Yellowknife (Nov 15/04) - Rudy Vanderjagt touches his well-worn, black leather jacket.

"I'm lucky I still have it," he said, "and that's only because they wouldn't take it. I sold my truck, I sold my TV, my stereo, my computer, all my tools, everything I had."

Vanderjagt spent all his money on crack cocaine.

"I'd come back from the camps with $9,000 and it would be gone in a week. I'd be flat broke, bumming money for cigarettes."

He was an electrician with a drinking problem when he came North three years ago -- and it wasn't long before he was addicted to crack.

"It's so easy to get," he said. "It's easier to get a gram of crack than a gram of marijuana in this town."

Vanderjagt led a life of desperation -- in and out of shelters, scamming bank machines for money and chasing the drug.

He could spend days without shaving, showering or moving off the couch, plunged into the depression that followed the high.

Two months ago he decided he had to make a change.

"I was at a cross roads where I was either going to take my life or get some help," he said.

"I'm tired of that life. I'm tired of waking up and searching my pockets for change, going out on the street looking for cigarette butts to smoke."

He went to the Salvation Army and checked into the Withdrawal Management program. He is 6 feet, 4 inches tall and at the time weighed only 150 pounds.

Now he goes to support groups such as Crack Busters, Cocaine Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous every night and he's been clean for more than 60 days.

Vanderjagt has been in recovery programs before, but he says this is the first time he's totally committed himself to turning his life around.

Vanderjagt has a full-time job, working at the Salvation Army's emergency shelter.

"I think it helps them to see me because they know me," he said. "They've seen me sleeping on mats at the shelter or bumming money downtown."

He said Yellowknifers don't understand how bad the crack problem is.

"It's an epidemic in this town. It's going to get worse before it gets better."

He thinks Yellowknife will see more drug-related crime as a result.

"I'm surprised there haven't already been more murders."

He said programs already offered in Yellowknife are great, and they do help people, but the city needs more. The Salvation Army offers the only residential treatment program in Yellowknife -- and it's for men only.

"There are a lot of women who do crack and they have nothing," Vanderjagt said.

He said the city could use a co-ed program, where people could live in, because that's an important part of the recovery process.

"I have a safe place to live and I have people I can talk to when the cravings get overwhelming," he said.

He said crack addicts don't have room to love anything but the pipe -- not even their own children.

"The only good thing I can say about it is it brings you into recovery fast because it ruins you so fast," he said. "It either brings you into recovery or it kills you."

He has a message for anyone who wants to change.

"There is help and there is hope," he said.