Addicted, by Andrew Chisolm

August 19, 2011 - Jim MacDonald can’t help but feel sorry for the people he often watches on television who stage interventions for their loved ones.

From pill junkies to meth heads — names used to describe a person and their drug of choice, or chain for life — the shows highlight the emotional struggle drug addicts face as they justify their dangerous lifestyles.

Jim knows first hand what the families are going through.

“My God, there’s a rough road ahead for them,” said the Souris man. “It’s a rough road we’ve been down.”

His late son, Reggie, battled with drug addiction, got mixed up in organized crime and spent time behind bars.

It was a lifestyle he attempted to escape but ultimately loved right to the end, alone in a swamp where a December chill took his life.

Along for his wild ride were his two brothers, mother and father and his two children and their mother.

“You don’t have to go to New York, Chicago or Los Angeles,” said Jim, adding his family is just one of many affected by drugs on P.E.I. “It’s here, it’s right at our backdoor.”

Jim was referring to his son being kidnapped in 2001 by the Hells Angels in Souris’ Co-op parking lot, a trip that had him hauled into a van where he was beaten over a $1,000 drug debt.

“He was going on that trip,” said Jim. “He was going to Montreal where they were going to fire him over the bridge.”

The van was pulled over by police not far from Summerside after the father of one of the kidnappers notified RCMP.

Reggie’s battle started in 1978 when he, then a 12-year-old student at Souris Consolidated, ate a few magic mushrooms before his Grade 7 history class.

“I saw waves in the floor like it was made of water. The teacher was about 10 feet tall. Then he was short and fat. Then he was tall and skinny again,” wrote Reggie in one many journals he left behind. “I was stoned and I loved it.”

Despite what some would call a stupid choice, Reggie was a smart kid with good grades. But his grades started to drop, his attitude changed and he stopped caring about his appearance.

“When we discovered there was something wrong with Reggie, we didn’t know what it was,” said Jim.

By 1983 he was snorting cocaine, dropping acid and well on his way into a world of dealing drugs.

He made arrangements with his late cousin, Mike, to trade magic mushroom for hash, a transaction the young teenager made through the mail.

By his 16th birthday, Reggie was making enough money picking mushrooms and selling hash that he was able to afford cocaine.

“I was a 16-year-old cocaine dealer,” he wrote. “Cocaine dealers were few and far between at that time. But I was headed for the big leagues.”

Even with his addictions and his days of dealing drugs, Reggie went on to graduate from New Brunswick Community College with honours in avionics in 1990, a diploma he couldn’t use because of a criminal record that was quickly building.

He attempted to go straight in early 2001 after spending two years in jail and another year in rehab but an opportunity and a craving for more than $7 an hour led him back to the drug trade. That opportunity was selling cocaine for a Moncton man who had connections to the Hells Angels and it’s what led him to the Souris Co-op where he was kidnapped.

“It was the only time I had seen him scared,” said Jim.

Reggie eventually moved to Toronto where he tried to use his diploma in avionics but every time he got his foot in the door with a company, his past would come back to haunt him.

    When they can’t pay, it gets ugly. We know of people who’ve committed suicide because they couldn’t pay. We know of situations where people have been kidnapped, beaten and threatened to get them to pay up,” RCMP Sgt. Randy Gallant

After being fired from a few decent jobs because of his criminal record, Reggie returned to Souris on May 27, 2005 — less than seven months before his death.

“He came home and he was different,” said Jim, noting Reggie was on methadone, working and was helpful around the house.

Jim, who had not seen eye-to-eye with his son for 15 years, had the opportunity to learn more about Reggie’s past for the few short months he had left before a mix up at the methadone clinic would lead him to one last binge.

Reggie’s methadone schedule was Tuesday but he was turned away the last week of November and told his schedule was shifted to Friday. That Saturday he left home and returned a few hours later.

“He bounced out the door and come back around 11:30 (p.m.) and was crazy,” said Jim. “I’m telling you right now, he was crazy. We put in one hell of a night with him.”

His mom found him a bed at the Mount Herbert addictions centre the next morning but Reggie wasn’t prepared to go.

“He looked at me and the last words he said to me was, “There’s nobody going to lock me in a cement basement anymore.’”

Reggie fled through a basement window and drove off — he was never seen alive again.

His car, containing a jacket and a half-filled syringe, was found in a wooded area north of Souris almost six months later. Reggie’s remains were scattered around a swamp not too far from the car, spread around by coyotes.

“If we had of got in the air at least we would have found the car,” said Jim, noting he had requested for one of his son’s to help the RCMP helicopter search team shortly after Reggie went missing. “I’m sure he was dead within a few hours but the coyotes wouldn’t have ate him.”

But how did a smart kid turned drug addict end up dead in a swamp?

Jim believes Reggie was deeply affected by a few deaths in the family and the loss of his best friend.

“Reggie said to me after all that, ‘why does everybody I like have to die?’”

But in his own words, it seems Reggie lived his life the way he wanted, or at least thought he did.

“Good things have been said about me and bad things have been said about me. I’d like to say that only the good things are true,” wrote Reggie. “But if I could live my life over again, there’s not a whole lot that I’d do differently.”

For Jim, he only wishes parents had more power to force their addicted children into rehab, which is a voluntary program.

“Here’s your son or your daughter. You know the drugs are killing them but there’s not one damn thing you can do about it,” said Jim. “They have all the rights in the world to destroy themselves.”

Author’s note: Reggie MacDonald’s story is long and detailed. A newspaper platform is only able to scratch the surface into his life. The journals he left behind provide a valuable tool for families, addiction workers and addicts themselves. They can be read online at: http://www.mereggie.com.

(By Andrew Chisholm)