock has a population of 34,000 and is known as "The Dairy Capital of Canada" according to the city's Web site. Kyle spent his formative years here, a small town that also refers to itself as "The Friendly City," with a happy family life and a strong dislike of his peers' hard partying.
But Kyle remembers Woodstock, which has a population of more than 100,000 less people than St. Catharines, as substantially less than ideal.
He describes the town as a place where everyone knows everyone else, populated by residents with a "small town attitude," with kids having to drive to Toronto - an hour and a half away - or London - about 45 minutes away - for any sort of excitement.
"There's nothing for anyone to do there," he said. "A lot of times people get stuck in that frame of mind and they just sit around ... There's nothing for the kids."
Even still, Kyle made it to the first term of grade 11 relatively content because of his close family ties, somewhat an anomaly in itself in this age of broken homes and dysfunction. He even enjoyed spending Saturday nights with his family during a time in his life when most kids do everything they can to get away from their folks at home.
