“There was no other way of numbing myself without doing cocaine and it worked very well to kill the pain. But it also takes everything you own. You give up on your personal hygiene, your eating habits and your self-will. And then, at one point, you just want to die because you’re tired of it as well as the pain that initially put you there.”
Those are the words of one man on the street talking to the youth taking part in the ‘Scared Straight” initiative happening on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.
It’s the poorest postal code in all of North America, says Pierre Morais, founder of the ‘Scared Straight’ Tour. Morais refers to the Downtown Eastside as having the unfortunate distinction of being North America’s most “infamous skid row.”
But Morais says that while one can look at this area and only see the hopelessness of the situation, he sees it as an opportunity to educate youth about the horrors of drug and alcohol addiction.
Scared Straight is a program aimed at taking high-risk youth on a 48-hour tour into the Downtown Eastside. On Monday, Global News followed a group of young people from Saskatchewan that is participating in the initiative.
The program is meant to drive home the message of where you could end up if you start experimenting with drugs and alcohol. “We take youth, who may or may not be using drugs or alcohol, through the worst drug infested ghetto in all of North America, which happens to be here,” Morais added.
According to Morais, Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside is home to more than 10,000 drug users and almost 3,000 homeless people in a 12-block area.
As the youth meet people on the streets, Morais points out, they’ll ask them what they want to tell these kids, and it’s usually the same message: “Stay away from drugs, it’s not worth it. You don’t want to be here.”
Morais estimates that approximately 3,000 youth have come through the program.
He says the program is effective because the truth can be a very powerful thing.
“There is no escaping the truth when it stares us square in the face” he said.
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