Julian
Madigan isn’t surprised eight teens whacked on ecstasy collapsed at
an Edmonton rave Sunday morning - the 24-year-old man from Ireland
has collapsed himself.
“You
haven’t seen the tip of the iceberg yet,” Madigan warned of a
rise in the drug’s popularity among teens and young adults at
all-night dance parties. “Only in the last year have you started to
get your raves.”
Canada’s
rave scene is about five or six years behind Ireland and the United
Kingdom, Madigan said. “It’s going to get worse before it gets
better.”
The
former raver and drug dealer has spoken at seminars and published a
book in Ireland and the U.K. in 1996 called The Agony of Ecstasy.
He has
conducted another five seminars in Saskatchewan since he arrived in
Canada in December. He and his father, Gerry, mailed letters Monday
to schools in Edmonton offering to come up from their Calgary home to
speak to students and parents.
Madigan
began educating people about the dangers of ecstasy after he tore
himself away from the drug scene that enveloped him at age 14.
“I
used to go to raves every single weekend - I lived for it,” he
said. Madigan’s ecstasy use escalated until he was taking three or
four tabs a night.
The
weekend binges usually began on a Thursday - with no rest until
Sunday when he would relax “with a bottle of Jack Daniels (whisky)
and a load of grass.”
In the
end, Madigan was trafficking drugs to support his $900-a-week drug
habit.
He
finally asked his father for help when a dealer trying to collect
about $2,000 beat him up and threatened to kill him, Madigan said.
His
last high on the designer drug was almost six years ago, when he took
cocaine and swallowed eight ecstasy pills.
Now he
is dedicated to educating students with honest information. Ecstasy
offers an incredible high - but for a terrible price, he tells them.
Anyone
who argues otherwise is simply wrong, he said. “They haven’t seen
their friends die.
“They
haven’t had their lives turned upside down. I know exactly what
it’s all about.”
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